Off-Field Advantages Make Up for Off Year

Despite Ken Griffey Jr.’s recent surge, you wouldn’t say getting traded to the Cincinnati Reds has been a tonic for his career or his new team.

Unless you’re Griffey.

“Do I regret doing it?” he told USA Today’s Chuck Johnson. “I got to go home and see my son play baseball. I got a chance to go watch him in his first football practice in pads. I get to fly home every now and then and see my daughter play basketball. All those things might not seem like much but for a person who travels as much as we do, that means a whole lot.”

But is he having fun?

“When I’m playing,” Griffey says. “That’s about the extent of it.”

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Add Junior: Once a happy, writers’ favorite, Griffey has turned inward.

“You can’t have the good and then when things get bad have everybody leave you alone,” said the Giants’ Eric Davis. “You can embrace it or you can run from it. If you run from it, it’s just going to get worse and worse. If you embrace it and tell them what’s going on, it just makes it easier for everybody.”

The Giants’ Barry Bonds said: “He [Griffey] is just very sensitive. He’s like my little brother. We’ve been together since we were kids when our dads were playing against each other. He’s a good man. But he really takes things to heart more than other people.”

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Trivia time: Who was the only player to win batting titles in three decades?

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He’s no dummy: Arizona Cardinal offensive tackle L.J. Shelton had one problem when he returned to practice last week after suffering minor injuries when his car was struck from the rear.

He couldn’t find his helmet.

When it was found, the Cardinal logos on the sides had been replaced by black-and-yellow emblems worn by crash-test dummies.

“I’m going to get them back,” Shelton said. “I’ve narrowed it down to about 60 guys.”

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Semi-Clean: In his new book, Florida State’s principle-wielding football coach, Bobby Bowden, said he doesn’t hire atheists, doesn’t allow beards and once fired an assistant for getting a divorce.

On the other hand, Seminole players--once derided by opponents as “Crimi-noles”--have had many brushes with the law or Bowden’s rules.

Bowden acknowledges he made a “colossal mistake,” disclosing the curfew violations of three players, including kicker Sebastian Janikowski, who was kicked off the team before the 2000 Sugar Bowl.

His mistake, Bowden says, wasn’t bringing in problem guys, but announcing their crime.

“Even the play-by-play TV broadcasters made it a centerpiece story just prior to kickoff,” Bowden wrote. “Some painted it as an issue of integrity--or lack of integrity--for our program.

“The players had broken a team rule, not a school policy or the law. I figured they [the media] would find out sooner or later, so why not be nice and tell them myself?

“Next time they’ll have to find out on their own.”

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Trivia answer: George Brett, who won in 1976, 1980 and, at the age of 37, in 1990.

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And finally: Baltimore Raven tight end Shannon Sharpe on new quarterback Elvis Grbac: “He can’t win. If he wins, what are they going to say? They won the Super Bowl championship last year. If you lose, they’ll say he messed it up.”