Sunday, February 13, 2000
Seattle remembers Griffey's charity
BY SUE LANCASTER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
SEATTLE — Ask anyone here what Ken Griffey Jr. is like, and you'll hear a common refrain. He's a nice guy. He's a good family man. He's great with kids. Oh, and he's a pretty good ballplayer.
Katina Clark, an apartment manager in nearby Mill Creek, typifies many Griffey fans here. She doesn't go to many games, she can name maybe three players “in all of baseball,” but she loves Ken Griffey Jr.
Why? “Because you never hear of him getting drunk or in a fight in a bar,” she said.
That's the Ken Griffey Seattle has known for 11 years. And that's the Ken Griffey Cincinnati can expect when the Reds come north in April.
So don't go looking for Junior at the Waterfront after the game. And don't expect to run into him at Jeff Ruby's — unless he's dining with family. And you certainly shouldn't expect to find his name on any arrest reports. Mr. Griffey is a homebody, by all accounts.
“He's very much a family man and ... I think he's going to spend a lot of time with his family,” said Bill Burton, executive director of the Rainier Vista Boys & Girls Club here.
Junior prefers the company of his family, wife Melissa, son Trey, 6, and daughter Taryn, 4, and is most comfortable in the sanctuary of his homes — one in Issaquah, Wash., a Seattle suburb, and another near Orlando, Fla., in the exclusive Isleworth development.
As Cincinnati fans know by now, Mr. Griffey's family was the driving force in his desire to return to his hometown.
“My life has changed,” he told the Seattle Times last summer, “in the sense that I'm more aware of the passing of time. I value my privacy more since I have a family. The best times are spent with Melissa and the kids.”
Even before he married and had children, Mr. Griffey never was much of a party animal. Drafted at age 17, The Kid was only 19 when he joined the Mariners in 1989.
“I was in the big leagues for two years before I could go into a bar,” he has said. In his early playing days, he lived in an apartment near the Kingdome and hung out with Mariners batboys, who were closer to his age than his teammates. On road trips, he socialized with young people in hotel lobbies.
Mr. Griffey always has been most comfortable with young people. When he's not spending time with his own children, he's often mentoring someone else's.
“Griffey loves kids,” Mr. Burton said. “He's a big kid himself. He relates well to kids. Kids love him.”
Junior Griffey is well-known here for his charitable work. He has received numerous awards, including the 1994 Celebrity Recognition Award from the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Mariners' Roberto Clemente Award for outstanding community service in 1996, 1997 and 1998. Junior has also sponsored Christmas dinners for 350 youngsters from Rainier Vista annually since 1994.
“He's been a great role model,” said Mr. Burton, who noted that Mr. Griffey is also on the board of governors for the Boys & Girls Club of America. Mr. Burton said Junior has exerted a tremendous influence on children through that organization.
To encourage kids to stay in school and improve their grades, he said, Mr. Griffey personally checks their report cards and rewards top performers with trips. Not just day trips. He takes them to Disney World. Epcot Center. All-star baseball camps.
“He catered to the kids the whole time he was there,” Mr. Burton said of one typical trip to Orlando, where Junior took kids to movies, amusement parks and restaurants.
“He's a great individual.” Jim Haugh, president of the Sports and Events Council of Seattle/King County, said Mr. Griffey's departure obviously is “a great loss for the community.” But, he was quick to add, “everyone understands his reasons for leaving.
“I can respect his decision based on his family,” he said. The Mariners' marquee player “built up this organization,” Mr. Haugh said. “We're very fortunate to have had Ken grow up here during his baseball career.”
Junior's relationship with Seattle hasn't always been rosy, though, particularly in recent months. He has been frustrated over the years both with the team's performance at times, and with his treatment in Seattle, particularly by the local media. Observers say Mr. Griffey felt misunderstood, and chafed at descriptions of him as sullen, spoiled or arrogant. “I feel as if I'm taken for granted all the time,” he once said.
Fans DO expect big things from Junior every time he steps up to the plate. And although he delivers more than most players, it's never enough. He's criticized for not running out ground balls, or not signing autographs for two hours after every game. And fans are disappointed when he doesn't hit a home run in every at-bat.
“He wasn't the center fielder from Hollywood,” Steve Kelley wrote in the Seattle Times last week. He didn't always smile when you yelled at him from the stands, he didn't always respond when you tried to talk to him at a restaurant or store, and he “didn't light up the 11 o'clock news with one- liners after hitting game-winning home runs.” But, he wrote, “Griffey still made every night in the Kingdome rich with anticipation. Every at-bat had possibilities. Every line drive hit in his direction had the promise of something special.”
Those who know Junior well say that the public Griffey, the superstar Griffey, is only one side of a complex personality.
“Ken's a warm and generous person,” Mr. Haugh said. “Being around him, he's a very happy-go-lucky guy, very playful. He has a lot of integrity, a lot of character. He doesn't have a big ego.
“He has a lot of respect from people in the community. ... He was very loved by the community.”
Keep in mind, Seattle was not a baseball community before Ken Griffey Jr. In 1987, when the Mariners drafted “The Kid,” many people in town paid little attention. After all, the hapless Mariners had been an abysmal team for much of their history, toiling in relative obscurity since 1977 — and not recording a winning season until 1991.
But Junior took the city by storm. In his first at-bat in the Kingdome in 1989, he slammed a home run. In his first pinch-hitting appearance in May 1989, The Kid hit a game-winning homer. A month later, on Ken Griffey Jr. Poster Day, no less, Junior smacked another game-winning home run. He had a candy bar named after him, which sold about a million copies, and he was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Bob Finnigan of the Seattle Times wrote that Mr. Griffey's rising popularity became evident in May 1990, when the Mariners gave away 10,000 reproductions of his SI cover, titled “The Natural.”
“Here in Boeing country,” he wrote, “not one was folded into a paper airplane and floated onto the field.”
But as his popularity grew, so, too, did the attention by the media. Junior was never comfortable in the suffocating coverage. He fidgeted nervously during interviews, and answered post-game questions tersely.
As the years progressed, and Mr. Griffey expressed frustrations with the team's performance, or the burdens of celebrity status, his public persona developed an edge. He sometimes was characterized as a whiner, a complainer, a “spoiled brat.” But now that he's gone, and his eulogies fill the airwaves in Seattle, the fans remember just how special he was and wish him well.
“Griffey leaves behind a decade of memories,” the Seattle Times said in an editorial written when it became obvious he was leaving, “and he takes with him the thanks and best wishes of sad but grateful fans. Maybe if the baseball gods are smiling, he will get to wear some of that World Series hardware, like his father's.
“Goodbye, Junior. We are parting friends.”
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