Posted Under: Johanna's View
Now that Ken Griffey Jr. has returned to Seattle, its doubtful we will hear much about him. Actually, in Cincy there was rarely news that made it past the Ohio river. But last night Griffey hit his 400th home run as a Mariner, and his 613th all time. He is now the active home run leader… which didn’t even occur to me.
The crowd, though small was into it according to this Gregg Bell piece. Griffey may have found the one place where everyone will be excited when they see flashes of the younger Griffey. A bit of trivia for you, Griffey’s last home run as a Mariner came off Jay Witasik in 1999.
Another bit of Trivia: Griffey may have been the first player to ask to wear #42 o April 15th to honor Jackie Robinson. From the Bell article:
Griffey was believed to be the first major leaguer to wear 42 to honor Robinson in a game, 12 years ago with the Mariners. He just went up to the Mariners’ equipment man weeks before the game and said he wanted to do it - he didn’t think to ask for the league’s permission because no one had done it.
The league granted permission for others to honor Robinson after that.
“I knew the family. It was just my way of saying thank you. I had no idea it would become something like this,” Griffey said before the game of all players wearing 42 on Jackie Robinson Day in the majors. “There’s a lot of people who wouldn’t be here (in the majors) if it wasn’t for him.”
Kinda cool tidbit.
Reader Comments
With everything going on with this teabag event I think Espn should get involved. I found it kinda sad that all these news networks picked up all these teabag events. One I might even add took ownership in them and early today at around 2:00 am Espn’s news coverage was the one that came to my attention.The report on Jackie Robinsons debute.
Now let’s examine this day for a second please. We just elected an African American President this year, but these networks and people who dress up like they did and are trying to go and celebrate a day were these “Founding Fathers” which enslaved these same African Americans which we elect today. Something isn’t right about that… if there is any story to cover please ask yourself what really happend yesturday.
I knew about Jackie’s historical event before early today but I wasn’t reminded of it until today and I missed any type of celebration coverage or did the media outlet not cover it enough for me to hear of it even tho I caught the news almost the whole day local and nationwide. Espn or somebody should report on this situation alone.
Its interesting to me that you thought there wasn’t much coverage of Jackie Robinson day… at least that is what I am getting from your post. ESPN ususally does a lot with it, though this year Jackie Robinson day fell on a day when they were not showing any games. They spoke a lot about it during the Mets broadcast, but I missed the news to see if was covered anywhere else.
Thanks for bringing it up.