Saturday, February 12, 2000
Seattle fans mourn the morning after
Griffey trade creates sadness for an icon lost
BY SUE LANCASTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
SEATTLE — As the city awakened Friday morning — Day 1 of ""Life After Griffey” — the reality began to sink in that the greatest athlete in Seattle history had left town.
""GONE!” screamed the headline in Friday's Post-Intelligencer.
""It's the day after everyone's life came to an end,” KJR-AM radio host Dick Fain said, only half-jokingly.
And in the gray, predawn hours, workers hustled to remove the larger-than-life banner of Ken Griffey Jr. hanging over the left-field entrance to Safeco Field.
To Seattle fans, Griffey is larger than life. And while some talk-show callers debated his legacy and whether his trade to Cincinnati really was the “biggest rip-off in the history of baseball,” many people here struggled to reconcile a wide range of emotions. Sadness, anger, disappointment — and a great sense of relief that the months of speculation finally had ended.
“He was a major part of the community,” said Su Hickenbottom, a fifth-grade teacher at Totem Falls Elementary School in Snohomish, Wash. “It's sad that it happened this way, but I wish him well. He brought us a lot of joy.”
On the airwaves and in Seattle's ubiquitous coffee shops, fans talked Friday both of their loss and of what they had gained from having one of baseball's greatest players on their team for 11 years.
But to Seattle, Griffey is more than a ballplayer. After all, Seattle never was much of a baseball city until The Kid came to town.
Ever since he burst onto the scene in 1989 — blasting a home run in his first Kingdome at-bat — Junior has been the darling of the city. It was Griffey, fans said Friday, who kept major-league baseball in Seattle. And it was Griffey who made Safeco Field, the city's new ballpark, a reality.
And it was Griffey who spent countless hours over the last 11 years helping thousands of youngsters through his charity work.
While some fans complained that Griffey had “slapped Mariners fans in the face,” others blamed Mariners team management for not taking the 1995 American League West championship team to the next level. Many said the team “gave away the best player in baseball.”
It has been a long week for Griffey fans.
Wednesday night, as word of a tentative agreement with the Reds spread through town, anxious fans waited for the inevitable.
TV stations ran crawlers across the bottom of the screen during prime-time shows, updating viewers on the status of the trade, and Griffey was the big story on the 11 p.m. news — even though thousands of Boeing Co. workers had walked out on strike that day.
In Seattle, Boeing's headquarters, it doesn't get any bigger than that.
But by Thursday night, when the deal finally was consummated, Seattle already was showing signs of accepting its fate and moving on.
The Griffey trade had fallen to fourth place on local TV news — behind a story about a government order to inspect all MD-80s, a Boeing strike update, and a memorial service for Alaska Airlines Flight 261 victims.
“A new beginning for the Mariners,” KING-TV trumpeted as it introduced the Griffey story.
Seattle was looking ahead. The Griffey Era was over.
Nevertheless, many fans still spent much of Friday looking back at the 11 great years Junior had given them and reliving the highlights of his brilliant career.
Still smarting from images of Junior pulling on a Reds jersey at Thursday night's news conference, fans lamented that he probably won't enter baseball's Hall of Fame in a Mariners uniform.
Many fans expressed emotions akin to a parent's upon sending a child off to college.
The Kid has grown up. We've got to let him go. But it hurts.
Junior himself may have said it best in an interview with KING-TV Thursday night.
“It's tough (leaving Seattle),” he said, “because those are the people who watched me when I was 19, a skinny kid with an Afro. ... But now, as a 30-year-old, I have a responsi bility to my family.”
One caller to KJR-AM said he, like many Seattle fans, had been angry with Griffey for requesting a trade in November. He's just a greedy, spoiled brat, the caller thought.
Until Thursday, when he saw the terms of the deal with the Reds and realized Junior wasn't lying when he'd said, “It isn't about money.”
“Let's give Griffey credit,” the caller said. “He's doing it for the right reasons. I give the guy a lot of credit for going home to where his heritage is.”
Even the young fans — Griffey's mainstay here — seemed to understand.
“If he did go anywhere,” said Kasey Crawford, 11, of Snohomish, Wash., “I'm glad he went home to be with his family.”
Down at the local Starbucks Coffee shop (Seattle's other icon), patrons were similarly charitable to Junior.
“It's sad,” said a visibly disappointed Brian Bachman, 20, of Sedro Woolley, Wash. “I grew up knowing him. He's part of our lives here.”
But, he said — echoing a sentiment heard throughout the city Friday — “I just want him to be happy.”
Sue Lancaster is The Enquirer's news editor.
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