Griffey was the Best

By KEN W PACZAS

With all this steroid talk, and rumors circulating throughout baseball, one might want to sit down and think. Who really was the best baseball player of the last 15 years?

With “Game of Shadows”  in bookstores, the depth and breadth of baseball's steroid problem finds the industry and the implicated still unable to confront the facts.

Barry Bonds is talking baseball and baseball only. Gary Sheffield has announced he has “moved on.” No wonder. Were either man to confirm the steroid allegations contained in this book, it would be tantamount to admitting they perjured themselves before a grand jury.

Ken Griffey Junior however shows class and does not try to throw people under the bus. He knows that his records are tainted because of what others did.  Yet, he doesn’t go into mudslinging.

He claims to have no memory of the dinner table declaration Bonds is reported to have made in another book, “Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero.” The pertinent passage reveals a Bonds so consumed with jealousy for Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa that he vows to start “using some hard-core stuff, and hopefully it won't hurt my body.”

Improbably, but predictably, Griffey can't seem to remember the conversation. He and Bonds are friends – second-generation ballplayers who have each surpassed their famous fathers – and there's little to be gained from squealing.

Furthermore, Griffey has continually resisted efforts to emphasize his own example of nature-based slugging. Though juiced sluggers eroded his eminence in the 1990s, and though some of his associates were quick to repeat incriminating hearsay about Bonds, Junior has sought to stay above the fray. He was doing pretty well at it, too, until the long-leaked dinner story found its way into print.

Even though Griffey has said that parents should be role models, not baseball players. He still leads by an example that would make any parent proud.

Griffey has chosen to stay silent on the subject of steroids rather than risk being seen as sanctimonious. He held his tongue as McGwire, Sosa and Bonds erased home run records that might have been his had he stayed healthy.

Griffey won the National League's comeback player award for overcoming a major hamstring injury and having an impressive 2005 season — batting .301 with 35 homers and 92 runs batted in. It was his best season since 2000, his first in Cincinnati. While the home run kings of the steroid era have slowly been fading, Griffey has showed that when healthy, he can hit homeruns just like he did in 1995.

Griffey is a 10-time Gold Glove winner; 11-time All-Star; 1997 AL MVP; Mariners all-time leader in home runs and RBIs; MVP of 1992 All-Star game at age 23. He was an urban legend that lived up to the hype.

This will be the first spring training in almost two decades where Junior will be sitting at home and not participating. I know he was not the same player, but I loved seeing him on that field, reminding me of when baseball was good.

His swing was magic, his fielding was perfect. If it wasn’t for injuries, you have to wonder what might have been.

Sorry Barry, even with the injuries, Griffey is the best “Natural” baseball player of the last 15 years.