Ken Griffey Jr.

Cliff Lee just finished perhaps his best start of the season—thus proving once again that he should not be traded.

Lee (5-3), lowered his ERA to 2.55. He allowed no runs and struck out seven Cincinnati Reds batters in a complete game. It was his second complete game of the season.

I was five years old when my dad took me to my first baseball game.

Old Municipal Stadium in Cleveland, Ohio was the scene. Even in 1986, "The Mistake by the Lake" was well past its prime. I believe Muni Stadium purists, like myself, defended the 78,000-seat paper weight by claiming it had character.

Baseball has always had a funny way of uniting its players under a common theme, no matter how similar or distinct they are, throughout its illustrious timeline .  

The 1970 season saw two of the game’s most prolific power hitters, Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, record their 3,000th hits.

Last Wednesday, Ken Griffey Jr., one of the greatest baseball players of all time, hung up his cleats, capping a historic career, both on and off the field.

Much has been made of his 13 All-Star nods, 10 Gold Gloves, seven Silver Sluggers, and one American League MVP Award, but lost in the fray of statistics and record books (in which Griffey certainly plays a dominant role), are the little things that made Ken Griffey Jr.’s career so great.

The Ken Griffey, Jr. Era officially ended on Wednesday, June 2, 2010 when the player known as “The Kid” retired from baseball after 22 seasons, 630 home runs, 1836 RBIs, and 1662 runs scored.  Griffey retires with one of the greatest resumes in the history of Major League Baseball.

Read any of the coverage of Junior’s retirement and you’ll begin to piece together the narrative of his career.  Griffey was drafted No. 1 overall in 1988 by the Seattle Mariners out of high school, and made an immediate impact in the major leagues.

A part of my childhood died Wednesday.

No, my dog didn’t pass away. My mother didn’t give away the stuffed bear my parents bought for me the day I was brought into this world. And my trophy collection is still intact on the shelves of my West Chester bedroom. Nonetheless, I felt as if any one of those things had actually happened.

Growing up, a lot of kids wanted to be like Mike.

Not me, I wanted to be like Ken.

George Kenneth Griffey Jr. had it all.

He had the skill at the plate and in the field that only others could dream of having, giving him that superstar label rather early in his career.

Unlike most other superstars though, Griffey also had the personality and charisma that created a likeable clubhouse atmosphere.

He was the perfect guy to look up to, and that's why so many little kids did, including myself.

The San Diego Padres and Philadelphia Phillies face off this weekend in a match-up featuring a bewildering assortment of player related in some way to other players, including Will Venable, Tony Gwynn Jr., Jayson Werth, Scott and Jerry Hairston, and Padres coach Glenn Hoffman.

Nevertheless, with Ken Griffey Jr., announcing his retirement on Wednesday, the era of Major League sons truly comes to a close.

This week in the world of sports, the phrase, “all bad things come is threes,” was taken to a new level. 

Much like the film industry, which lost Gary Coleman, Dennis Hopper and Rue McClanahan in a nine-day span, the sport’s world experienced the retirement of a baseball icon, a perfect game sabotaged and the death of a college basketball coaching legend.

It started late-Wednesday afternoon when reports out of Seattle said the Mariners’ Ken Griffey Jr., 40, was retiring. 

Ken Griffey Jr. is my version of The Beatles.

For every generation there are cultural phenomena that don’t resonate with their predecessors and go unappreciated by their successors.

I spent about two hours attempting to write a fitting sendoff for Junior the morning after he retired.