Ken Griffey, Jr. hit his 600th career home run last night. It happened before a sparse crowd of about 10,000 people down in Miami where they must have been giving away signed NFL footballs to get THAT many people there. It’s a sad state of affairs when an outstanding player hits a milestone and there is such a lethargic reaction to it…but it’s been a long time coming and I think Cincinnati has kinda lost interest. Which is, in my opinion, only fair because Griff lost interest in us about…oh…7 years ago.
When he played in Seattle, Junior was the biggest thing going. He started playing there when he was maybe 16 years old or something crazy like that. He had a boatload of home runs, made outstanding plays in centerfield and had that charismatic smile that you couldn’t deny was that of a superstar. Since coming to Cincinnati, we’ve seen very little of that.
Cinci ain’t exactly a hotbed for sports. We’ve got the Bengals who have underperformed throughout the years, we’ve got the Reds who won a couple of titles about 200 years ago and we have college basketball in UC and Xavier (the Musketeers are the only game in town right now!). There is college football to our north (Ohio State) and college hoops are big in the south (UK, Louisville) and we have a couple of minor league teams here when you get bored (hey! the Cyclones just won some Division AAA III minor league championship! yahoo!) but for the most part, our city has been in the Dark Ages when it comes to sports for maybe a couple of decades.
Ken Griffey, Jr. was supposed to change all that. Well…he and Carson Palmer were supposed to change all that, but let’s not lose sight of the topic here…’kay? Ken Griffey, Jr. was welcomed back to his hometown as a hero. We had a parade, we had celebrations. There were horns blowing and minstrels dancing in the street! It was gonna be the greatest event in the history of the Queen City! And then…it wasn’t. And then we lost interest. Which is too bad because Griffey has accomplished so much without the aid of steroids or any other enhancements. And in this day and age, there’s something to be said for that…
So now we have Jay Bruce and Joey Votto and Jerry Hairston, Jr. and Brandon Phillips (who now takes the “Baseball’s Greatest Smile” award from Junior) and many other young players on the cusp of making the Reds a really good team for very little money. I can’t speak for everyone, but I am much more excited to see them play than to see Junior ground into a double play trying to hit another weak home run. So thankfully it’s over. Griffey hit his 600th home run last night and really nobody cared.
Well…except for Seattle. I’m sure there was a high fives and a lot of spilled coffee out there…
