Ken Griffey's Return Worth The Wait

And yet, a twinkle of hope never went out. The lone event that lightened Griffey’s burden was an interleague return to Seattle in 2007. When he pledged to retire as a Mariner, I fancied the idea that a one-year contract was in the future—a consolation prize, little more than gestural symbolism, but better than nothing.

After all, my life was not a Hallmark movie, nor a child’s book complete with the happiest of endings. What more could I hope for?

I knew some things are beyond the reaches of fate. But two weeks ago, something broke that mold.

Griffey, a free agent for the first time in his life, signed with the Mariners.

The birth of my first child will have a tough time replicating the joy that overcame me when I heard the news. I don’t know if I’ll ever fully understand it. I don’t know how something this unreal, this otherworldly, this patently unfathomable, could have come about.

I know I’m sentimental. Sport evokes these swings in emotion that would make Shakespeare pale in awe. It’s become a shtick for me to bemoan, to aggrandize and to inject more passion into the sporting world than necessary. In the end, these are men who throw leathery orbs around a field of grass. Their movements are inconsequential, and there’s no reason for the idolization that comes about with each passing generation.

Or so you say. See, that inconsequential means nothing to me. Your arguments fall on deaf ears, for I am too busy re-watching Griffey’s 1995 run on my iTunes, reliving the instant when I became a sports fan.

Now here I am, attending school in Houston, a young adult looking back through the images of my childhood. But if you try to find me on April 14, I’ll be at the Mariners’ home opener, looking down from the stands at the image of my childhood.

During the telecast of that fateful Game 5, announcer Brent Musberger said, “Ken Griffey Jr. is fulfilling his destiny.” Musberger may have been 14 years early, but he was right—Griffey’s destiny has come true.

And my childhood, unlike so much else that goes awry in the world, has become complete.

And sometimes, that’s life.

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