Griffey has done baseball the right way
Ken Griffey Sr. is naturally proud of his son.
It’s just too bad the rest of us are unnaturally uninterested in baseball’s home run milestones.
Is it just me or did Ken Griffey Jr.’s 600th home run Monday seem more mundane than magical? And shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t we be celebrating Griffey even more today because his home runs have presumably come without the stench of steroids?
“I think this is a huge deal for my son,” says Ken Griffey Sr., who, like Junior, lives in Orlando. “With him going about his business the right way during the steroids era, it makes his accomplishment even more special in my mind.”
Everything Senior says about his kid makes sense, but still there is something missing. Junior becoming only the sixth player in history to hit 600 home runs should feel momentous, but it doesn’t.
I don’t know why, but it just doesn’t. Maybe this benumbedness, more than anything, is the biggest tragedy of the steroids era. Not only have supposed cheaters like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire diminished the accomplishments of the players who came before them; they have sucked the joy out of the accomplishments of the players who came after them.
Talk about dastardly double plays: These frauds not only have bastardized past players, they have minimized future ones.
orlandosentinel.com
6/10/08
Magnolia Tribune
