Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. returns to Seattle

Widely recognized as the greatest offensive catcher in Major League Baseball history, Piazza hit. “I’m not going to call a grown man “Chipper.’ Plus it rattles him”.

The senior members of the BBWAA (Baseball Writers’ Association of America) are the ones who do the Hall of Fame voting.

Griffey will wear the Mariners cap as he is inducted into the Hall of Fame, making him the first Mariner player to join the Hall. He’s already in the Mets Hall of Fame, but there’s a very good chance No. 31 will then go up on the outfield wall – hint, hint.

Ken Griffey, Jr. and Mike Piazza were elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“He wore it backwards more than I did”, Griffey said with a smile.

Piazza hit.331/.394/.572 in 5½ seasons with the Dodgers, and has better rate stats in Los Angeles than in NY, but he also played in his only World Series with the Mets, and played 7½ years in NY.

But Griffey’s No. 24, which has never been worn by another Mariners’ player since he was traded to the Reds before the 2000 season, won’t just be retired at the big league level.

Griffey is likely to become the first player in the Hall with a Mariners cap.

“I’m just a proud father, just glad everything went the right way”, Griffey said. He inspired me to think about baseball in terms of mythologies and legends, and to tie it, a simple game, into all that is profound about tradition, the passage of time, and the bond we share with those who came before us and will come after us still.

“I could never play for the Yankees”, Griffey Jr. told the Daily News in December of 1995, two months after he hit five home runs in the AL Division Series against the Yankees and raced home from first base with the winning run in the deciding fifth game. Despite an injury-riddled second half of his career, Junior still pounded the sixth most home runs all time.

Still… Griffey injected some intrigue into the process Friday when asked, again, whether he wanted the cap on his plaque to face forward or backward in the style he made famous. Perhaps the newly streamlined electorate included fewer folks who won’t vote for any first-time candidates, or who send in blank ballots as protests, and Griffey was simply the first consensus guy on the ballot since that change.

“I feel like the fans here truly brought me into their family”. Every time I’ve come back, I’ve been so incredibly honored from the response. Thursday, Griffey announced he will enter the Hall of Fame, as a Mariner. However, Bonds, McGwire, and Clemens now look up to Griffey Jr. for another reason: the former Major League Baseball center fielder is going to Cooperstown while the others will have to wait – hopefully forever. Piazza spoke Wednesday night about his choice with former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, whose recommendation led to the team drafting him. It was fury unleashed, and we got to watch-hundreds of times, as it turned out-as it sent the ball screaming into the gap or soaring over the wall, with Piazza pausing only barely at the plate to literally bare his teeth as it sailed away, as if he had banished some foul enemy to the halls of hell where it belonged.

“[Martin] did everything possible to embarrass me here in New York”, Griffey Sr. said.