The Kid Gets 600

Ken Griffey Jr. finally got his 600th career home run after what must have felt like a lifetime from 599 last night in Miami in front of a packed crowd of
16,000 at Dolphin Stadium in a 9-4 Reds victory.

For the baseball fans of my generation, it was a bittersweet moment. It was nice to see "The Kid" join such elite home run hitting company after years of struggling to stay on the field, but it was also symbolic of what should've happened years ago.

I'll cover first the angle that has been largely covered today. The basis of many a great sports argument is "what if?" and while it makes for great conversation, it rarely can be definitvely applied. Baseball provides two of the best exceptions in Junior Griffey and Mickey Mantle. We can pretty much take it to the bank that if Mantle didn't tear his leg on the Yankee Stadium sprinkler and didn't go Reginald Denny on his liver that he would've likely been the all-time home run leader possibly until Barroids. The other is that if Griffey doesn't miss almost 4 years of his prime, we're not talking about whether Bonds' record should have an asterisk next to it or not. In each of his seasons in Cincinnati where he played at least 100 games, he hit 25+ and in an 83-game 2004, he managed to hit 20. THE MAN MADE THE ALL-CENTURY TEAM AFTER PLAYING 10 SEASONS! Given a clean bill of health, Griffey can still produce consistently while puhsing 40.

The other side of last night's milestone is that me and the other baseball fans who grew up in the '90s are getting just a little bit older. As I became a baseball fanatic during Griffey's peak years, he remains the most incredibly gifted player I've ever watched. In addition, from about 1992-2000, he was the epitome of cool in baseball. If you didn't mimic Junior in your swing (even as a righty)or try to slide like him in the outfield when you were playing in Little League, you really didn't pay attention to baseball. I can remember wasting many summer afternoons playing Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball on my Nintendo64, which says something sad about me, but that's a different story altogether.

With Griffey's injury-induced decline and the rise of A-Rod, Pujols, Manny, Big Papi, ANdruw Jones, David Wright, Derrek Lee, Alfonso Soriano and others, Griffey's feats have become nothing more than a footnote and a friendly reminder of childhood. Whenever he would pass someone on the all-time home run list the last few years, I know I was not the only one saying things along the lines of "Oh yeahhhhhhhh, Griffey! I forgot about him! Good for him!" and then go on a brief trip down memory lane of Griffey in Seattle white and navy blue.

With Griffey now achieving the coveted 600 mark with the team he grew up with and in the final year of his deal he signed in 1999, he is all but likely to be traded in the coming weeks to a contender, at least I hope he does. Griffey hasn't sniffed the playoffs in a decade and with the end in sight, I hope he gets one more chance on the national stage to remind us of the magician he once was. Just not with the Phillies or Yankees.