Baseballhead:
Halfway Homer Hype

Michael Cox

Why, hello and welcome to another installment of Baseballhead, as always in CinemaScope and Sensurround, and 100-percent annoying-computer-generated-sidekick-free.

We open with an auspicious feat which occurred Monday night in Anaheim, wherein one George Kenneth Griffey Jr. hit his 378th home run, exactly half the number required to set a new MLB record, at the age of 29-1/2.

Of course, the fact that The Man They Call Junior is our brightest hope for a new career home run king is no news this season, as it has been hyped from every corner. This is as it should be, although this sudden media interest comes almost a full year after our own Dave Paisley charted the likely flow of Griffey's future career. I suggest you check it out if you missed it the first time (and our numbers say you probably did).

There have also been various "sources" who feel Griffey's power will suffer in Seattle's new Safeco Field, where the air is unconditioned and heavier and the fences a touch longer, but that remains to be seen. Junior has hit very close to half his dingers on the road, a fact that puts the lie to the theory that the "cozy Kingdome" has been the real source of his magic.

In any case, it's still a long way to go for Griffey (even longer if he has his sights set on Sadaharu Oh's professional baseball mark of 868), and only his desire and ability to stay healthy will dictate his fate. If he gets there, it will be a marketing windfall for whichever team employs him (along the lines of Mac/Sosa times ten), and despite rumors to the contrary, the Mariners likely are keeping this firmly in mind.

For the record, Griffey still maintains that he doesn't try to hit home runs.

Item: With both leagues' All-Star starting lineups finalized, all that remains of the 1999 voting process is the sour grapes. First and foremost is the Juan Gonzalez spat, wherein our Juan firmly believes that in a fair voting process he would easily be elected to the AL's outfield. After all, he is the reigning MVP! Why, this could only mean that Cleveland must be cheating!

First of all, Gonzo should really avoid any thought that his MVP awards mean an automatic berth. In both 1996 and last year, many (and not only the statheads, for a change) believed that his awards were undeserved, hinging on the overrated statistic of RBI as well as the fact that the rightful heirs to the throne were saddled with an underachieving batch of teammates.

Good news, though -- Gonzo's Al Belle-like refusal to play if not elected may have Al Belle-like repercussions in future MVP voting, where there's actually a criteria for character.

And as for those accusations of some sort of "vote fixing," or even something that "looks a little fishy," as the normally-astute Rob Neyer put it recently, I've got one word: Ha.

There is nothing wrong with promoting the home team to its fans. I know Derek Zumsteg covered this yesterday, so I won't go on about it, but if there's anyone out there who hasn't heard the news that Richard Jacobs does the best job in the country of promoting his team, I don't know where they've been. The Tribe's organization bothered to care, other teams' didn't. Gonzalez should be blaming the Rangers for not leveraging their big BPiA crowds into votes for their favorite players.

Or, considering his low, low vote total, could it be that even the DFW faithful would rather vote for someone else?

The surprise of the balloting for me was Junior's vote total, which was higher than even that of the supposedly baseball-saving duo of Sosa and McGwire (individual totals, you fool, not added together...then again, even that would be closer than you'd imagine.). This only reinforces the fact that Ken Griffey Jr. is the most marketable player of our time.

What happened to Mac's supposed reach to the "casual fan"? He was even creamed in the balloting by Robbie Alomar, who's remembered more for expectoration than baseball skills.

Item: Unfortunately, NL manager Bruce Bochy will have a tougher time selecting a representative from the Pirates than he had anticipated. Jason Kendall required surgery to repair his broken and dislocated right ankle after suffering the most gruesome-looking injury since Robin Ventura slid into home in 1997. I haven't seen a replay or photo of the injury, and frankly, I don't care to. I'll take everyone's word that it was bad.

Item: Finally, I had the opportunity (along with about 40K others) to get a sneak preview of the new Safeco Field, which opens for actual baseball right after the All-Star break. The first impression is that it's Coors Field with a better eye for detail. Although Coors is truly magnificent, there are spaces in and around the concourses that look unfinished, and I found myself making sure muggers weren't lurking. Safeco maximizes all of its space wonderfully, with no useful space left empty and no space closed off that can be left open and airy.

There are acres upon acres of standing room in the outfield area, between the multi-leveled bar/terrace in right-center, the beer garden (with giant beer bottle, the obvious meeting place for the Strikethree.com staff), a center field staircase/terrace, and bullpen viewing area (we've got a pool going to guess the first opposing reliever to be baited into attacking a fan). Never has any ballpark afforded so much room to roam, and being a roamer myself, I love it.

For you sitters out there, the old saw "there isn't a bad seat in the house" isn't exactly true, with a few seats under overhangs or with a limited view of the outfield, but I dare you to sit in the $5 bleacher seats and tell me they're bad. The best part? I got hot and had to buy a soda to get cool. Doesn't sound like much, I know, but something that never happened in 22.5 years of the Kingdome.

Yes, I could've sat there for hours, watching nothing but the grounds crew, in the sun and gentle breeze. The only two things I could have done without: The first scoreboard TV monitor shot of a shirtless fat guy (at exactly 3:27 pm PST on July 5, 1999), and a performance of "The Star Spangled Banner," with way too many notes (some off-key) and at half the appropriate speed, by a "rising young talent" that I'll give 5-1 odds never surfaces anywhere else.

Maybe they were just getting the bad anthem rendition out of the way before an actual game.

Speaking of traditional numbers that are usually badly performed, I want to give kudos to the first entertaining version of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" since the Goo Goo Dolls jump-started their career with that FOX commercial a few years ago. In a world sadly overpopulated with little Pepsi girls and talking chihuahuas, a major corporation has managed to re-inject mirth to the ad break.

Two words, my friends: Budweiser Ferret.

about the author

After a mysterious run-in with what looked like a giant flying mold spore, Michael Cox is currently building a scale model of the Kingdome out of mashed potatoes. Send him Richard Dreyfuss' phone number at mc@strikethree.com.