What Might Have Been; What Was
It’s not that Matthew Pouliot didn’t let the body cool before deeming Ken Griffey, Jr. “overrated.” It’s not even that the word “overrated” is the very first word in the headline — that that adjective, and not the “yet still great” that follows it, is what Pouliot wants us to see and know first.
It’s this: by whom, exactly, is Junior overrated? Because it ain’t by me, and I can’t think of anyone else, fan or sportswriter, who overrates him either.
Pouliot may have gotten pre-frustrated by all the laudatory prose he knew Griffey’s retirement would generate, and may have decided to puncture the balloon with an “enh, he wasn’t that great” for the sake of balance, but the word “overrated” is, I think, not accurate. Griffey is respected, but everyone knows what he is: an extremely talented player who played very very well for a while, but probably didn’t reach his full potential because he kept getting injured.
Pouliot also seems irked by what he perceives as Griffey’s lock on Cooperstown: “Griffey is certainly a Hall of Famer. Fairly or not, he’s gone untarnished despite playing during the Steroid Era, mostly because he never looked like a user.” Okay, what’s with the attitude? Perhaps I’ve read too much into it, but it feels like Pouliot either suspects Griffey of using and getting away with it, or resents accusations leveled at other players who “looked like” users.
Or…maybe he just doesn’t want Griffey to get into the Hall of Fame solely because he didn’t take ‘roids; he wants the election to proceed from Griffey’s numbers and performance. It’s a worthwhile desire, but painfully naïve, and if Griffey gets a halo from it, so what? Can’t you give us that? We’ll have to wait decades for a player untainted by any hint of the now-up-capped Steroid Era to re-break the home-run record so that we can feel good about it; who’s our best shot now, Jason Heyward? If he can stay healthy, and pitchers stop throwing perfectos for five minutes in 2010, and he gets traded to a teeny stadium, and he doesn’t decide to go to law school. If it ever happens at all. Can’t you let us remember when Junior came up, when it really did seem like the beginning of a new game somehow, that we were on the eve of something different in baseball?
(Quick Heyward sidebar here. First of all: love that guy. Second of all: I found out while researching this piece that his middle name is “Alias.” …Rad, right? LOVE that guy!)
It’s true that Griffey wasn’t the second coming of Stan Musial, that he didn’t have much to brag about in the postseason department (although I’m not sure how anyone could have hauled some of those early-aughts Reds teams to the postseason, short of buying them tickets), that he didn’t lead the league in RBIs or OPS. But he shared the league with guys like Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez, and if a PED-related rationale leaves McGwire off of a dozen ballots every year, maybe it should go in a positive direction too.
Look, I don’t even like Griffey that much, but a lot of the ancillary shit here isn’t his fault. I think he would have told you himself that he shouldn’t have played outfield for the White Sox, but: not his call. I think he would want the BBWAA to vote for his accomplishments and not because he didn’t break a rule, but: not under his control.
And I think “overrated” is unfair, because it’s inexact and untrue. Griffey isn’t overrated. He’s, I believe, widely considered a great player who can’t rank among the greatest because he turned 30 and his legs fell off; who hit beautiful, architectural home runs; who probably didn’t juice. It is in fact possible to understand Griffey’s career in three dimensions, and honor his departure as the end of an era itself both good and bad. Rating him with informed admiration is not the same as overrating him.
Tags: Alex Rodriguez Barry Bonds famous boyfriends Jason Alias Heyward Ken Griffey Jr. Mark McGwire Matthew Pouliot overrated! shut up steroids
Sars, I don’t know from baseball and don’t usually comment on these posts, but I’m from Seattle, and…word. Why the hell have we developed this need for all our athletes to become demigods and perform the Twelve Labors of Hercules before we’ll deign to pat them on the head? Why can’t greatness come from doing as well as you can, for as long as you can, and knowing when to hang it up and stroll into the twilight?
I was hoping that I’d see a post from you one way or the other about Junior. I remember your posts about the irrational hate and the post about the home run you saw him hit in spring training one year, and all the rest, plus I read the article you’re talking about this morning, and was left sort of scratching my head about it. I can sort of see what he’s getting at: Griffey’s lifetime average wasn’t spectacular thanks to those years in Cincinnati, and his OPS wasn’t spectacular (although did anyone actually care about OPS before sabremetrics came into vogue?), but the dude was, by all accounts, a stand-up guy, hit spectacularly at his peak, finished 5th on the all-time HR list, and for all intents and purposes, saved baseball in Seattle. That’s HOF-worthy to me.
The post-season stuff that Pouliot brings up is nonsense. Ernie Banks never played in a post-season, Ted Williams hit a princely .200 in the ’46 Series, and most of the teams Junior played on were terrible, both in Seattle and Cincinnati. A-Rod in a Rangers uniform should be proof enough that one superstar does not make for a playoff team (or even a winning one, for that matter).
I was a big fan of his as a kid (loved those climbing catches against the Kingdome’s center field wall) but only got to see Junior play a couple of times, once each in his last two years with the Reds. While it was clear he wasn’t at his peak, I was glad to have seen him at all (especially since the second game was the day before he hit #600–everyone in Pro Player Stadium–all 4,000 of us [heh, except not really] was on edge to see if he’d do it). Farewell, Junior. Thanks for highlight reel.
Steroids help you recover faster from injuries, right? Just… throwing that out there. Maybe Griffey would’ve been one of the greatest if he’d juiced, and maybe we all kind of suspect that, and so we feel good about him, and SHUT UP FEELING GOOD IS NICE.
“…pitchers stop throwing perfectos for five minutes in 2010” — oh, don’t worry, Jim Joyce got your back on that one.
Beyond simply not looking like a user, doesn’t the fact that he spent basically the entire second half of his career on the DL also point to him probably not being a user? Steroids are supposed to cut down on injuries, right?
He’s overrated by info-tainment enter-writers whose entire career is based on overrating people. The way that some of these arseholes write about sports you’d think they were trying to pump-and-dump stocks. No surprised that we’re seeing pre-backlash; it’s just the flip side of what people were doing to KGJR his whole career.
@Elizabeth: “Joyce got your back on that one.” Haha, yeah. Although, when you think about it, Galarraga has been in the news more for not throwing a perfect game than if he had done!
Word on the Heyward love – NL Rookie of the Month for May!
That is all.
Oh wait, also this: Griffey’s the only guy to ever hit a home run in Camden Yards that hit the warehouse beyond right field. There’s a little baseball-shaped plaque on the spot and everything. I think that’s just cool.
@ Melanie: I still remember that. 1993 All-Star Week Home Run Derby. Back when the top of the line All-Stars actually still participated in the festivities…
Just had to throw this in, too: One of my favorite Onion articles–
http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-to-ken-griffey-jr-we-wish-it-were-you-hitti,2212/
He was in one of the earliest episodes of The Simpsons to make us realise that the show was something special. Can you be overrated when you’ve done that? No, I don’t think so
I think this is one of the main problems with sports media today. Writers and radio personalities feel like they have to make statements that will get readers to their pages. The easiest way (and laziest) is to against the grain simply to go against the grain. One example is when Tiger Woods didn’t make a recent cut in a tournament. The next day a prominent sports writer declared that Tiger was “washed up”. The only reason (it seems to me) that he wrote that is because he wanted eyes on his column and knew that statement would get people to read it.
My mama called me near tears last night when the news broke, so I’d like just to send her on over to Pouliot’s desk. Look MY MOM in the face and say that, buddy.
From everything I’ve heard, Griffey was also a tireless go-to guy for Make a Wish and other childrens’ charities, locally and not, but never tooted his own horn about it. A class act, and to be missed.
Okay, who needs a beer?
Is Matthew Pouliot one of those East Coast Bias nuts? Dancing around the question of whether Griffey juiced or not and then saying “well Griffey was OK but he was no Bonds” makes no sense. It is as if he wanted to write a mean-spirited article but just didn’t have the balls. You hit 600+ home runs you get to Cooperstown, period, and then we get to argue about what that means. Even this Pouliot dude. Unfortunately. The best part of last night was seeing that beautiful, classic swing, over and over.
@Elizabeth and @Andrew, depending upon how a person uses steroids, they can both rehab injuries and be the source of new ones. Because they bulk up muscles so much but do nothing for ligaments and tendons, some roiders find that their muscles are too strong for their own bodies, and subsequently rip from their moorings. And once that starts happening, no roidy rehab will help. When roiders start breaking down, they break down fast and far.
Other PEDs work differently, which is why the “smart” user will have an array of roids, hGH, hormones (male and female), insulin, various proteins, and muscle relaxants at their disposal.
Thanks for your elegant words. This: “Rating him with informed admiration is not the same as overrating him” = a grand slam of word. @Abigail – that swing! and yes, @Kim – a beer sounds grand. B/c the class act Griffey is gone, and I still need to salve the call that took a perfect game from Galarraga last night. Not to thread-jack, or anything (she wrote, hijacking the thread) – but Sars, what did you think of that? Because it broke my big galumping Tiger-fan heart.
And by “last night,” I mean, “Wednesday night.” The wound, she is fresh, and interfering with the thinking.
@Suzanne: It’s the week after a Monday off; I’ve been thinking it’s Thursday all week.
I started to answer this here and then, four screens later, I realized it’s its own column. Look for that later today. The short version: it sucks for Galarraga, I feel for him, I admire how classily everyone has tried to act in the situation…and I feel the call should stand, but I will get into that further in the essay.
@Sars: the only thing that can make things even marginally better is a Sars column!! *sobs*
Well, that and the fact that it might stand as an oddity? The “28-out Perfect Game” that folks are already calling it? But I will stay snuffling in my workplace corner, and wait for your writing.
*wipes tears with Tigers pennant*
@Elizabeth- Oh, that still stings even two days later.
@Sars- I had a feeling you’d get around to Galarraga in his own column, if for the replay issue alone, and I’ve been looking forward to it.
I’m actually kind of bummed for Junior, because he retired, and the next morning Galarraga was the biggest story in sports, not just baseball. And then it was kind of like “Oh, and by the way, Griffey retired”. Kind of a suck way for that story to break.
Sorry about that. I meant to put Elizabeth in the body of the comment . . . my middle name is Elizabeth, but that doesn’t matter.
Thanks for this, Sars. I’m from Seattle and am a lifelong Mariner’s fan, and Griffey really did do wonders for ball there. When A-Rod was on the team, he was notoriously a jackass (the local weekly called him “Ass-Rod”), but Junior never got that kind of press. He wasn’t perfect, but supported local charities, seemed like a really family-oriented person, and–most importantly–DELIVERED at the plate and at center field. Maybe he didn’t live up to his ultimate potential, but I’m satisfied with a great hitter, amazing fielder, and good person representing the Ms for so many years. If Pouliot thinks that’s overrated, that’s too bad for him.