‘The Natural’

In some ways it was just one more home run, but for Ken Griffey Jr, his family, millions of baseball fans and a guy named Joe, it was much more than that. On Monday 9^th June, Griffey struck a 3-1 curveball from the Marlins’ starter Mark Hendrickson into the right-field seats at Dolphin Stadium. Bridging the gap between career home runs numbers 599 and 600 hadn’t been easy, but it was worth the wait.

Somehow he was always destined for greatness. The son of a former Major Leaguer, Griffey was selected with the first overall pick by the Mariners in 1987 and he dazzled as a twenty-year old rookie two years later. He was blessed with the ability to make the difficult look easy: a trait epitomized by his seemingly effortless swing. It’s no wonder that the section on MLB.com dedicated to Griffey’s recent milestone moment heralds him as ‘The Natural’.

However, something else is being implied by that title, whether deliberately or not. Barry Bonds is the son of a former Major Leaguer and was blessed with prodigious natural talent just like Griffey, but no one refers to him as ‘the Natural’. Junior in many ways is the antithesis of ‘BALCO’ Bonds. One is the ever-smiling, wholesome athletic star; the other is a surly, muscle-bound drug cheat, or so the public images of the two will have it.

In recent years, Griffey’s career has been greatly hampered by injuries. While the player himself and the Reds will curse that bad luck, the bigwigs at MLB are no doubt bemoaning those lost plate appearances as much as anyone. Even though he had never played a full 162 game season for Seattle (161 in 1998 was pretty close), it was only after he left the Mariners for the Reds in 2000 that the injuries really started to bite. After playing 145 games in his first year in Cincinnati, Griffey played in just 554 out of a possible 972 games over the next six seasons. The 418 games he missed over that period amounted to two and a half seasons. When you consider that Griffey has averaged forty homers per 162 games over his career, he could well have been hitting number 700 this week instead. Factor in the tentative/rusty performances in games played by Griffey when returning from injuries, or playing through them, and it’s very possible that he would have been closing in on the all-time home run record this season if fitness had allowed it.

Of course, we can only take this re-writing of history so far. Every player loses time to injuries and every player starts slowing down as age catches up with them. Bonds himself played in just 14 games in 2005 due to a knee injury and would probably be adding to his total of 762 this season were he not sitting on the sidelines for various reasons. Still, it’s fair to surmise that Bud Selig would have bothered to turn up if Griffey rather than Bonds had been the first player to hit career homer number 756.

What Bonds and Griffey do have in common is that their historic home run balls are valuable souvenirs. Only 16,000 people were in attendance at Dolphins stadium, but a fair few were stationed in right field: the place where Griffey has launched so many of his home runs. A Marlins season ticket holder called Joe moved into that section of the ballpark in the hope of being in the right place and he ended up with the ball. Another fan is threatening legal action claiming that he had the ball ripped from his grasp. In preparation for such an event, this fan actually attended the game with his lawyer. Only in America …

Griffey has said he would like the ball back and plenty of people are supporting this course of action as ‘the right thing to do’. The ball has been valued at $50,000 and the owner’s intentions have not been made clear as yet. $50k is not to be sniffed at, but hopefully he will come to a sensible agreement with Griffey. Bonds’s ‘756′ ball was bought at auction for just over $750,000 (£385k), so if things had panned out differently and this had been Griffey’s all-time record breaking ball then the decision would have been even harder.

It would have been worth a whole lot more than $750k to Bud Selig and MLB’s public relations department though.

Week 11 wrap-up
We’ve entered the second period of interleague baseball this weekend, but the divisions in both leagues are largely unchanged from this time last week.

The Angels (41-28) top the AL West, with the A’s having closed the gap to 3.5 games. The White Sox (38-30) have retained their 4.5 game lead over the Twins in the Central, but the Tigers are starting to claw their way back. Although their five game winning streak still leaves them seven games adrift of Chicago (and six games below .500), don’t count out Detroit from making a run at the division during the second half of the season. It’s a similar situation in the East where the Red Sox (43-28) lead the Rays by 1.5 games while the Yankees are beginning to find some form (and some fit players) and have moved within six games of the top spot.

In the National League East, the Phillies (41-29) enjoy a four game lead over the Marlins. The Central leading Cubs have the best record in baseball at 44-25, although the Cardinals are keeping their rivals within touching distance thanks to their own impressive 41-29 mark. In the West, the Dodgers have lost four in a row allowing the D-Backs (37-32) to extend their lead to 5.5 games despite playing .500 ball over their last ten games.

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