SPORTS

Ken Griffey Jr.: No regrets in Cincinnati

C. Trent Rosecrans
crosecrans@enquirer.com

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Ken Griffey Jr. will be wearing a Mariners hat when his Hall of Fame plaque is revealed at Sunday’s induction ceremonies, but even though his time in Cincinnati didn’t go as anyone planned, he said Saturday that he has no regrets about his time there.

"You had your ups, your downs. I spent a little more time on the DL than I care to talk about," Griffey said at a Saturday press conference. "Being able to wear the same uniform and, at the time, the same number my father wore, is something that you only dream of."

Griffey came to Cincinnati to great fanfare before the 2000 season, but not only did he never make the playoffs with the Reds, that first season was the only one of Griffey's nine in Cincinnati in which the team had a winning record.

“Do I wish things were a little different? Absolutely,” Griffey said. “Every team you play for, you want to win a championship. It takes 25 guys and a couple of guys to fill in when guys get hurt to win that. I just wasn’t lucky enough to do that. There are a lot of great players who never won a championship. But these guys still go out there and work hard and  put everything on the line as if they were playing for a championship.”

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Mike Piazza, who will also be inducted into the Hall on Sunday, also retired without winning a World Series.

“That’s why we love baseball and we love sports, in a sense that you can try to build the perfect team, but it’s hard to win,” Piazza said. “Everything has to go perfectly, everything has to be in sync. You can spend a lot of money, you can get the best players, you can do everything that you think will be the right thing and then this guy gets hurt or this ball hits the base and goes the wrong way, that’s why we love this. That’s why you can think it’s perfect and it’s going to work out and you always know, being on the other side now on the ownership, that you can play the perfect game and one wrong bounce and you can lose the game.

"That’s why we love sports and that’s why this is an inexact science and this is why we keep coming back.”

There are three World Series rings in Griffey’s family, though. As a member of the Big Red Machine, the elder Griffey won the World Series in 1975 and 1976. He also received a ring as a member of the Reds in 1990. Even if his son didn’t need the reminder, he gets them often from his father.

Soon, though, Griffey will have a Hall of Fame ring — and that won’t be lost on his father.

“I’m going to put it front in center of the house, it might be on the gate when you’re ringing or something like that, there’s going to be a lot of people seeing it,” Griffey said. “It might be like the Stanley Cup, I might take it around with me and do some things like that. Brush my hair with it — I’ll figure out something. It’ll be seen.”

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No. 1 and No. 1,390

Griffey is the first No. 1 overall pick to make the Hall of Fame, while Piazza will be the lowest drafted player, No. 1,390 overall, to make the Hall of Fame.

While Griffey was the No. 1 pick in 1987, Piazza was drafted in the 62nd round a year later, with just five players drafted after the Dodgers took him in the final round of that year’s draft.

When asked about their different roads to Cooperstown on Saturday, Griffey noted that the roads were only different on draft day.

“We got drafted, we worked hard through the minor-league system and we had an opportunity to become big-league ball players and produce,” Griffey said.

Said Piazza: “I’ve said this before, it’s a testament to this country and this game, how wonderful baseball is in the sense that we’re on the same path, but in different ways. I think it just shows that if you do get an opportunity, and you do work hard, he had unique challenges being a first-round pick, I had unique challenges being a last-round pick. There was pressure on him, there was pressure on me. It may be a little different or nuanced a different way, but ultimately it came down to people who loved you, coaches who supported you, people that were in your corner, the experiences you have in the minor leagues, the experiences you have in winter ball, spring training, learning from the veterans.”

2016 National Baseball Hall of Fame inductee Ken Griffey Jr. (right) rides with his family in the Parade of Legends in Cooperstown.

Brett: ‘He reminded me a lot of his dad’

Hall of Fame third baseman George Brett knew Ken Griffey Jr. was special the first time he saw him.

“I played against his dad in Triple-A, and that was the only time I really played against Ken Sr. because he was in the National League and I was in the American League and he reminded me a lot of his dad,” Brett said on Saturday. “(He was) just a guy with a great swing and obviously great speed and great arm and a great center fielder and a great offensive player. You knew it was going to happen the first time I saw play — a three-game series in Seattle or a three-game series in Kansas City, you say, who the hell is this guy? And now we all know who he is.”

Brett is the only player to win batting titles in three different decades, and his left-handed swing was one of the most beautiful in the history of the game. But for most, Griffey’s is the best.

“I think fluidity, the fluidity of it,” Brett said of what made Griffey’s swing stand out. “It wasn’t a herky-jerky swing, everything was real fluid through the ball. Very strong guy, obviously. I think he stayed within himself, you never really saw him overswing. He had aggressive swings, but he never really overswung. He understood the game — hit it hard, not far. If you hit it hard, it will go far. When you try to hit it far, like a golf ball, it goes all over the place. He stayed within his limitations and knew that if he put a good swing on it, the ball had a chance to go a long ways — and it did, numerous times.”

The Cincinnati Kid: Griffey's legacy here