Ken Griffey, Jr.

Ken Griffey, Jr. (born November 21, 1969, Donora, Pennsylvania, U.S.) is an American professional baseball player who was one of the iconic athletes of the 1990s and ranked among the best power hitters and defensive outfielders of all time.

In 1987 Griffey was the first player selected by the Major League Baseball draft and was signed by the American League Seattle Mariners. He made his major league debut in 1989. His father, outfielder Ken Griffey, Sr., was playing for the Cincinnati Reds in that year, and the Griffeys thus became the first father and son ever to play in the major leagues at the same time. Griffey, Sr., arranged to be traded to the Mariners late in the 1989 season, and the two formed a sentimental duo in the lineup until his retirement in 1991.

Griffey, Jr., soon began to prove his worth as both a center fielder and a hitter. He was injured in his rookie season, but in 1990 he won his first Gold Glove Award, had a batting average of .300, and played in the All-Star Game. He went on to win the American League Gold Glove Award for the years 1991–99 with his spectacular fielding. In 1997, when Griffey hit 56 home runs and batted in 147 runs, he was a unanimous selection for the American League’s Most Valuable Player award.

At the close of the 1999 season, Griffey—who had come to dislike playing in the Mariners’ new pitcher-friendly stadium and wanted to work closer to his family’s home in Orlando, Florida—requested a trade from Seattle. In February 2000 he was traded to Cincinnati, which he considered his hometown and where his father worked as a coach. Griffey struggled with a series of injuries in Cincinnati. When he was on the field, he remained a dangerous left-handed hitter. In 2004 he became the 20th major league player to hit 500 home runs, and he was named to the National League All-Star team in 2000, 2004, and 2007. In 2008, after hitting his 600th career home run, Griffey joined Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Sammy Sosa as the only players in major league history to accomplish that feat. Griffey was traded to the Chicago White Sox in July 2008.

He became a free agent for the first time in his career at the end of the 2008 season, and he signed with the Mariners again in February 2009. Griffey’s return to Seattle was a boon for the Mariners’ attendance figures, but his deteriorating on-field play and subsequent lack of playing time led him to abruptly retire from baseball in June 2010. He finished his career with a .284 batting average, 630 home runs, and 1,836 runs batted in. In 2016 he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, having received 437 of the 440 votes cast (99.32 percent) to set the record for the highest percentage of votes in the history of the Hall of Fame (which was broken in 2019 when Mariano Rivera was elected unanimously). In 2021 he joined the Mariners’ ownership group.