Griffey Has Game Fit for Kingdome

The player most responsible for ending the Seattle Mariners’ days in the Kingdome made sure their final game in it would be a memorable one.

Ken Griffey Jr. hit his 27th homer and robbed Juan Gonzalez of a three-run shot with a spectacular, over-the-fence catch as the Mariners defeated the Texas Rangers, 5-2, Sunday before a sellout crowd of 56,530.

“It was great,” teammate Edgar Martinez said. “We’ve been watching him play like that for years. It just amazes me he always comes through in a situation like today. That shows the class of player he is. He’s the best.”

With his father, Cincinnati Coach Ken Griffey, watching from the broadcast booth, Griffey gave the Mariners a 3-2 lead with a three-run homer in the first inning.

“I wasn’t trying to hit the ball out of the ballpark. I just got lucky,” Griffey said during a postgame ceremony on the field.

Then with two men on in the fourth, the nine-time Gold Glove winner leaped over the 8 1/2-foot wall in center to snare Gonzalez’s 395-foot drive for the final out of the inning.

“It was a great play,” Mariner Manager Lou Piniella said. “You could tell by the way he was going back he had it timed. It was just a matter of if he could get to it.”

The Mariners played their 1,755th and final game at the Kingdome before moving into their new home, the $517-million Safeco Field, on July 15. Griffey’s play and Seattle’s 1995 AL West championship run helped gain support for the city’s new baseball stadium with a retractable roof.

Griffey missed Friday night’s game because of a sinus infection and declined to talk to reporters after Sunday’s game. But right fielder Jay Buhner was happy to speak for him.

“It was kind of strange,” Buhner said. “It seems like it was scripted into the whole deal. It was almost like it was supposed to happen.”

The Kingdome’s first sellout crowd of the season watched the Mariners defeat the AL West-leading Rangers for the second consecutive game after losing 14-4 on Friday night.