Ken Griffey Jr.’s Number to Be Retired by the Mariners

In fourth grade, Ken Griffey Jr. had his talent show routine down pat.

“My dad made a joke last night”, Piazza said Thursday. “He had the physical attributes”. With that in mind, anyone telling you NOT to swing like a baseball player is just simply mistaken.

The results of that day came full circle Wednesday.

Former Seattle Mariners Ken Griffey Jr., left, and former New York Mets Mike Piazza pose for a photograph after a press conference announcing their election to baseball’s Hall of Fame, Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016, in New York.

“It’s hard to describe the feeling”.

Griffey got the most votes ever for a player being voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.3 percent of the votes, and Mike Piazza received 83 percent of the votes. Nowhere was this more evident, than in his reaction to finding out that number 24 will hang next to Jackie Robinson’s number 42 in Safeco Field.

You’ve no doubt heard by now that Junior will be the first Mariner – as in wearing the Seattle team’s cap – when his bust is enshrined in Cooperstown.

Needless to say, this has been a whirlwind week for Griffey, and Friday’s announcement is a pretty cool way to punctuate it. The younger Griffey became a 13-time All-Star outfielder and finished with 630 homers, sixth on the career list. Now I’ve got great friends who are from Japan to Australia, guys I get a chance to play with and meet and I call and text when they do great things.

“He was natural born centerfielder”. The case against him really came down to suspicions that he may have used steroids during his career.

“I got a little indignant in the clubhouse and Junior was standing out there”, Griffey Sr. said. It is a day-to-day grind that can catch up with a hitter like a split finger fastball.

The much-loved Griffey’s accolades are right up with the best of them.

“The problem was with me and my father”, Griffey told The Seattle Times in 1992. A few voters figure that since everyone else is voting for Griffey, they’d like to see some other players get some votes. “Baseball-wise, yeah you’re going to look at numbers and things like that, but the way he went about his life and the things he did off the field, nobody can compare to that”. Over two seasons, the pair played in 51 games together before Senior retired. But his best game as a Donora Dragon was football. Prior to the 2000 season, Griffey was nearly traded to the New York Mets to form a dynamic duo in the middle of the lineup with Piazza, Anthony DiComo of MLB.com reports. Instead, he’ll go into the Hall of Fame like everyone else: With his hat facing forward. Griffey will be inducted into the Reds Hall of Fame in ceremonies before a game between the Miami Marlins and the Cincinnati Reds.

Two decades later, with his own sons in tow, Griffey Jr. spoke with admiration about how his father handled his playing career. He was born and raised in Cincinnati, and later played nine seasons with the Reds (and a portion of one with the White Sox), but baseball will always remember the Kid with his cap on backwards patrolling centerfield with the Mariners.

As it is, Griffey’s vote should raise him to the level of the game’s greatest center fielders – a lineage that runs like this – Tris Speaker to Joe DiMaggio to Willie Mays to Griffey, with Mike Trout on the horizon.