Monday, April 03, 2000
It's time for star's power to come out
BY TIM SULLIVAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Ken Griffey Jr. reported for work at 10:35 a.m. Sunday morning, and his first order of business was to complain about his office.
“I can't hide,” he said, his reedy voice rising in mock anguish.
Griffey grew up in the Cincinnati Reds clubhouse. Though he had forgotten the way to the trainer's quarters, he remembered well the traffic pattern in the big room. He knew that the first locker on the right was no place for quiet contemplation, but a bustling corner beside a deafness-inducing stereo speaker.
He had hoped for a more secluded spot. He had hoped to come home inconspicuously.
As if.
The best baseball player of his generation returns to his boyhood haunts as a grown man beneath a magnifying glass. Sixty-three newspapers, 36 television stations and 55 photographers have been assigned credentials for today's Opening Day game, which is the 132nd in Reds history and yet distinctly different from all of its predecessors.
“It feels like everyone's on the edge of their seat,” said first baseman Hal Morris. “This time of the year, it's hard for us (players) to get any more anxious than we already are, but I can't wait to see Junior get introduced. I can't wait to hear this place.”
The Reds won 96 games last year, extending their season an extra day for a one-game playoff against the New York Mets. Six months later, the lineup from that Oct. 4 game was still posted on the clubhouse wall beside Griffey's cubicle Sunday afternoon. The nameplates of departed outfielders Greg Vaughn and Mike Cameron had been removed, but the rest of Al Leiter's victims remained — a mute testimony to what might have been.
Yet rather than dwell on that defeat, Reds fans have spent the winter anticipating better days — a new era featuring Griffey in center field, tracking fly balls with feline grace, sending hanging sliders into lunar orbit, filling seats customarily left vacant, reviving a dormant baseball town with his singular star power.
Today's game with the Milwaukee Brewers sold out in slightly more than three hours. The most expensive tickets at Cinergy Field — those in the blue and green levels — are sufficiently scarce to be considered investment-grade. New advertising signage — much of it attributable to the Griffey phenomenon — will generate close to a million dollars for the ball club.
For the generation of Cincinnatians too young to recall the Big Red Machine, Ken Griffey Jr. is a legend in their own time. If he can manage to hit two home runs before the All-Star break, Griffey will become the youngest player ever to reach 400 career homers. He might try to hide, but his talent always gives him away.
“In years past, we were a middle-of-the-pack type team,” said outfielder Dmitri Young. “Last year, we were the only ones who believed in ourselves. This year, with the addition of (Dante) Bichette and Griffey, everyone expects us to go to a new level. I expect us to get to the playoffs and the World Series. It's the start of one of the greatest seasons any Cincinnati team has ever had.”
Optimism is always abundant on Opening Day, Sean Casey's broken thumb notwithstanding. Joe DiMaggio once compared the sense of wonder and excitement on Opening Day to that of a child contemplating still-wrapped birthday presents. When Reds third baseman Aaron Boone was young, he would sleep with his bats on the eve of his Little League opener. Boone is all grown up now, but the thrill of the first game is undiminished.
“I'm sure I'm going to be really nervous,” he said. “It's one game of 162, but it's a little different feel.”
Opening Day is the one time during the season when each player is introduced before the game. Reds marketing director Cal Levy is charged with keeping the ceremonies running on schedule, and anticipates having to interrupt a lengthy ovation.
“I'm not going to let it get out of hand,” Levy said. “He (Griffey) doesn't want it to get out of hand.”
Ken Griffey Jr. would prefer to go about his business incognito. For days, he has resisted Opening Day-related questions, eager to deflect some of the unrelenting attention.
Reds Hall of Famer Joe Morgan rarely resists a question. Asked Sunday what Griffey might be feeling, Morgan invoked his own homecoming game with the San Francisco Giants.
“He played ball in Seattle, but this is his home,” Morgan said. “When he steps out on that field, he'll have a special feeling that he's never had as a baseball player. He's had Opening Days before. But this is his Opening Day.
E-mail Tim Sullvan at tsullivan@enquirer.com
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It's time for star's power to come out
