Ken Griffey Jr. knows history. Family history. Baseball history. He has been around long enough to create plenty in both.
He played 11 seasons in Seattle, is in his sixth now with the Reds, turns 36 on Nov. 21, has 10 Gold Gloves and 509 home runs, has been married for nearly 13 years and has three children.
It all weaves back and forth, family and baseball, for Griffey. History unfolding every day for this athlete not quite a recluse but close, not surly but certainly prickly. Smart, intuitive, sensitive but full of pride. Percolating with confidence.
“I got the chance to meet one of my great-grandparents and have relationships with both sets of my grandparents,” Griffey said.
“When you add up the grandkids on my mom’s side, it’s about 97, and when you add them on my dad’s, it’s about 57. So, in a lot of cities I go to in baseball I have family and good friends.”
And his wife, Melissa, brings the kids from Orlando, Fla., to meet him, as they did this weekend in Denver. Soon, with school finished, they will settle in Cincinnati for the summer.
His oldest boy, Trey, 11, was in the Reds’ clubhouse Saturday at Coors Field bouncing a ball, running to the batting cages for swings, sprinting back and checking in with his dad. Griffey, used to do that with his dad in the 1970s in those Reds clubhouses.
History, weaving history.
As much as America knows about this baseball star who emerged in 1989 and became the game’s most prolific player in the 1990s, so much is mysterious. Griffey believes you already know plenty. That his life has been an open book.
For the last three seasons in Cincinnati his games played pans out this way: 70 in 2002, 53 in 2003 and 83 last year.
The injuries have come frequently and in assortment, the chief ones to both hamstrings and his right knee.
It was here at Coors on April 10, 2000, that Griffey hit his 400th home run. He became the youngest to reach that number, and he did it on his father’s birthday. Hank Aaron himself picked Griffey to break his home run record of 755.
But it took Griffey until last season, on Father’s Day, to reach 500 homers. Injuries make many consider him a fading if not faded star. It makes some diminish his earlier accomplishments as simply old news.
He is the only active player other than Roger Clemens to be voted to baseball’s all-century team in 1999.
Yet some people stupidly look at this player now and yawn.
“It’s not about the past, it’s about the present in baseball and all sports,” Griffey said. “It’s kind of that way in life. It’s not the ‘The Longest Yard’ that will be remembered, it’s the remake of the ‘The Longest Yard,’ that is what’s happening. Anywhere you go, anything you do, it’s about now. What are you doing now?
“The great thing is I’m not done. I don’t want to be done in this game until I win a championship. My father has three rings and I have none. People remember the basketball shot made in Game 7 or the Super Bowl run that clinches it. Not all-star games.”
He said he grew up in Cincinnati but became a man in Seattle. Now he is late in a $165 million contract that ends in 2008 with an option year in 2009.
But many fans in Cincinnati do not believe he will finish it. They expect him to be traded as early as this year. They wonder during every Reds game if Griffey will get injured again.
It was a celebrated homecoming that has not matured in the way all sides desired.
“I have been hurt while giving my all on the field,” Griffey said.
No doubt. No wild nights or wild moments away from the park that caused his injuries. Just hard play.
He has had teammates who have called him aloof, a cancer, selfish. He does not think his current teammates think of him that way. He admits, though, it is possible among the other 24.
“They don’t know me because they don’t live with me, but there is not a guy in here who I wouldn’t try to help or go to dinner with or whatever,” Griffey said.
“It is hard in baseball to please everybody and make everybody happy. Some guys may not understand that like Roger Clemens or Barry Bonds or Sammy Sosa, there is not a lot to say to me about playing baseball. I just go play.
“I don’t need a cheerleader or a lot of instruction.”
He said he wants to stay in Cincinnati but he would accept what comes if he is traded.
This is a man who works hard to avoid vulnerability. Often, the most vulnerable among us do.
He has gained more career all-star votes than any player and ranks third now in all-star balloting among outfielders. Plenty of people still do appreciate Ken Griffey. That makes him proud.
“Now, I keep up with that stuff, I know those numbers,” Griffey said. “I know that history.”
Staff writer Thomas Georgecan be reached at 303-820-1994 or tgeorge@denverpost.com.
