By DAN TOMASINO
May 12, 2008
Ken Griffey Jr.'s lips briefly curled into his familiar boyish smile while he gripped his black Louisville Slugger and chatted with teammates behind the batting cage at Shea Stadium.
It's not easy for the Reds' 38-year-old right fielder to smile these days. He attended a wake for his best friend, Frank King, on Thursday and will return to Cincinnati tomorrow for the funeral. King and Griffey were close from age 11 until King lost his battle with cancer a week ago.
When Griffey speaks of the loss of King, it sounds as though he has lost part of himself.
"He was always there to help me with everything," Griffey said. "I'll need 10 friends to fill his place. It's been tough."
Answering endless questions about his approach of the 600-home-run milestone is not what Griffey, who is not in love with the media anyway, wants to do while grieving. But behind every response was the innocence of a man who understands he's playing a kid's game for a living.
"You guys think about [600 home runs] a lot more than I do," said Griffey, who remained at 597 homers – 199 with the Reds -- after failing to hit one in the weekend series at Shea.
His next home run will make him the fourth player to hit 200 home runs with one team and 300 with another (he hit 398 with Seattle). Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro and Jimmie Foxx are the other three. Five players (Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays and Sammy Sosa) have hit 600 in their career.
With two prestigious milestones in sight, Griffey reiterated his stance that home runs only are special when they come at big moments and that little things are just as significant. When you're a kid playing in the back yard, he said, you fantasize about hitting a home run to win the World Series, not to reach a numerical plateau.
"I have to think about the [game] situation," Griffey said. "Moving guys over; guy on third, getting him in. That's basically what baseball is about.
"I don't worry about other people and their opinions. It's the 24 other guys in this locker room that you have to worry about. And, yeah, I'm gonna get booed if I lay a bunt down."
