February 27

The look on Junior Griffey's face when he popped up out of his slide with the winning run of the final game of the Mariners' playoff win over the Yankees in 1995 was one of those looks -- like those at Mount Rushmore, or the Old Man in the Mountains in New Hampshire -- that is etched in history. It was childlike wonder, the pure joy of a great player's life.

	Ken Griffey Jr. gets to don the uniform he dreamed of wearing as a child.

The ensuing four years failed to fufill Griffey's promise, and brick by brick, a wall was built around him. When he talks, rambles, about baseball, he talks of the pure joy of playing, such as when Mark Lewis hit in front of him and Jayhawk Owens behind him in Little League and no one kept statistics, they just played all day. Junior this week acknowledged that he batted .255 the final month because the team was out of it and he was shooting for 400 homers ... and he seemed a little sad about it, because he'd rather have been playing to beat the Texas Rangers. When he was a kid he didn't strike out until he was 15 or something, and playing the game was always fun; when he turned professional, what wasn't fun was the public side of it, and, like Mark McGwire, he's seemed strained by the tug between the personal and the team.

As he starts over in his hometown for the team he says he followed in the papers while playing in Seattle, here are some gut feelings about the man:

1. When he talks about the importance of his wife Melissa and his children Trey and Taryn, there is nothing phony in the least. Hang with this family. Junior really cares, no lip service here. He knows that his father -- who is so important to him that Junior lists playing with Senior as his greatest memory of his Seattle career -- had to move from city to city, town to town, and that he, Junior, does not. Is there something wrong with a superstar whose family is this important? Not hardly. In a society rotted by family dysfunction, Griffey is family.

2. Junior is like Barry Bonds. Neither one lets on, but they are two of the smartest players in the game. Griffey publically says things like "I don't study things," but privately, he can tell you how almost every pitcher tips his pitches, how they like to develop patterns, etc. He misses nothing.

3. Some people say it isn't about money, it's about winning. So when players asked Griffey why he took less in present value than Shawn Green, he replied, "The highest paid player isn't necessarily the best player." He took less because he wanted to come home, and he thought the Cincinnati-Orlando thing was the best environment for his family. He also took less money and deferred millions "because I never wanted to go somewhere and prevent the team from being able to get what they need to be competitive. I hope they can take some and get the pitching they need, and I think they will. How in the world can I spend all this money? There's no price tag for winning, and being where you want to be." One certainty is that between Griffey's deferments and the revenues he creates for the Reds, Barry Larkin's contract will be extended, and soon.

4. In many cases, players come into new environments labeled as "leaders" and cannot fufill expectations.(See Mo Vaughn or Kevin Brown). Griffey comes to a team where Larkin is the leader and everyone knows it, and Griffey can be what he is, the best player in the sport.

5. Griffey privately asks that we not overplay the notion that he is vastly underpaid. Between a local bank, Reds owner Carl Lindner's Chiquita banana money and some other Cincinnati-area deals, Griffey has a lot of side deals that pay him handsomely.

6. There are some odd, hard feelings about his departure from Seattle. Griffey still respects Mariner president Chuck Armstrong. He never knew Pat Gillick. But there are some other suspicions -- such as one that owner Howard Lincoln had to get this deal done, because he had to know by March 1 which uniform Griffey would be wearing in 2001 because of a Nintendo game. Hey, that's over.

7. He resents insinuations that part of this deal is that his father will be the manager in 2001. "Do you think my dad would say I took a pay cut for him to be a manager?" says Griffey. "He would not allow that."

Baseball needs Griffey because he is a great player, and those who run the game wish that sometimes he was more at ease with who he is and what he represents. That may come in time, and we do sometimes forget that he is 30 years old, born after the Miracle Mets and Woodstock. His ease with public demands may come in time, but for now, his priorities are his family and winning, and what's to dislike about someone with those values?

Talent draining from AL
The Mariners are doing all the right things with Alex Rodriguez, but no matter how convincing Lincoln and Gillick may be, one gets the distinct feeling that Scott Boras walked out of the room telling them, "read my lips ..." It will be interesting to see how A-Rod fares without Griffey behind him. He's a free swinger -- a 207/475 walk/strikeout ratio the past five years -- and that showed when he batted without Junior behind him last season. Rodriguez's power numbers were actually better (.595/.578 slugging), but his on-base percentage suffered greatly (.384 with Griffey, .323 without him) and his batting average dropped from .295 to .273.

If you're an American League fan, you should be concerned about the possibility of A-Rod leaving the league next season. What the Junior Circuit has are the Yankees, the Shortstops and the Indians and Red Sox.

Until Derek Jeter, Nomar Garciaparra and A-Rod start rolling, the talk is about having Junior, McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Jeff Bagwell in the same division. AL fans take note -- they all came out of the American League. Check the lists of star players and their original teams:

American to National	National to American

Ken Griffey Jr. (Sea.)	Pedro Martinez (L.A.)
Mark McGwire (Oak.)	Robby Alomar (S.D.)
Sammy Sosa (Tex.)	Rafael Palmeiro (Chi.)
Jeff Bagwell (Bos.)	Paul O'Neill (Cin.)
Kevin Brown (Tex.)
Mike Hampton (Sea.)
Curt Schilling (Bos.)
Shawn Green (Tor.)
John Smoltz (Det.)

Then look at some of the young stars who have been traded across to the NL: Fernando Tatis, Sean Casey, Brian Giles, Matt Mantei, Robby Nen. Going the other way? Seattle RHP Freddy Garcia.

Around the majors