Of Griffey, a blown call, and an obscure anniversary

Today Ken Griffey Jr announced his retirement from baseball - well, June 2 he did. It's midnight now as I'm writing this. I know I balked at Griffey coming back to Seattle after the way he whined and cried his way out of town several years ago, but I can easily admit now that I've enjoyed watching him play again. I can remember back in the Griffey/A-Rod hey day watching the two of them hit back-to-back homeruns in the Kingdome. One of the homeruns was the 50th of the season for one of them. I don't remember which one though. Anyway, it turns out that I got to see the last hit of his career - a walk off single on May 20 - and his last at-bat - a pinch hit force out on May 31.


To Griffey I say, "Thanks for the memories!" How cool that I got to see a future Hall-of-Famer play during the height of his career?!

His last hit

His last at-bat

A little while after hearing about Griffey's retirement, I get a text saying that Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers is pitching a perfect game. It was close enough to the end of the day so I pulled up the game on MLB.tv to watch the 9th inning. One out. Two out. And then this...

It was unbelievable! I felt so bad for Galarraga. He handled it with class though. After I got over the initial fury over the bad call, I started to feel bad for Jim Joyce, the umpire. I have to believe that he was 100% sure Jason Donald was safe. If there was any question at all would he really take the perfect game away from the pitcher?? I'm sure he's dealing with death threats now and he acknowledged after seeing a replay that he made the wrong call. Human element is a part of the game, and while I don't want to see instant replay as a blanket policy in baseball with every close play suddenly being analyzed, when it comes to a play like this I'm all for it!


Now about that obscure anniversary. May 19 marked the 10-year anniversary of Kris Benson pitching a complete game, Brian Giles signing a 7-year contract and (drumroll please) Jason Kendall hitting for the cycle! I remember being at a Mariners game with Pam, sitting along the third baseline. When I saw the highlights from that game on the big screen I started hitting Pam on the leg - I couldn't believe it! I was so excited! Pam - not so much. I believe her exact words were, "ouch!" :-)