Junior's Charisma
Again some sweet stuff from the Bakery,
[Griffey] On teammates getting along: "They're going to have to,'' he said. "We're here for one reason and that's to win ballgames. You're going to have your feuding in there. But that is not going to carry over to the field. That's just the way it is. I mean, you're just not going to like somebody and he's not going to like you. But you're going to go out there and play. And you're going to give the other seven or eight guys on that field a chance to win. And that's just the way it's going to be.''
Sabertistas behind the ropes there. You're not on the guest list. ;- ) Hardball fans step inside; the Doctah is about to Speak...
The first question that fans might ask is, why would it matter when The Natural says this, when it didn't matter when Carl Everett said it?
Anybody who's ever been inside a locker room knows why. It's because Griffey is The All-State Quarterback, the 20-point shooting forward who takes the prom queen to the dance. Everybody else in the locker room takes his cue from that guy.
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Griffey had fouled-up karma in Cincinnati and the marriage was a bust from the honeymoon. But Griffey's clubhouses in Seattle were always good clubhouses, by baseball standards.
In 1988, under a sour, curmudgeonly, playing-out-the-string Dick Williams, the Mariners (by all accounts) had one of the most every-man-for-himself clubhouses in Mariner history, if not in baseball history. Sigh. They contained the losses to 93, only because of a nice crop of young talent that included Alvin Davis and Mark Langston.
In 1989, Griffey's very first year, the clouds parted and the M's clubhouse became a major-league clubhouse. They immediately began a climb towards .500 that took only a couple of years. Griffey himself wasn't yet good enough to accomplish much of that himself.
What Griffey did do, was immediately befriend the weirdest, most difficult people on the ballclub, guys like Jeffrey Leonard, get them laughing and smiling, and turn the entire focus onto "what neat things might happen on the field today?"
From 1989 all the way through 1999, Griffey's clubhouses were focused on baseball. And they could be tough: when the 1995 M's went down 0-2 to the Yankees, Griffey personally grabbed the ballclub by its bootstraps and (backing up his words on the field) forced it to challenge the Yankees. People underestimate how tough a competitor the 1990's Griffey was, and how much he talked to his teammates about competing.
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Nowadays, Griff comes back to a completely random clubhouse, one having no idea where it goes next, and that clubhouse will be looking at him.
Sabermetricians might sniff, "well, I only see 22.1 RAR." But the guy who walks in and sees KEN! GRIFFEY! JR! standing at his double locker sees 600 home runs. He sees the Hall of Fame, he sees a guy who hangs with Tiger Woods, a Nike guy, all that stuff. Junior will still own the clubhouse.
And so when he says,
"We're here for one reason and that's to win ballgames. You're going to have your feuding in there. But that is not going to carry over to the field. That's just the way it is. ...You're going to go out there and play. And you're going to give the other seven or eight guys on that field a chance to win. And that's just the way it's going to be.''
In Kid-O-Vision translation that means, you don't get to give up six runs and then talk about Ichiro, there, Carlos.
So, instead, you might as well focus on not giving up the six.
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It's interesting; when the Mariners brought in Carl Everett, they thought they were paying $2M (or whatever) for a possible 80 RBI, and a more probable infusion of much-needed grit.
They've been grasping at chemistry straws ever since Jeff Cirillo, going on down through Everett and Jose Guillen and all the other Scowling Vets (TM).
Funny thing. Griffey might be worth a lot more than his $2.5M just for finally being the guy who fixes the clubhouse.
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Chipper Jones talked about Griff's ability to crank it up a notch, which, again, is something that athletes of Jones' caliber understand. I'll be very interested to see whether Griff can't go to the extra level of concentration and provide a 2009 season "that nobody could have predicted at the time." :- )
Hey, I hear Shaq had 45 points tonight, a week before his 37th birthday. That's talent for you.
BABVA,
Dr D
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image: http://www.chatterbalks.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/griffey_pink_lumber.jpg
