Ken Griffey Jr. to officially enter Hall of Fame as a Mariner

Griffey will be the first player in the Hall of Fame as a Mariner. Griffey said quietly, while pausing and collecting his thoughts and emotions.

“We’re looking forward to seeing Ryan in a Mariners uniform”, Dipoto said. “It’s not one guy that saved baseball in Seattle”, Griffey said.

There are certainly past Mariners worthy of consideration to have their number retired. He’s the Nelson Mandela of baseball and, in time of widespread cheating, Griffey Jr.is a revolutionary for doing one simple thing: respecting the rules. “Weekend” at Safeco Field on August 5-7 in a series against the Angels.

At the time, the younger Griffey looked forward each year to taking the field with his dad for the annual father-son game.

Piazza and Griffey will officially be inducted into the Hall of Fame on July 24. This is true even for a pair of all-time greats such as Ken Griffey Jr and Mike Piazza, who were both selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on Wednesday evening. 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.

Griffey was told Thursday evening over the phone about the Mariners’ decision to retire his number.

“I got a little indignant in the clubhouse and Junior was standing out there”, Griffey Sr. said.

Lost in the hoopla over Ken Griffey Jr. earning the highest-ever voting percentage for a baseball player voted into the Hall of Fame (99.3 percent, named on 437 out of 440 ballots), is the obvious question of how in the world could three voters actually leave him off-and ever be taken seriously again?

Piazza said he would enter the Hall as a New York Mets. There was one kid wearing a Mets jacket who almost collapsed from joy. “But the instincts were there, too”.

Ken Griffey Jr. was straightforward with his Hall of Fame cap selection: His plaque in Cooperstown will have a Seattle Mariners logo and won’t portray him with the brim toward the rear, the way he wore it so often. He flew to NY for the first news conference.

“Oh, I don’t know”, he teased. I don’t feel like I was embraced, and I wasn’t by any means playing well. He rang the bell on the NY stock exchange with his fellow inductee Mike Piazza. But there was a point in Griffey’s life when things seemed so bad he tried to commit suicide by swallowing 277 aspirin, by his count, according to a 1992 article in The Seattle Times. He can wear a track suit or he can wear a tuxedo, but he’s all class – especially considering how the Mariners welcomed him on Friday.

Fred McGriff might not deserve entry into Cooperstown, but I think he deserves more votes than what he got. “It’s unbelievable. Humbling. Awesome”.

Griffey Jr. was born in Donora, Nov. 21, 1969, just five months after his father was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds out of Donora High School.