James Chamberlin

I came across a post on another site courtesy of Digg this afternoon regarding Ken Griffey Jr.’s home run total. He’s currently at 596, four away from the next milestone of 600. And there’s very little press about this.

When I was younger, I collected baseball cards with a frenzy. I still have some of the cards, but one of the cards I was most interested in obtaining was Ken Griffey Jr.’s rookie card, specifically the 1989 Upper Deck card.

Way back then, this card had a book value of over $100. This is a very good reason to want to collect it, of course. But I never did manage to obtain one. Today, they can be had for a lot less on sites like eBay. Highly valued cards like the Griffey ’89 Upper Deck Rookie aren’t worth much unless they’re graded by a reputable grading company like PSA, which looks at the surface, edges, etc for imperfections. If you manage to get a perfect 10 from PSA, you can get over $200 for it from most buyers.

Anyway, back to Griffey, himself. Right from the start of his career, Griffey proved himself to be an excellent baseball player. Not only did he have speed on the bases and in the outfield, but he had one of the sweetest swings of anyone. He hit for a good average and belted a lot of home runs, so much so, it was Griffey who was said to be the next home run king, not Barry Bonds.

But injuries nearly ended the outfielder’s career. Once he would heal up, he’s get hurt again. I remember watching SportsCenter on ESPN and seeing disappointing news after disappointing news. But here in the last few years, Griffey is playing more often. He’s not injured nearly as often and is about to hit his six hundredth home run.

The lack of media coverage is rather surprising though. Here we have the one guy who is clean [no steroids], and he’s about to surpass a huge milestone. Griffey is currently in sixth place all-time, and the media doesn’t care.

I realize the media is tired of covering baseball because of steroids, but they should be championing the one guy who didn’t use.

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