Ken Griffey Sr. 1989 Topps Traded

On June 13, 2016, I received the above card in the mail. I took to Facebook to write this:

“Another visit from the BCB, dropping off one of the last parts of the Big Red Machine: Ken Griffey Sr. -- though it would've been cool to get an 89 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. 

Couple of things about KGS: I always assumed he was a slugger. Nope. Turns out his high in dingers was 21 in 1986. 

He was a great fielder. I remember him climbing a wall and robbing Marty Barrett of a homer in Yankee Stadium. Double freedom rockets to Barrett. 

He had another son, Craig, who never made it to the Bigs. Must've been awkward at Thanksgiving around the Griffey table. All-in-all, KGS was a good guy to have on your team.”

Sports never stop. The way that seasons keep going and going, it’s like a speeding train. Each year is like a car connected to the engine. When you finally make the decision to jump on that train, you’re going to find yourself in a car that’s going to be different than the previous car (season). This is true with players.

To continue the train analogy, I jumped into baseball in time to grab the 1986 car. The way that I was able to acclimate myself was through baseball cards. When I got a Ken Griffey Sr. card, I thought of him strictly as a Yankee outfielder. From the back of his card, I knew that he played for the Reds, but as far as I was concerned he was a Yankee. In contrast, someone who jumped on the sports train in 1976 remembers Griffey as a Red. For them, he’ll always be a Red no matter if they see him as a Yankee or a Brave or Mariner.

With that as a background, seeing Griffey as a Red was pretty special to me. By the time I had this card, I knew a lot about baseball history and understood that the Big Red Machine was a really big deal. Seeing Griffey back in his Cincinnati Red was cool, it was almost like getting into a time machine and remembering that, oh yeah, Griffey made his name as a Red. I was able to go back in those train cars, just for a little bit. Hey, I like going home again, even if it’s never the same. Therefore, I liked this card a lot.

By the time this card was available, Ken Griffey was the hottest name in baseball. It wasn’t because of Ken Griffey Sr. though, it was because of his son, Ken Griffey Jr. Playing in the Pacific Northwest, Junior burst on the scene with a bang in 1989. He seemingly could do everything: he could hit for average, hit for power, he could run, he could field (holy shit, could he field) and he had a pretty good hose. Ken Griffey Junior put baseball on the map in Seattle. People cared about Mariners games like never before. Seattle tickets were hard to come by due to Griffey’s star power.

Every once in a while, a star comes along and sets baseball on fire. But what was interesting about Griffey Jr. wasn’t that he was only a star, it was that his dad was still playing baseball at the same time as he was. Baseball is the ultimate father-son game, how many tear stained stories were written when Kevin Costner wanted to have one last catch with old man a year prior during “Field of Dreams”? Major League Baseball pushes the father-son dynamic so hard that it kind of shoots itself in the foot with the syrupy nostalgia that it uses as the focal point of its marketing campaigns. At some point in a teen’s life, the kid starts to exert some sort of independence from their dad.

But this was different. Ken Griffey Jr. was young when he made his debut (he was 19-years-old when he started) and he played the game with a youthful exuberance. He wore his hat backwards! and that made a lot of sports writer’s monocles drop into tea cups. “How dare he disrespect the game by wearing his baseball cap backwards? This hip hopping of baseball is dreadful!” But kids didn’t care, they saw Junior’s smile and sweet swing and wanted to be like him.

Aside from Bo Jackson, there was no other baseball player that was cooler than Ken Griffey Junior.

On the other side was Griffey Sr., he looked like your dad. He was pudgy, seemed a little ornery (especially in comparison with his son) and was a little slower than how he used to be. Every so often he could use his dad-strength to hit one out of the park, but he looked as if he needed oxygen at second base to continue his home run trot. In 1990, the Cincinnati Reds* cut Griffey Sr. From what I remember, they did it because there were a lot of people clamoring for the Griffeys to play in the same outfield. Father and son, one in left, the other in center. The old guard and the new guard. Dad, let’s have a catch to warm-up!

* You know what I never thought of before, that 1990 Reds team won the World Series that year. Griffey was released on August 24 of that year. I would bet that Griffey would have been on that team’s postseason roster. He may not have played a ton, but he was a part of the team that long, why wouldn’t he have been there. I’m not sure if Griffey asked to be released, but if he did, he gave up a World Series ring to play with his son. I know at the time, the Reds weren’t considered a slam dunk to win the World Series, but man, that must’ve been a tough pill to swallow. Though, I suppose that’s the sacrifices you make when you’re a father.

The Mariners said yes and the two were teammates. I wrote in the blog about Marty Barrett how cool it would be to have a brother in the Major Leagues while you were there, but a father in the bigs? How awesome is that?

The Griffeys played more than a handful of games together in 1990 and 1991, before Ken Senior called it a career in 1991. But the duo amped it up on September 14, 1990 in Anaheim when Angels starter Kirk McCaskill served up homeruns to both Griffeys in the same game. Not only did they homer in the same contest, but they went back-to-back. I remember being dumbfounded by this.

I stole this picture from the following week’s Sports Illustrated from my high school library and stuck in my locker because I thought that it was so cool.

(This might be one of my Top Five, all-time baseball photos. I love it.)

The only other father-son duo was the mirror image of the Griffeys: the Raineses. Tim Sr. is a Hall of Famer and his son, Tim Jr., is not. They played a few games together for the Baltimore Orioles, but it wasn’t the same. Not only were they second but they never hit back-to-back bombs either.

Griffey Sr. wasn’t a superstar and he was never the best player on his team. In fact, he may have been the seventh or eighth best player on that Reds team, but that says more about how stacked the 1970s Cincinnati squad was more than Griffey’s talent level. But he was the last of the Big Red Machine standing and he achieved something that none of them could ever do: even a decade plus after the team was gone, he was the coolest member of that Reds squad ever.  

BTW, if you’re interested, Craig Griffey made it to AAA in the Mariners organization. He ended up retiring after he was sent down to AA after a few games. His pro baseball highlight had to be playing alongside his brother in a handful of Spring Training games back in the 1990s. I know that I kidded a little bit above about an “awkward Thanksgiving” but the dude went higher in pro baseball than 99.98888% of people who swing a bat. That’s nothing to overlook and in any other family, he’d be the greatest athlete produced.

But he was a Griffey and no matter how much his mother loved him, if she was starting a team made up strictly of Griffeys, I can guarantee you that he’d be picked no higher than third. That’s cold.