Griffey story isn't only sweet one

Sporting News, The, Feb 21, 2000 by Dave Kindred

I could write about murder most foul, charged against two players from the National Felony League. What, what, what is Ray Lewis thinking? Indicted for murder in the stabbing deaths of two men, the Ravens' star linebacker also stands accused of withholding information and lying to Atlanta police in obstruction of their investigation.

I could write about young men so conditioned to believe in their invincibility that they would put themselves at risk driving, not content to speed but speeding with reckless abandon, 107 mph on a city street, 70 mph in snow on an icy highway weaving in and out of traffic. How senseless it is that a friend of Derrick Thomas is left to say he hopes something good comes from the accident, and that good is this: "Wear your seat belts." A gifted man and another friend had to die so that message could be delivered?

I could write about the XFL.

But I'd rather not.

I'd rather write about fathers and sons. I was in the Braves clubhouse in June 1987, shortly after Ken Griffey Jr. signed his first pro contract. The prodigy was 17 years old, and the Mariners reportedly had just given him $175,000. He'd come to Atlanta to see his father, then a Braves outfielder.

They came into the clubhouse three hours before Griffey Sr.'s 1,710th big-league game, 18 years after getting his own signing bonus as a 29th-round draft choice: "A jock strap, a pair of sanitary hose and a Reds warmup jacket."

To see them was to see genetics at work, even, or especially, in the athlete's roll of their shoulders, the unmistakable swagger of strength and self-assurance. As Junior sat at his father's locker stool, catcher Ozzie Virgil asked, "You spending that money yet? Your dad get you a car or what?"

"A Corvette," Junior said.

"No, no, you wanna get killed?" the veteran catcher said. "Put some steel around you," to which the young man said, "A Porsche, maybe."

We talked about a son's growing up with a father in the big leagues. Griffey Sr. said, "I could always throw to him like I was throwing to one of the guys-and he was only 7, 8 years old. He never wanted me to throw the ball underhand to him No T-ball."

The nomadic life of a baseball player took the father away so often that he saw the little boy only in offseasons. Then one day--suddenly, the way these father-son things happen--Ken Griffey Sr. turned around and saw ... himself.

"He shot up at 15. I left for spring training, and he was a little shorter than me. When I came back, this is what I had to come back to." The father, smiling, tilted his head toward the son standing at his locker, 6-foot-3 and 195 pounds to the old man's 6-1,205.

They laughed easily together. Junior said he didn't know how much money the Mariners had given him because his father did the deal and wouldn't tell him. "And I'm not going to give him any of it until he's 35 or 40 years old," the father said. As to which man could nm faster, Griffey Sr. yielded quickly: "He's as fast as I was chasing his mother."

Now the boy-turned-man may be baseball's best player. Now they're together where the father's career was made, in Cincinnati, where they played father-son games at Riverfront Stadium with the Roses and Perezes, and where Junior is the Reds' new center fielder and Dad is a coach. A sweet story this is, and every father and son, if they're lucky, have their own story.

On a day when I was 17, fleet as the wind itself, a big-leaguer in the making, my father said he would race me to first base. He was an old man, really old, older than dirt, a decrepit (even balding) gentleman who should have been whittlin' on twigs instead of daring his speed-burner son to a footrace.

I have since figured out how old Dad was that day. He was 47, which is, I now know, younger than springtime. Dad wore khaki work trousers the day of the race. He had on his carpenter's cap with a stub of a yellow No. 2 pencil stuck upside down under the right side. I stole a glance at his shoes. They were heavy brown things; he called them "clodhoppers." On my flying feet were Rawlings' best baseball spikes, the Fleetfoot model, with the tongue flap turned down over the laces the way the big-league players did it then.

As we sprinted away from home plate, I found myself in the disconcerting position of being a step behind the old crock Dad beat me to first base by that step and part of another. So, as we caught our breath on the outfield grass, I did that afternoon what any 17-year-old apprentice immortal would have done.

Without hesitation and with no remorse whatsoever, I lied. Though both of us knew the truth, I said, "Next time, I won't let you win."

The truth was plain Either Dad was the world's fastest geezer, or, o diary, I wasn't so quick after all. That afternoon I decided that maybe, possibly, even probably, I should make at least tentative plans to earn a living at something other than playing shortstop for the Cardinals. That day, I suspect, I became a sportswriter. Thanks, Dad.

Dave Kindred is a contributing writer for The Sporting News. Look for additional commentary from Dave weekdays at sportingnews.com and on AOL (keyword: TSN).