When It Comes to Doing It All, Griffey Leads the Way

We knew before we got to the ballpark that Ken Griffey Jr. is unlike any other ballplayer on the planet. And it’s obvious after one step into the Seattle Mariner locker room that he isn’t like the rest of his teammates.

No other player has two cubicles for his belongings. Griffey’s two cubicles are so stuffed he needs a rolling trunk to store more stuff. Boxes of more stuff just shipped in await him just about every time he arrives in the clubhouse.

Griffey doesn’t sit in a mere folding chair. Uh-uh. He has a black leather recliner with armrests and remote control.

No other player can, on a whim, interrupt his manager’s pregame meeting with the media and proclaim: “Skip, I want to lead off,” get the go-ahead from Lou Piniella, then draw arrows on the lineup card to indicate that he was moving to the No. 1 spot and Lee Tinsley would take Griffey’s third spot in the batting order for Wednesday night’s game against the Angels. Griffey wanted it, he got it.

“See how easy we make things around here?” Piniella said.

Everything’s easy when you’re Griffey, who had more instructions for Piniella: “You can take the day off. I’ll manage.”

And later: “I might even do the announcing too.”

Anything else, Junior?

“I heard the Sonics were looking for a forward.”

No, dominating one sport is plenty for now. Griffey’s is the most recognizable and marketable face in baseball now that the other junior, Cal Ripken, has reduced Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games record to a speck in his rear-view mirror.

Griffey is so big, his season so outstanding, that it’s news when he does not hit a home run. SportsCenter shows his every at-bat. Shortstop Alex Rodriguez thinks that on a team with Jay Buhner, Edgar Martinez and Paul Sorrento (not to mention Rodriguez himself), Griffey’s most valuable contribution might not be his skills with the bat, it’s his ability to draw crowds of reporters in the locker room so the rest of the Mariners can walk around in peace.

No other player can make an entire sport stand still when he walks to the plate. Every television camera, every eye in the stands and even the attention of the opposing players focuses on Griffey.

“You sense greatness,” Angel shortstop Gary DiSarcina said.

“With the sweetness of his swing, sometimes you find yourself thinking like the fans do, staring and gawking.”

He mesmerizes us, comes as close as humanly possible to providing highlights on demand, and yet it still isn’t enough. He can’t simply be Griffey. Now he must be Roger Maris.

Griffey doesn’t understand what all the hoopla is about, even as an ESPN announcer on a clubhouse television hypes the broadcast of Wednesday night’s game by saying, “Watch Ken Griffey Jr. go for No. 56, 57, 58 . . . “

Griffey has this to say about his chances of breaking Maris’ record of 61 home runs: “It’s not going to happen.”

But it doesn’t hurt when you can put yourself leadoff to get yourself another at-bat. Griffey would love to break the record, but with 55 homers and three games to go, the odds don’t project in his favor. And he knows that his odds of getting a good pitch to drive are even slimmer. When asked how many pitches he has seen in the last month that were right down the groove, he held up his index finger. He hit No. 54 and No. 55 off a slider and a changeup. In the third inning Tuesday night, the Angels’ Allen Watson, who has given up more home run balls than most batting practice pitchers this year, pitched around Griffey so blatantly that when Griffey came to bat in the fifth the TV graphic said he was one for one with a single and intentional walk.

Griffey would just as soon take a day off than go through this exercise in frustration. When asked why he is playing, Griffey said, “Because if I don’t, there’s going to be about 45 million people in the U.S. calling my house.”

The baseball public’s obsession with magical numbers shouldn’t diminish the impact of Griffey’s MVP season. The facts are, he and McGwire have more home runs than anyone since Maris set the record in 1961 and more home runs this season than all but five players in major league history.

You look at his most important task, his contributions to his team, and can see how he boosted Seattle to the division title, hitting five home runs in the first week of September, when the Mariners finally put some distance between themselves and the Angels.

That’s what a most valuable player does. But Griffey says, “I just go out there and do what I have to do. I don’t think about what happened last week or whatever.”

The thing that’s wonderful about Griffey is despite this abundance of talent and this excess of attention, he’s so normal.

“Why try to act like somebody else?” Griffey said. “It’s hard enough acting like yourself, just trying to be yourself.”

OK, so perhaps you didn’t walk into a Mercedes-Benz dealership this week to do a little window shopping and wind up buying one of their new sport-utility vehicles for your wife.

But if you look through the two-stall locker, below all of the brand-new, Griffey-model shoes, you’ll find some things that look as if they could be in your 12-year-old’s room, such as a Nintendo controller. He has the same playful whims and fantasies too, and Wednesday was his chance to make like the kid in “Little Big League” and manage a professional baseball team.

Ken Griffey Jr., with talent, skill and a swing that his peers all envy, in the midst of a season unlike most in baseball history, and nothing could make him so happy as when he brought the lineup card out to the umpires. Forget Roger Maris. All you need to know about Griffey is that he was happy about the chance to be Lou Piniella.

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Big Bopper

A look at how Ken Griffey Jr. rates as a home run hitter:

MOST HOMERS IN A SEASON

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Player, Team Year HR Roger Maris, New York Yankees 1961 61 Babe Ruth, New York Yankees 1927 60 Babe Ruth, New York Yankees 1921 59 Jimmie Foxx, Philadelphia A’s 1932 58 Hank Greenberg, Detroit Tigers 1938 58 Hack Wilson, Chicago Cubs 1930 56 Ken Griffey, Jr., Seattle Mariners 1997 55 Mark McGwire, Oakland-St. Louis 1997 55

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MOST HOMERS AT AGE 27

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Player HR Finish Jimmie Foxx 302 534 Eddie Mathews 299 512 Ken Griffey Jr. 293 Mickey Mantle 280 536 Mel Ott 275 511 Frank Robinson 262 586 Hank Aaron 253 755 Johnny Bench 240 389 Jose Canseco 235 Orlando Cepeda 223 379 Harmon Killebrew 223 573

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Note: Babe Ruth had 197 home runs at age 27 and Willie Mays had 216.

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J.A. Adande is a columnist for the Orange County edition of The Times.

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* ANGELS WIN

They keep Griffey in the Kingdome and enjoy a meaningless victory over the Mariners. C5