erik lundegaard

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Sunday October 04, 2009

Straight Line to the Hall of Fame

It's the last day of the regular season, and possibly the last day we'll see Ken Griffey, Jr. playing Major League baseball, but just check out this photo, taken, I believe, Tuesday night, when Junior, who's 39, and an old 39, hit his 17th homerun of the season and 628th of his career:

It would be hard to draw a straighter line than the one you get following the angle of his head to his arms to his bat. It's beautiful.

Junior's put up amazing stats in his career—particularly if, as seems likely, he's one of the few guys who didn't take steroids all this time. Steroids help you heal faster and Junior's been nothing but injured this decade. Even so, he has 630 career homeruns, fifth all-time, after Mays, Ruth, Aaron and Bonds*, so really fourth all-time. He's 16th in RBIs (14th). He's got 10 Gold Gloves—all with Seattle. But it's more than the numbers. Junior is just beautiful to watch. As an old man I'm gonna be the guy going, “Yeah yeah yeah. But you should've seen him play.”

EXTRA: Via MLB's site, here's the 630th, and possibly last, homerun of his career.

Posted at 08:52 AM on Sunday October 04, 2009 in category Baseball