Last year, when the Cincinnati Reds came to New York for a visit for the first time in thirty years, Ken Griffey Jr. was decidedly unenthusiastic, commenting to the press, “My favorite Yankee Stadium memory?  It’s leaving Yankee Stadium.”

He was subsequently dubbed, “Grumpy Griffey” by the New York Post. (They’re very clever over there.)

I prefer to call him “The Kid.”

It all began over twenty years ago when Griffey Sr. was a utility player for the Yanks.  A group of fourteen Bombers’ kids were playing in the corridor, and apparently Billy Martin, not a fan of Pop Griffey, decided to giver the Brothers Griffey a bit of the old Martin guff.

In a Times article from 1991, Griffey was quoted as saying, “Martin told one of his coaches to go up to my dad.  He wanted us out of there. Just me and my brother, nobody else. Not Lou Piniella’s kid. Not Graig Nettles’s kid. Not Don Baylor’s kid.”

Clearly, it was an event that had a strong impact on Griffey, and he famously vowed never to play for the Bombers.

Griffey goes on, “I hold it against them and I will always play harder against the Yankees.  It’ll never change. Every time we play these guys, I try a little extra.”

When you’re twenty-two, it’s easy to say this or that will never change.  Ultimately, only time will tell. Based on his statement from last year, his grudge remains intact.  “I never forget,” he comments.  “That’s just who I am.”

This says something about Griffey, though it’s hard to know exactly what.  His dogged refusal to let go of something that happened so many years ago might seem a bit stubborn, almost petty.   Yet, Griffey Jr. is one of the most universally liked players in baseball. He has integrity, class, and has made it consistently and abundantly clear that he values family above all other things. Moreover, he is one of the few power hitters in this era of performance enhancing drugs whose name will almost certainly never be tainted by an accusation of steroid use.

If it seems strange that more than twenty years after getting kicked out of the Yankees clubhouse by a manager who has long since been dead, Griffey Jr. still uses this event as a source of motivation, bear in mind that the man has over 600 career home runs. Far be it for us to judge.

True to his word, The Kid. tried “a little extra” last night in the Mariners outing against the Yankees.  He hit his 621^st career home run, putting the punctuation mark on a Hall of Fame career spent torturing the team he so resents. It was a two-out, sixth-inning, first-pitch fastball from Pettitte.  Griffey Jr. knocked it over the right field wall with a swing that’s just as graceful as it ever was.

One of my readers, The Thunderphobe, pointed out that long before any current member of the Yankees team, including coaches (leaving aside special advisor Mr. October) had set foot in the House That Ruth Built, The Kid was there, running around those hallowed halls with dear old dad.  That he was, in fact, being ejected from those hallowed halls by a surly Billy Martin before some of the younger Bombers, such as Joba and Hughes, were even born.

For better or for worse, the Yankees have loomed large in Griffey Jr.’s imagination for the greater part of his career, for the greater part of his life, it would appear.  If this does in fact turn out to be The Kid’s last season, it’s fitting, poetic almost, that his swan song should come in the form of a solo home run in The House That George Built.