“Junior was such a joy to watch play baseball as young player. He had this youthful exuberance, he exuded joy (he wore his hat backward, which drove the get-off-my-lawn grumps insane but was for people of his generation just about the coolest look ever), and there was that singular grace he played with — the way he ran after fly balls, the way he moved on the bases, the way he would turn on even the best fastballs, all of it just seemed impossibly lovely. That’s the word that comes to mind. Lovely. They used to say that Fred Astaire just standing against a building looked like a dancer. Junior standing outside waiting for the team bus looked like a ballplayer.”

-- Joe Posnanski, “No. 51: Ken Griffey Jr.,” in his hot-stove-league listing of the 100 greatest baseball players of all time. It's a nice piece, sad, too, but I'll be waiting to see the 50 players Posnanski thinks are better than Junior. I anticipate doing a lot of this: “No, no, no ... yes ... no” over the next few months.

My piece about Junior the month he retired.

Yep.