HOW FAR HAS JR. FALLEN?
When I first started to take a serious interest in baseball, Ken Griffey Jr. was baseball. He was a tremendous defensive CF and continued to put up big numbers at the plate. This was the player that was going to break Hank Aaron's homerun record. Then he got traded to Cincinnati. He might as well have been traded off the face of the Earth (because that's basically where he has been since 2001). This spring there have been rumors that "Griffey is back!" but I think I've grown skeptical of those rumors after hearing them for the fourth straight year. Griffey is 6 for 31 this spring (.194) and according to a scout quoted in Jayson Stark's latest column "has absolutely no balance at the plate right now" and was also described by one scout as "playing with disinterest". This reminded me of an interview I saw with him on ESPN not to long ago. To describe Jr as "jaded" would be an understatement. I can make the observation from the outside looking in that Jr doesn't seem to be having any fun anymore, but I don't really know for sure. Others have made similar claims, but it's difficult to get inside of somebody's head and know what they are really thinking. Imagine being anointed the one to break the most prestigious record in all of sports one day, and to be an over-the-hill bust seemingly in a blink of an eye. It isn't very difficult to understand why Griffey might not be having as much fun as he once did. One thing is for sure: the Ken Griffey Jr. I grew up watching in the 1990's doesn't exist anymore. He's no longer hitting .300 with 40+ homeruns and winning gold gloves, all with a smile on his face. Now he's playing less than 100 games a year, hitting about .260 and falling victim to some sort of freakish injury like clockwork.