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He was featured on the Wheaties cereal box and had his own signature sneaker line from Nike, Inc. With one of the most iconic swings in baseball history, Griffey Jr. crushed a low-and-away fastball way out to left for an opposite-field home run. Back-to-back home runs for the Griffeys -- another history-making father-son moment. The every-two-years-for-a-milestone-homer streak ended, but by the time Griffey entered the 500-homer club in 2004, he did it on what was already a memorable day.
Gregg Doyel had this to say of the years Griffey was with the Reds in comparison to the 2010 Reds team. Griffey's defense in center field was widely considered the standard of elite fielding during the decade, exemplified by his streak of 10 straight Gold Gloves from 1990–1999. His impressive range allowed frequent spectacular diving plays, and he often dazzled fans with over-the-shoulder basket catches and robbed opposing hitters of home runs by leaping up and pulling them back into the field of play.
Advanced Batting
But unfortunately, that’s when the injury bug started to bite, as he played in just 158 games between 2002 and 2004. Thanks to an incredibly powerful few years in the late ‘90s, The Kid put himself in what seemed to be a favorable position to challenge Hank Aaron’s career homer record of 755. I mean, when you rifle through 100 homers every couple of years, it’s hard not to think about that. The 2000 season was also his first with the Cincinnati Reds after getting traded and signing a big extension with the organization.
As a free agent, Griffey was courted by the Mariners and the Atlanta Braves. Griffey once again sported #24 with the Mariners; the team had not issued the number to any player or coach in the nine years between his two stints in Seattle. Despite being ranked second in the National League All-Star voting for outfielders for most of the first half of the season, Griffey finished fourth with 2,907,746 ballots, 87,000 votes behind Kosuke Fukudome. At the All-Star Break, Griffey was batting .239 with 12 home runs and 42 runs batted in.
OTD in 1990, the Griffeys went back to back
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The game features the 28 MLB teams in existence at the time, though playing through a full 162 game season unlocks the option to play against the two 1998 expansion teams, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The game includes a franchise mode, MLB Challenge mode, exhibition (single-game) play, and All-Star Game mode, which includes a home run derby mode. Unlike its predecessor, most of the stadiums in the game are generic and the Houston Astros play on natural grass at the Astrodome. From the batter's box most of the other stadiums look authentic but once the ball goes towards the warning track, the outfield walls on either side have a big wall and left center/centerfield/right center have a small outfield wall.
Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run
Despite falling out of the record chase, Griffey nearly duplicated his 1997 statistics, finishing with a .284 average, 56 home runs and 146 runs batted in during 161 games. During the second game of the 2006 regular season, Griffey hit home run #537, surpassing Mickey Mantle for 12th on the all-time list. He returned on May 11 from a knee injury suffered April 12, and hit a walk-off three-run home run in the bottom of the 11th inning against the Washington Nationals.
After coming up short a couple of times in the recent past, Griffey also etched his name among MLB’s Home Run Derby winners during the All-Star break. Since he did this during his age-26 season, this dinger helped him become the seventh-youngest MLB player in history to reach that number. There’s also something special about hitting a milestone home run at a historic stadium like Fenway Park. From the standpoint of fWAR, 1996 was Griffey’s finest work, as he posted 9.7 fWAR in 140 games played. At that time, he had enjoyed his third season of 40-plus homers and set a new career-high for the time being with 49 dingers and 140 RBI. Griffey was criticized by some for his effort during his stint with the Reds.
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Griffey's agent stated Larue's initial report had been posted in error and that Larue had asked his employer to remove it, both of which they refuted. On June 23, 2009, at Safeco Field, Griffey hit the 5,000th home run in franchise history, off San Diego Padres pitcher Chad Gaudin. On July 1, Griffey hit career home run 621 at the new Yankee Stadium, off Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte in the sixth inning. On August 12, 2009, against his former team, the Chicago White Sox, he hit a run-scoring single in the bottom of the 14th inning to win the game, 1–0, for the Mariners. Griffey's signature moment with the White Sox came on September 30, the last game of the 2008 season; an extra 163rd game between the White Sox and Minnesota Twins to break the tie atop the AL Central. In the fifth inning of the scoreless game, the Twins threatened with Michael Cuddyer on third and one out.
Member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Induction2016Vote99.3% George Kenneth Griffey Jr. , nicknamed "Junior" and "the Kid", is an American former professional baseball outfielder who played 22 years in Major League Baseball . He spent most of his career with the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds, along with a short stint with the Chicago White Sox. A member of the Baseball Hall of Fame and a thirteen-time All-Star, Griffey is one of the most prolific home run hitters in baseball history; his 630 home runs rank as the seventh-most in MLB history. Griffey was also an exceptional defender and won ten Gold Glove Awards in center field. In 2004, Griffey avoided major injury during the first half of the season, and on June 20 became the 20th player to hit 500 career home runs.
All images are property the copyright holder and are displayed here for informational purposes only. Yes, with all those close similarities, he hit his 50th homer of the year on the same exact day, two years in a row. After watching his first career homer fly out of the yard, we’ll check out his 100th, 200th, 300th, 400th, 500th, 600th, and his final dinger, as well as the excellent timing he had for some of them.
"Today is a great day for baseball. It’s a great day for Seattle. It’s a great day for the Mariners." He had a .284 batting average, 2,781 hits, 630 home runs, 1,836 RBIs and 1,662 runs scored. He won 1 Comeback Player of the Year award, 10 Gold Glove awards, 1 MVP award and 7 Silver Slugger awards. Griffey came in fourth for the AL MVP voting in 1998, but he just further cemented himself as an inner-circle Hall of Famer, and he wasn’t even 30 years old yet. When you hit 112 homers over the span of two seasons, it’s easy to make quick work of the all-time leaderboard while ascending to the top.
When Griffey Sr. signed with the Seattle Mariners (Griffey Jr.’s team at the time), no father and son had ever even played together on the same team. On Sept. 14, 1990, Ken Griffey Jr. and Ken Griffey Sr. made history, as they have been known to do, when they became the first father-son duo to hit back-to-back home runs in a game against the California Angels. He’d hit three more that season with Chicago, with the first one being number 609, which tied him for fifth all-time with Sammy Sosa on the all-time list. Can you imagine what it feels like to hit 300 homers in the big leagues before you turn 30 years old? At the time of this homer, he was the second-youngest hitter to reach the milestone.
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