Bill Conlin: Time for Ken Griffey to call it a great career
JOE DiMAGGIO knew when it was time. He told reporters during 1951 spring training that it would be his final season. No. 5 had lost 3 prime years to WW2 and the Yankees had made him baseball's first $100,000 player. But his final years were weighted by a succession of injuries and illness.
JOE DiMAGGIO knew when it was time. He told reporters during 1951 spring training that it would be his final season. No. 5 had lost 3 prime years to WW2 and the Yankees had made him baseball's first $100,000 player. But his final years were weighted by a succession of injuries and illness.
There was a poignant moment of foreshadowing the final day of the 1949 season, the Yankees playing the Red Sox and the winner going to the World Series. With the Yankees leading comfortably in the ninth, the great centerfielder failed to catch a routine - for him - fly that went for a two-run triple. He immediately took himself out of the game. "There may have been a fan there who never saw me play before," he said after the Yankees hung on to win the pennant. "He deserved to see me at my best."
Joe had a strong bounceback season in 1950, but played in just 116 games in 1951 while hitting a career-low .263. He knew he was keeping the position warm for a kid named Mickey Mantle. But the Yankees won yet another pennant. In Game 4 of the World Series against the Giants ("Win The Pennant"), he broke a 1-1 tie with the final home run of his career, served by Sal Maglie. His final at-bat was against righthander Larry Jansen in Game 6. He smoked a double. While his teammates celebrated another Series title, DiMaggio reiterated that it had been his final game.
The Yankees offered to pay him the same $100,000 salary to play only the 1952 home games. Joe declined. On Dec. 11, he held a press conference and formally retired.
Steve Carlton hung on too long. So did Willie Mays - waaaaay too long.
Lefty believed the Gus Hoefling prediction that the great lefthander would pitch at a high level well into his 50s. Satchel Carlton, he wasn't. The last, sad season of Mays in a Mets uniform made the final days of Joe D look balletic. Couldn't run, couldn't hide.
Now it is time for the greatest outfielder since Mays - a more graceful, economical, athlete than even Willie, some feel - to call a press conference and say grateful, gracious things. Including goodbye.
It is not as if Ken Griffey Jr. is stealing money from the Seattle Mariners, who have tried earnestly to have the first-ballot Hall of Famer retire in the uniform of the team that drafted him and the franchise he probably saved. The money is guaranteed and Junior didn't enter contract negotiations with a hood and a gun.
Nor does he need the ugly situation that mushroomed out of an incident allegedly leaked to a baseball writer by two unnamed Mariners that, when summoned from the clubhouse to pinch-hit, the 40-year-old legend was deep in converzzzzzzzation with Rip Van Winkle. Griffey's agent says Tacoma News Tribune beat writer Larry LaRue claimed he inadvertently filed an updated blog that had Griffey in the warm embrace of Morpheus before filing a longer preplanned piece updating Griffey's diminished performance. The blog ran with an unconfirmed report that Griffey was sleeping and did not ask him for comment on the allegation. That's News Reporting 101. Unfortunately, the basic rule of Blogging 101 is you pick up a big handful of crap, fling it against the wall and see how much sticks - sources or confirmation not required. Meanwhile, the newspaper is backing LaRue's blog. But even if Griffey was sleepless in Seattle, there is hard evidence Junior is cooked. He needs to move on with dignity and pride in his amazing accomplishments. But it is very much his call.
Mike Schmidt did it the right way. When he made the snap decision in San Diego on that memorable evening in 1989, he was upset with his fielding and overall play. He had slowed from jaguar to housecat. But Michael Jack could still hit. An 0-for-3 against the Giants on Sunday, May 28, 1989, left the third baseman at .203. But he had six homers and 28 RBI. I believe he could have run his home-run total of 548 to more than 600 with an American League DH gig. But that was not him. He came into the game as a rounded ballplayer, not a hired bat. No. 20 went into the Hall of Fame as the whole package, not as a guy who hung around into his 40s so he could join a 600 Club that lost some luster in the Steroid Era.
Willie Mays knew nothing but baseball back to his teenage years in Alabama. He wound up shilling for Atlantic City casinos. No wonder he hung on so long.
The only job Steve Carlton ever had before he was drafted and signed by the Cardinals was cabana boy at a Miami Beach hotel. He used those long, future slider-flinging arms, to shoulder a dozen or more lounge pads and hustle them out to poolside. Working up A1A in Hallandale Beach a few years earlier at the Moongate Hotel, the best I could stack was 10. My arms were too short to outpad Lefty. Now, he uses that long left arm to sell his signature.
DiMaggio came from commercial fisherfolk in San Francisco and hated the work. But Big Apple exposure opened a lot of doors for him. Mr. Coffee never wanted for a postcareer paycheck.
It is disingenuous to order a man to quit a job that has been the only activity of his adult life. Come to think of it, this is the only thing I have done besides lifeguarding. Baseball is an all-consuming career for those lucky and skilled enough to have one at the professional level. You take the wife on a cruise or to the islands after the season. Then the holidays are on you and there's a banquet here and there, maybe some promotion work for the ballclub. Then, hey, pitchers and catchers in just 2 weeks. You get to Florida or Arizona early and it all begins again.
Baseball is not as addictive as tobacco, cocaine or heroin. But it is close.
Send e-mail to bill1chair@aol.com.
For recent columns, go to