Just how good was Ken Griffey, Part one

There was a time when the name Griffey meant just one person – Ken Griffey. There was no need back then for a “Senior” to be tacked onto his surname. Overshadowed by his own son, who accomplished far more than his dad die – heck, Junior accomplished more than almost everyone in the annals of the game – Griffey was, nevertheless, a very, very good major leaguer.

In fact, when I interviewed Sparky Anderson in 1992 the phenom that Junior was had been coming off a .327 season and was in the midst of his second straight 100 RBI year (of his eventual eight 100+ RBI seasons) and his third All Star selection. Anderson told me that if Junior ended up being as good as his father was for his entire career, he would truly be a big star.

I wondered if perhaps Anderson was engaging in hyperbole or if he was merely telling me what he thought I wanted to hear after he had been told that I was a high school classmate and baseball teammate of Griffey, Sr. Then again, having managed Griffey on Cincinnati’s great teams of the Big Red Machine era, Anderson was well aware of what Griffey had accomplished.

Digression: Stan Musial was, like the Griffeys, a product a Donora, Pennsylvania – a tough steel town not far from Pittsburgh. Musial was born, in fact, on the same day of the year as Junior. In Musial and Junior, Donora produced “The Man” and “The Kid” – one a current and the other a future first-ballot Hall of Famer.

Incidentally, as a trivia side note, longtime Donora doctor William Rongaus is said to have delivered both Musial and Griffey, Sr. All told, the three accounted for 1,257 home runs in the major leagues. You can add two more if you include Steve Filipowicz, a fourth Denoran, who lasted just 57 games at the big league level.

Baseball analyst Bill James saw an Achilles-like phenomenon in the situation, stating: “My son is a ballplayer; I’m thinking of taking him to be washed in the waters of Donora.” From 1941 through 2010, a period of nearly 70 years, there were only 10 seasons in which a Donora-born player was not in the big leagues.

On August 13, 1951 Musial – who had earned the nickname “The Donora Greyhound” as a speedy youth – hit his 200th career home run. This one was an inside-the-park shot and he circled the bases in a reported time of just 14.6 seconds. An account from The Sporting News stated Evar Swanson, from a minor league team in Columbus of the American Association, once sailed around the bases in an exhibition race in 13.3 seconds, what was thought to be a record for the quickest round tripper ever.

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During the 1952 season, someone apparently kept track of the fastest times for runners going down the line from home to first because The Sporting News later reported the five quickest major leaguers.  Mickey Mantle, batting righty no doubt, turned in the best time at 3.1 blistering seconds. Bobby Thomson of the “Shot Heard Round the World” fame came in at 3.3 seconds. Meanwhile, three men tied with the next best time of 3.4 seconds – Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, and Musial.

Enough digression. Griffey, a track star at Donora High (on top of being a standout in basketball, football, and baseball), was easily one of the fastest major leaguers during his prime, probably faster than Musial. And Griffey used his speed wisely, legging out many an infield hit. In 1976, when Griffey finished eighth in MVP voting, he compiled 37 infield hits. That season he hit .336, a personal high and an average nearly good enough to win a batting title– he lost out on the last day of the season by three points to Bill Madlock. Previously, Griffey had burst onto the scene with an abbreviated rookie season in which he hit a lusty .384. Counting partial seasons, Griffey topped the .300 mark a total of ten times.

Back to 1976. Take away his 37 infield hits, and his batting average plummets precipitously to .270. Of course that’s not a fair method to determine how important his speed was to him because, for example, some of those hits came on bunts, so taking away all of his hits assumes he would have made outs had he always swung away and never bunted. Plus, even slow players occasionally beat out an infield hit. Still, even if we assume that without his speed Griffey would have made, say, just a dozen more outs over his 562 at bats, he would have wound up hitting .315. Take away 15 hits which may have resulted from his sheer speed, and his average drops 27 points to .309.

In any case it’s clear that speed allows a player such as the Mercury-swift Griffey to beat out more hits than the average player, and those hits boost batting averages—in his case, in a lofty way.

More on Griffey and his impressive body of work in Part Two, later this week.