The Legend of Ken Griffey Jr.: Ranking Top Plays, Moments That Defined 'The Kid'

You can get a good sense of why Ken Griffey Jr. was a near-unanimous selection for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2016 just from looking at his 630 career home runs and countless accolades.

And yet, focusing only on those things doesn't quite do him justice.

Griffey's legend has as much to do with specific moments and plays that made him a mythic figure in the hearts and minds of countless fans of Major League Baseball. At any given moment, "The Kid" could drop jaws with his bat, his glove or his legs.

Accordingly, we've rounded up a dozen of Griffey's best highlights and ranked them based on their general memorability. This involved jumping back and forth on the timeline of his 22 years in the majors from 1989 to 2010. While that may get confusing, we promise it won't be boring.

Let's take it away.

12. Making History in His Return to the Mariners

Date: April 6, 2009

Even up to the end of his career, Griffey liked greeting new seasons with a literal bang.

Following an unspectacular campaign in 2008, he underwent knee surgery and turned 39 years old during the ensuing offseason. But rather than call it a career, he accepted an offer in February 2009 to go back to the team with which it all started 20 years earlier: the Seattle Mariners.

"He's coming home," then-Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik told reporters. "I can't begin to tell you how ecstatic we are. He is too."

Beyond having him around for old times' sake after a 101-loss season in '08, the Mariners' plan for Griffey involved using him as their everyday designated hitter. It paid off immediately on Opening Day of the '09 season, when he tied Frank Robinson's record with the eighth Opening Day home run of his career.

From there, Griffey went on to finish 2009 with a respectable .735 OPS and 19 homers. And while his next go-around with the Mariners in 2010 lasted just 33 games before he unceremoniously retired, he made sure to leave a final impression with a walk-off single for his last major league hit.

11. Hitting His 1st MLB Home Run in Style

Date: April 10, 1989

Given that he was a 29th-round pick by the Cincinnati Reds in 1969, it's fair to say Ken Griffey Sr. beat the odds to become a three-time All-Star and two-time World Series champion.

His son, on the other hand, was the subject of great expectations as soon as the Mariners chose him No. 1 overall in the 1987 draft. The thinking went that he had power potential well beyond that of his dad, who hit 152 home runs in 19 seasons. And Junior seemed fine with this.

"Dad impressed me once," he told Hank Hersch of Sports Illustrated in 1988. "That was when he hit a home run and was named MVP of the 1980 All-Star Game."

Sure enough, Junior hit 27 homers in only 129 minor league games before breaking camp with the Mariners as a 19-year-old in 1989. As if to prove how undaunted he was, he let loose with his soon-to-be storied swing at the first pitch he ever saw at the Kingdome, driving it over the left field wall for his first MLB home run.

By the end of the '89 season, Griffey's 16 home runs were the third-most ever by a teenager.

10. Notching Consecutive 56-Homer Seasons

Dates: September 27, 1997, and September 25, 1998

By the late 1990s, Griffey had firmly cemented himself as the most beloved star in Major League Baseball.

His home run-hitting prowess had a lot to do with that. After hitting a relatively modest 87 homers through his first four seasons in Seattle, Griffey reached and stayed on a whole 'nother level by walloping at least 40 home runs in six of the next seven seasons.

He topped out at 56 home runs not once, but twice in 1997 and 1998. The first of those efforts resulted in his finally taking home an AL MVP award. In the second, he was a key figure in the race for Roger Maris' single-season home run record before he fell behind Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

More than two decades later, these two seasons might not seem like as big of a deal as they were at the time. He didn't break any records, after all, and extreme home run seasons haven't exactly gone extinct.

Yet those two years did carve out a special place for Griffey that he still occupies: He's the only player in American League history to hit at least 56 homers in back-to-back seasons.

9. Becoming the 6th Player to Reach 600 Home Runs

Date: June 9, 2008

After Griffey ran his career home run total to 593 during an All-Star season in 2007, there wasn't a question of if he would hit his 600th home run in 2008.

The only questions were when and, given that he was in the final year of his contract for a fledgling Reds squad, for which team.

As it turned out, Griffey got No. 600 out of the way relatively early and in the same threads that he and his dad wore for 21 combined seasons. In the first inning of a tilt against the Florida Marlins at Dolphin Stadium in June, Junior knocked a fly ball to right field that made him the sixth member of the 600 home run club.

"I don't think I touched any of the bases," he told the Associated Press. "I sort of floated around."

The 600 home run club has gotten less exclusive in the years since 2008, but not to a point that it's been overrun. Only Jim Thome, Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols have joined, and no other active players are particularly close to getting into their company.

8. Celebrating Father's Day with No. 500

Date: June 20, 2004

When the Reds traded for Griffey and promptly extended his contract in February 2000, it marked the beginning of a happy homecoming that would hopefully last for years.

It didn't quite pan out that way. Griffey was on the wrong side of 30 by the time he began his tenure with the Reds, and it showed as his numbers slipped in 2000 and injuries beset him in subsequent seasons. Heck, the Reds even tried to trade him after the 2001 campaign.

Yet Griffey stuck with the Reds, and their continued partnership eventually yielded one of the most heartwarming moments in recent baseball history in June 2004. On Father's Day, with his dad in attendance at Busch Stadiium for a game against the St. Louis Cardinals, Griffey connected for his 500th home run.

Naturally, his immediate celebration was with his teammates. But as soon as he got the chance, he made his way to the stands to give pops a hug.

"Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would accomplish something like this," Junior told reporters. For his part, Senior quipped: "[It's] the easy way for him to get out of getting me something; that's all it is."

7. A Gold Glover Is Born

Date: April 26, 1990

As great as Griffey was as a rookie in 1989, it was really his 1990 season that solidified his status as the next big thing in Major League Baseball.

Jesse Barfield might have understood this before anyone else.

At the time, Barfield was an established star who was on his way to a 25-homer season for the New York Yankees. The reason he didn't end up with 26 home runs, however, is because a subsequently overjoyed Griffey went over the wall to take one away from him at Yankee Stadium in April.

"As I jumped, I thought, 'I got a chance,'" Griffey said of his leap and grab, according to E.M. Swift of Sports Illustrated. "That's the first one I've caught going over the wall, in practice or in a game."

By the end of the year, Griffey had made a big enough statement with his defense in center field to earn the first Gold Glove of his career. He went on to win nine more from 1992 through the final season of his main run with the Mariners, 1999.

6. To the Wall for the Famed 'Spider-Man' Catch

Date: May 25, 1991

Sans the help of modern metrics, it's a matter of opinion which of the many great catches Griffey made throughout his career is the best.

So, it's fine if you lean toward his robbery of Barfield in 1990. But for our money, Griffey committed an even more egregious heist the following year.

This one came at the expense of Ruben Sierra at the Kingdome in May 1991. Though Sierra wasn't bidding for a homer on the line drive that he hit deep to right-center field, he hit it hard enough that Griffey had little choice but to put himself in harm's way for the catch.

"I ran so far that I said, 'Well, if I hit the wall I'm gonna have to catch it anyway,'" he later said in a TV interview. "And I know I'm gonna hit it, so I might as well do it the best way I can. And that's use my feet and hands, other than my chest."

As painful as the grab—known as the "Spider-Man catch"—looked at the time, Griffey was fine. He went on to play in 154 games that year, winning both his second Gold Glove and his first Silver Slugger.

5. Going Back-to-Back with Dad

Date: September 14, 1990

As Griffey Jr. was rising through the minors in the late 1980s, the very possibility that he and Griffey Sr. could soon be playing in the majors at the same time was enough to get people excited.

Even better would be if they played on the same team, much less shared the same lineup. But with Senior committed to the Reds when Junior debuted in 1989, a few stars would have to align for that to happen.

Well, they did. Come August, Senior was granted free agency by the Reds after he first retired and then unretired and accepted his release. Evidently spotting their chance to influence the record books, the Mariners pounced and brought the elder Griffey aboard.

The two Griffeys suited up in Mariners uniforms for the first time August 31. A couple of weeks later, in September, they pulled off the never-before-done and probably never-will-be-done-again feat of hitting back-to-back home runs as a father-son duo.

As Hall of Famer Dave Winfield put it: "It's like keeping up with the Joneses, but now it's keeping up with Griffeys."

4. Off the Warehouse During the Home Run Derby

Date: July 12, 1993

Since the day Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in April 1992, the B&O Warehouse beyond the right field wall has loomed as an alluring target for left-handed sluggers.

Yet, to date, only one hitter has hit the warehouse on the fly in a non-batting practice event: Ken Griffey Jr.

To be fair, this "non-batting practice event" was, well, a batting practice event. It happened during the Home Run Derby in July 1993. And despite his 465-foot blast, Griffey eventually lost the title to Juan Gonzalez.

Nonetheless, his warehouse homer is arguably the granddaddy of all Home Run Derby highlights. It also heralded his future as an elite performer in the Derby, as his wins in 1994, 1998 and 1999 make him the only three-time champion in the event's history.

As Griffey said at the time, people will stop fussing about his warehouse homer when somebody replicates it in a game. But for now, time has proved him wise with regard to something else he said: "It just means it will be written about for a while."

3. Going Deep in 8 Straight Games

Dates: July 20-28, 1993

As memorable as it was, Griffey's clout to the warehouse in Baltimore during the Home Run Derby wasn't his greatest home run feat of the 1993 season.

On July 20, he hit his first home run after the All-Star break. He then homered again on July 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25. After an off day on which the Mariners returned home from a 12-game road trip, he homered again on July 27 and yet again on July 28.

That's eight straight games with a home run, making Griffey only the third player to ever do that (Don Mattingly and Dale Long are the others). Almost three decades later, that group still consists of only three players.

Griffey's home run binge ran his total for the '93 season to an even 30, which was already three more than his previous career high, from 1992. He was officially a home run hitter, even if he didn't want to admit it.

"I don't consider myself a home run hitter," he told Tim Kurkjian, then of Sports Illustrated. "But when I'm seeing the ball and hitting it hard, it will go out of the park."

2. Homering 5 Times in the ALDS

Dates: October 3-8, 1995

The 1995 season resulted in the first postseason berth and first postseason series victory in the history of the Mariners. It's not at all a stretch to say that neither would have happened without Griffey.

That year, the Mariners went into August 24 with an 11.5-game deficit in the American League West that existed in part because their star center fielder had to sit for nearly three months after breaking his wrist.

But starting on that date, Griffey made up for lost time by going off for eight home runs in the stretch run. That performance propelled the Mariners to a 25-11 record that was punctuated with a 9-1 win over the California Angels in a one-game playoff for the AL West title.

Even after all that, Griffey wasn't done. Opposite the Yankees in the American League Division Series, he homered five times in five games. In doing so, he became the first player since Reggie Jackson in the 1977 World Series to hit five homers in a playoff series.

But while his home runs helped the Mariners win the series, not one was as key as Griffey's crucial run home.

1. The Mad Dash to Save Baseball in Seattle

Date: October 8, 1995

Though the 1995 season was a happy occasion for the Mariners, it might have spelled doom for baseball in Seattle if things had happened differently.

Before '95, the Mariners had been a perennial also-ran since their inception in 1977. That typically meant low attendance at the Kingdome, which wasn't such a great place to watch a ballgame come the 1990s. 

Accordingly, the Mariners were angling for a new stadium in 1995. When the city rejected the idea in September, the club's ownership threatened to sell if an agreement for a new stadium wasn't in place by the end of October.

It was against this backdrop that the Mariners found themselves trailing the Yankees 5-4 in the 11th inning of Game 5 of the ALDS at the Kingdome. But after Joey Cora and Griffey singled, Edgar Martinez ripped a double that chased home Cora with the tying run and a hustling Griffey with the winning run.

The Mariners went on to lose the American League Championship Series to Cleveland, but Griffey's mad dash may have clinched the approval for a new stadium that came mere days later. Which is to say, Seattle fans can give him partial credit for T-Mobile Park and the continued presence of the Mariners in their city.

See Also: How '90s Icon Ken Griffey Jr. Transcended MLB to Become Pop Culture Legend

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference. Videos courtesy of Major League Baseball, via YouTube.