Yankees Crush Red Sox Winning Streak At 8
July 27, 2008
BOSTON (AP) — Robinson Cano and Andy Pettitte are doing it again, rounding into form as the New York Yankees gear up for another playoff run. Read more
Ken Griffrey Jr. Joins The 600 HR Club
June 10, 2008
We knew 20 years ago, when he was 19 and skinny, that an achievement of this magnitude was possible. The signs were everywhere. Ken Griffey Jr. was the son of a major leaguer, he was from Stan Musial’s hometown, Donora, Pa., he says he never struck out in a high school game and he was the Seattle Mariners’ No. 1 pick in the June 1987 draft.
Now he is 38 and thick, he wears Babe Ruth’s No. 3, not Willie Mays’ No. 24 as he did in those early seasons. He plays right field now, not center field. He doesn’t scale fences like he used to and he doesn’t smile as often as he used to. But nonetheless, in the first inning Monday night at Florida against Mark Hendrickson, he joined Ruth, Mays, Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron and Sammy Sosa in the most exclusive and prestigious club in sports, the 600 Home Run Club.
“I was there in his prime,” said Cubs manager Lou Piniella, who managed Griffey in Seattle. “He was special. And he was fun to watch.”
It was clear right away that he was special. Only days after Griffey signed with the Mariners, he came to Seattle and took batting practice with the major league club before a game.
“I’ve seen it before when a No. 1 draft pick comes to the big club right after he’s drafted, and the kid is nervous, he gets in the cage, pops up a bunch of balls, swings and misses at a couple because he’s trying to hit it so high and so far because he doesn’t feel like he belongs,” said Scott Bradley, who is Princeton’s baseball coach, and a former teammate of Griffey during 1989-92. “That wasn’t the case with Junior. He got in the cage, and he was kind of carrying on a conversation with the media while he was hitting. The first 25 swings, he just hit line drives to left field. He didn’t overswing one time. Then he hit balls up the middle. Then he took a break, came back loose, and started hitting balls into the seats. I looked at [veteran Mariners] Harold Reynolds and Alvin Davis and said, ‘It looks like he belongs.’”
After two seasons in the minor leagues, none above the Double-A level, another clear sign came.
“When he came to camp in 1989, he had no chance to make the team,” Bradley said. “But he got a lot of at-bats early that spring because a lot of veterans don’t like to play a lot early. After 20 games, he wasn’t just the best player on our team, he was the best player in the league that spring. The Mariners basically said, ‘We don’t want this to happen, we don’t want to rush him, we don’t want him to make the team.’ So they started running him out there against every elite pitcher, against all the nastiest left-handers they could find in hopes that he would stop hitting, and they could send him out. It never happened.”
He made the club as a 19-year-old, the youngest player on an Opening Day roster that season. In his first at-bat at the Seattle Kingdome, he hit a home run on the first pitch he saw from the White Sox’s Eric King. Griffey went on to hit 16 home runs that season — in baseball history, only Tony Conigliaro and Mel Ott hit more homers as teenagers.
Ken Griffey Jr. debuted in the majors with the Mariners in 1989, and has played with the Reds since 2000.
Griffey started the All-Star Game in his second season, then the third youngest player ever to do that. Almost as memorable in 1990 were the back-to-back home runs that he and his father hit against the Angels’ Kirk McCaskill, a first in baseball history, and likely to also be the last. In 1993, Griffey hit a home run in eight consecutive games, tying the record held by Dale Long and Don Mattingly. During 1997-98, he joined Babe Ruth as then the only American League players (Alex Rodriguez has joined that club) to hit 50 home runs in back-to-back seasons. When he hit 50 for the first time, he joined Mays as then the only players ever to win a Gold Glove in a season in which they hit 50. In 1999, he became the first American League player since Harmon Killebrew to lead the league in home runs three seasons in a row.
“His swing,” former Oriole Brady Anderson said, “is absolutely perfect.”
Griffey had the amazing ability for a young hitter to see, react and hit the breaking ball if it stayed in the strike zone for too long. As he grew as a hitter by developing his opposite field power and still maintaining his pull power, the huge home run seasons came. He was then the youngest player to reach 300, 350, 400 and 450 home runs. He was named to the All-Century team when he was 29 and he was named the Player of the Decade for the 1990s. When he was 31, he was a legitimate threat to break Hank Aaron’s record of 755 home runs. The projections were for 800 home runs, nothing could stop him.
“The first time I saw him was in Arizona for spring training,” Piniella said. “He would hit these towering fly balls that would carry and carry, and go out of the ballpark. I just figured it was the thin air in Arizona. Then he kept hitting those towering fly balls wherever we went, and I realized it wasn’t the thin air, it was him. And it was so effortless.”
When the Reds traded for Griffey before the 2000 season, bringing him home to Cincinnati in a trade that left Mariners fans wanting and angry, it seemed inevitable that Griffey would break Aaron’s record as a member of the Reds. On the day of the trade, then Reds general manager Jim Bowden called Griffey “the Michael Jordan of baseball.” That first season in Cincinnati, he hit 40 home runs and drove in 118 runs.
Then the story began to change. Four seasons in a row, Griffey suffered a major injury, limiting him to 111, 70, 53 and 83 games played, respectively. When he finally got to 500 home runs in 2004, everyone knew, that without the injuries, 500 might have been 600. The following three seasons, he missed another 105 games. We all realize that with better health, the 600 he just reached would have been 700.
But Griffey is far from done as a power hitter. There are still homers to hit, and milestones to reach. He could become the third player ever, joining Ty Cobb and Rusty Staub, to hit a home run as a teenager and as a 40-year-old. He could join Ted Williams, Rickey Henderson and Willie McCovey as the only players to hit home runs in four different decades and he could become the first player to hit 300 home runs for two different teams.
It is easy to look at 600 and wonder what might have been with improved health. But it is easier and more fun to remember Griffey at his best, a wondrous athlete who streaked through the outfield, climbed an outfield wall and made a catch that only Mays could make, then the next inning, hit a ball to places that very few players could reach. Six hundred home runs is a tremendous milestone, but Griffey at 100, 200, 300 and 400 was simply breathtaking.
Tim Kurkjian is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine.
8 Red Sox & Rays Suspended For Brawl
June 6, 2008
NEW YORK — Boston outfielder Coco Crisp, Tampa Bay pitcher James Shields and six other players were suspended Friday following a pair of altercations at Fenway Park. Read more
Barry Bonds Pleads Not Guilty To All Charges
June 6, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — Barry Bonds is headed to trial next March on federal charges of lying to a grand jury about his use of performance-enhancing drugs.
The trial date was set Friday after baseball’s home run king pleaded not guilty when he was re-arraigned on 15 felony counts of lying under oath and obstruction of justice.
Lead Bonds attorney Allen Ruby entered a plea of not guilty to the charges on the slugger’s behalf, while Bonds stood silently in front of the judge. Ninety minutes later, Ruby agreed to a March 2, 2009, trial date before a second judge.
Bonds, who has not signed with a team this season, pleaded not guilty to similar accusations last December, but a judge ordered prosecutors to rewrite the indictment. The new indictment includes no new allegations.
Bonds was charged with 14 counts of lying under oath and one count of obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors say Bonds lied when he told a grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, known as BALCO, in 2003 that he never knowingly took steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs.
A much smaller and subdued crowd attended the Bonds hearings Friday than had showed up to his first federal court appearance Dec. 17. Dressed in a black, pinstripe suit, Bonds stepped out of a black SUV with his attorney and a couple of bodyguards and entered the courthouse through a back entrance without addressing reporters.
Bonds embraced his aunt, Rose Kreidler, after the hearing.
“The reason that I am here is because his father is deceased,” said Kreidler, sister to Bonds’ father, Bobby Bonds, who died in 2003 of cancer. “This is such a tremendous blow to his family. It is so much on us. He’s a great person. We are all praying for him.”
A jury earlier this year convicted cyclist Tammy Thomas of lying to the same grand jury that Bonds is accused of misleading. Last month, another jury convicted track coach Trevor Graham of lying to federal investigators.
In all, six of the 11 people charged in connection with the BALCO investigation were accused of lying during the government’s investigation started in 2002.
“The outcome of other cases has no effect on ours,” Ruby said outside court. “He didn’t lie to the grand jury.”
Five men, including Bonds’ personal trainer, Greg Anderson, have pleaded guilty to selling performance-enhancing drugs.
Prosecutors allege that Anderson supplied Bonds with performance-enhancing drugs and at least on one occasion injected Bonds with drugs.
Anderson spent nearly a year in prison last year after refusing to testify before a grand jury about whether he supplied Bonds with drugs. Anderson’s attorneys say the trainer also will refuse to testify at Bonds’ trial, making it likely Anderson will be returned to prison on contempt charges if the slugger doesn’t plead guilty.
The Major League Baseball Players Association said last month it was investigating whether to file a collusion grievance against teams for not pursuing Bonds, who became a free agent when the San Francisco Giants decided they didn’t want him back after 15 seasons.
The 43-year-old outfielder, a seven-time NL MVP, says he wants to play this year. His agent claims no team has made an offer for the 14-time All-Star.
Outside court, another Bonds attorney Mike Rains shot down rumors that the slugger and Red Sox were in talks. But, he said, “Barry is in great spirits.”
Bonds hit 28 homers last year to raise his total to 762, seven more than Hank Aaron’s previous record.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press
Chipper Reaches 400 HR Milestone, Batting Avg .418
June 6, 2008
ATLANTA (AP) — A threat to hit 400? Chipper Jones is already there. Read more
The Great Pedro Martinez Returns, Mets Win 9-6 Over Giants
June 4, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — It might be a little while before Pedro Martinez returns to his dominant old self. He took a big first step just by getting back on the mound, then went out and won. Read more
Big Papi Gets Cast For 2-3 Weeks
June 4, 2008
BOSTON — The long black cast stretched from the middle of David Ortiz’s left biceps to just above his knuckles. Read more
Big Unit Moves To 2nd on Strikeout List
June 4, 2008
MILWAUKEE — Randy Johnson took sole possession of second place on baseball’s career strikeout list Tuesday after getting the Milwaukee Brewers’ Mike Cameron to go down swinging in the first inning Tuesday night. Read more
Cubs Top MLB Standing on June 1st, First Time in 100 Years
June 2, 2008
CHICAGO (AP) — The Friendly Confines have never seemed friendlier, and that’s a big reason why the Cubs are the best team in baseball entering June for the first time in 100 years. Read more
Manny Ramirez Joins 500 Homer Club
June 1, 2008
BALTIMORE — Manny Ramirez connected for career homer No. 500 on Saturday night, hitting a drive off Baltimore Orioles right-hander Chad Bradford to become the 24th major leaguer to reach the milestone. Read more
