Griffey Wants Club to Improve

With three weeks left in the season, Ken Griffey Jr. is pressuring the Seattle Mariners to upgrade the team this winter or trade him.

The Mariners have heard Griffey’s mantra before, but it now has more urgency as he and Alex Rodriguez enter what could be the final weeks of their Seattle careers. Both are eligible for free agency after the 2000 season.

“To me, I figure if they can’t work anything out with Alex by spring training, they’re going to trade him,” Griffey told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in a report in Sunday’s editions.

“And if I don’t sign anything by April, they’re going to look to trade me, because the one thing I don’t think they want is having to deal with the Randy Johnson situation all over again.”

After months of dealing with Johnson in a contract dispute, the Mariners traded their ace to Houston in July 1998. After the season, he signed a $52.4 million, four-year contract with Arizona.

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Scott Brosius knew the call would soon come. He got it Sunday in the Yankee Stadium clubhouse, an hour before the game against Boston.

Maury Brosius, who watched his son win the most valuable player award of the 1998 World Series, had died of colon cancer back home in McMinnville, Ore. He was 55.