more evidence of Ken Griffey Jr's amazingness

The title may lead you to believe that I've written about Ken Griffey Jr., centerfielder extrodinaire, in a previous post.  I haven't, but if every time I've had my "first baseball chat" with someone over the past 15 years, if the conversation went longer than 10 minutes, I've gone into significant detail why the great pro sports tragedy over my lifetime has been the injuries that have derailed the career of the greatest baseball player ever.
(run-on sentence?  i'm back, baby!)

Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star and Sports Illustrated has one of the best blogs for baseball nerds on the internet.  In his latest column, he tackles an interesting subject: Zero Intentional Walks.  He finds the 5 seasons in history in which a player has 35 or more home runs without being intentionally walked, and he then analyzes why they had the statistically quirky season that they had.

The excerpt about my boy:

Alex Rodriguez (1998)Hit 42 homers without an intentional walk

Main batter who hit behind him: Ken Griffey

Comment: Here is the golden one. Who was SO scary a hitter that managers simply refused to walk A-Rod? And, yes, A-Rod was absurdly good in 1998. He had been absurdly good for three years. He was INCREDIBLE as a 20-year-old in 1996, leading the league in hitting, runs and doubles. He was plenty good as a 21-year-old in 1997. And in 1998, he hit .310/.360/.560 with 42 homers, 123 runs, 124 RBIs, 46 steals and a league-leading 213 hits. He led the league in WAR. Oh, everyone knew all about A-Rod. 

But, much like Mantle, much like Chipper, managers were not going to walk anybody to face Ken Griffey in the 1990s. Griffey mashed 56 homers in 1998, just like he had in 1997, and he did it with such style and grace … and I really do believe that plays a part in the managers’ mindsets. I mean, sure, 56 homers is 56 homers. But there was something about Griffey that seemed classical and legendary even before he WAS classical and legendary. He always felt like a player out of time — he was Buck O’Neil’s favorite player, the one who reminded him sometimes of Willie Mays, sometimes of Ted Williams, sometimes of Oscar Charleston, sometimes of Turkey Stearnes … 

In any case, managers intentionally walked A-Rod TWO TIMES in more than 2,000 plate appearances from 1996-1998. That was the power of the young Ken Griffey Jr.

awesome.