The Seattle Mariners unveiled a Ken Griffey, Jr. statue at Safeco Field to honor the Hall of Famer.
“It’s nice. It looks like me. Good extension, eyesight in the right spot, looking up, not high, but I’m looking at that like it’s 450-ish,” Ken Griffey, Jr. said at the unveiling of a new statue at Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners. The statue catches Griffey at the conclusion of his picture-perfect swing, with the left hand high across his chest and the right hand holding the handle of the bat as it trails behind him. It does look like his eyes are watching a 450-foot home run land deep in the right field seats, possibly in the upper deck at Safeco Field or off the Hit It Here Café sign.
The Griffey statue is the new attraction at Safeco Field, unveiled on the team’s off day on Thursday. It sits in front of the Home Plate Entrance at the corner of Edgar Martinez Drive and Dave Niehaus Way. Team president Kevin Mather said at the unveiling,
"“Since this ballpark opened in 1999, we’ve been waiting to complete the look at our front door, the finishing touch. Today, we finally have the perfect piece that will welcome fans for generations to come.”"
When Safeco Field opened in July during the 1999 season, it was 10 years since Griffey burst upon the scene in Seattle as a fresh-faced rookie with a big smile on his face. He was the team’s first superstar, a player known across the country who was on the cover of magazines and video games and in an episode of The Simpsons. Two days before Safeco Field opened, Griffey was an AL All-Star for the 10th straight year and had won the Home Run Derby for the second year in a row.
It was also just four years after Seattle had almost lost the Mariners. In 1992, owner Jeff Smulyan sold the team to a group led by Hiroshi Yamauchi. The new ownership group was looking for a publicly-funded stadium to replace the Kingdome. Attendance was down and the team had never come close to making the playoffs, although they were just two games out of first when the strike stopped the 1994 season in August (two games out with a 49-63 record).
That 1994 season was a bizarre one in its own right for the Mariners. Shortly after the 1994 All-Star Game, the Mariners were warming up before a game when they heard a crash around them. It was one of the 26-pound tiles from the Kingdome’s roof falling into the seats. More than one tile fell from the roof and the Kingdome could no longer be used for baseball. The Mariners went on a 20-game, 21-day road trip during which they traveled 10,425 miles. It would have gone on longer if not for the strike on August 12 that ended the season.
Amid the rumors of relocation in 1995, the Mariners started slowly and fell to 13 games behind the California Angels on August 2. Griffey was injured in a collision with the outfield wall in late May. Starting with a win over the Angels on August 3, the Mariners went on a roll. Griffey returned on the 15th and went on to hit .255/.374/.466 over the remainder of the season. That was above league average, but not close to what he had done the previous five seasons.
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The main driver of the Mariners offense during their great stretch in 1995 was Edgar Martinez. From August 3 on, while the Mariners went 35-19 and came from 13 games back to beat the Angels in a one-game playoff, Edgar hit .357/.486/.643 with 51 runs, 12 homers, and 45 RBI in 56 games. On the mound, Randy Johnson was 10-0 with a 1.45 ERA and 99 strikeouts in 74 2/3 innings during this stretch, including nine innings of one-run ball in the playoff-clinching tie-breaker game on October 2.
In the middle of this dramatic comeback, there was an election on September 19 in which residents of King County voted on a one-percentage-point sales tax increase to fund a replacement stadium for the Kingdome. The vote narrowly lost and the owners set an October 30 deadline for the state to come up with a plan to finance a new stadium.
After the Mariners beat the Angels in the one-game tie-breaker at the end of the season, they played a dramatic American League Division Series against the New York Yankees. They lost the first two games in New York, then came back to tie the series with two wins in Seattle. Game Five was in Seattle and it went 11 innings
Randy Johnson had started and won Game Three just two days earlier, throwing 117 pitches in the process. He came into Game Five on one day’s rest in the top of the ninth and pitched three innings, throwing another 44 pitches. With the Mariners down 5-4 in the bottom of the 11th, Joey Cora led off with a bunt single. Griffey singled up the middle and Cora moved to third. Then Edgar Martinez stepped up and hit what has been known ever since as “The Double”. It was a line shot down the left field line that scored Cora to tie it and Griffey all the way from first to win it. There’s not a more memorable moment in Seattle Mariners history.
The comeback that season and winning that series against the Yankees saved baseball in Seattle. Soon after Edgar’s big hit, the Washington State Legislature held a special session and approved funding for the park that would be Safeco Field. Griffey was a big part of the Mariners winning that series. He hit .391/.444/1.043 with five homers, but Edgar was even better, hitting .571/.667/1.000 and leading the team with 10 RBI. Randy Johnson was also brilliant on the mound, winning two of the three games.
With the funding secured, the Mariners got their new ballpark and would stay in Seattle. Safeco Field was a baseball Valhalla for Seattle fans. It replaced the Kingdome, which was an old, gray hamburger-shaped, multi-purpose domed stadium that had hosted the Mariners and Seahawks since 1977. Safeco had a retractable roof that could be opened on the beautiful sunshine-filled summer days in Seattle or closed during the drab, gray days of April. It’s been called “The House That Griffey Built” and now has the Griffey statue right out front.
Strike a pose, Kid. pic.twitter.com/7Ov5b2SYM3
— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) April 14, 2017
Along with the statue unveiling on Thursday, the Mariners are giving out 45,000 replica Griffey statues at Friday’s game. Twenty-four lucky fans will receive replica statues that have been autographed by Griffey. For a generation of Mariners fan, getting that Griffey statue will be an incredible moment.
Looking back, it’s ironic that Griffey himself played just one half-season in “The House That Griffey Built” before essentially forcing the Mariners to trade him to his hometown team in Cincinnati that offseason. He returned for two seasons at Safeco at the end of his career, but he was a shadow of his former self by that point. Overall, he played 116 of his 2,671 career games at Safeco Field and hit just 29 of his 630 career home runs there.
That’s not to say he doesn’t deserve a statue. He put Seattle baseball on the map and was the first player to go into the Hall of Fame as a Mariner. His statue joins the statue of longtime Mariners broadcaster Dave Niehaus, whose likeness is a fixture in the right-center-field concourse. Both statues were created by artist Lou Cella.
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But perhaps there’s another Mariner who is worthy of a statue. Edgar Martinez was the best hitter on the 1995 Mariners team that saved baseball in Seattle. He was the best during the season, during the team’s torrid comeback from 13 games out to win the division, and during the five-game playoff series against the Yankees. Edgar was a Mariner his entire career and is back with the team as their hitting coach. Ken Griffey, Jr. may have scored the winning run in Game Five, but it was Edgar who hit “The Double.” Give that man a statue.