In Seattle, In Seattle

"Your Boy Just Hit 600".

And so a text told me about an event that should have happened in 2004. Ken Griffey Junior hit his 600th career home run tonight in Miami, Fla. If you don't know why this is important to me, then you probably didn't know me between 1992 and 2000.

During those years, I followed every single move that Junior made. I collected his baseball cards, I bought Seattle Mariners hats (I even had the turquoise fitted one and the one with the silver bill) and I went to at least one Mariners-Twins game a year. I even kept a scrapbook with clippings from USA Today and the Star Tribune. But when Griffey went to Seattle in 2000, I kind of lost touch. National League ball doesn't interest me as much as AL, so I kept on following Seattle(these were really bad, Scott Stahoviak and Pat Meares years for the Twins) even though Griffey had left.

As it turned out, I wasn't missing much. Griffey spent a huge chunk of time on the DL and his prodigious stats fell off a bit. Most predicted that he would break Aaron's record, with all the injuries he had, it looked like a miracle to get to 500. But he did, and around 2004, Griffey started putting up really solid numbers again. And tonight, he finally got to 600.

It was a happy moment for me personally. Griffey always seemed like a good player to follow(family man, played the right way, had one of the best lines in the best Simpsons episode ever) and I guess that this was sort of a vindication for picking the good guy when all my friends liked players like Albert Belle (nutcase) or Jeff Bagwell (looked like he was sitting on the toilet when he batted, was washed up by 33).

Congrats, Junior.

P.S.-The Twins are sucking hardcore right now, so it pleasures me to write something positive about baseball.