Ken Griffey Jr. was a cultural icon in the 1990s, with his
trendy Nikes, backwards cap, and room filling smile, no one person had made
baseball as cool as Junior did. Every kid who watched baseball in the 90s and is now an adult knows exactly
what a Ken Griffey homerun looked like and the famous strut when he knew he got
all of the ball. His swing was dubbed as the “Sweetest Swing in Baseball” for
its smoothness, and grace.
How good was Ken Griffey Jr.? At age 29 he was voted to the
All Century Baseball Team alongside the greatest outfielders of all time like
Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Mickey Mantle. Around the same time,
Hank Aaron said he believed Griffey would be the one who broke his All-Time
Home Run record of 755, and based on his 398 homeruns through age 29 it was
almost a certainty that his name would adorn the top of the list of baseball
immortality.
At age 40, Griffey faded off into the shadows retiring with
many asking the question ‘WHAT IF’. Griffey is undoubtedly a first ballot Hall
of Famer, and seen as the one guy who did it 'right in a time (Steroids Era)
where everyone was cheating to get the leg up.' Baseball historians still
wonder today if Ken Griffey could have gone down in baseball's history as the
mammoth character he was, rather than a tragic ending to a "What if."
