PEORIA, Ariz. ? Did the Stew pick up some Hall of Fame-bound competition in the final days of its spring swing? Unless Ken Griffey Jr. was just doing some double-agent work for his hometown Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday, it looks like we might have.
At the same time as yours truly� was snapping some photos of pitchers and catchers from the Seattle Mariners before a night game against Milwaukee, it looked as if The Kid was doing the same with his smartphone on the opposite�side of the practice area.
Hey, that's one way to put the "special" in "special consultant," Junior!
Griffey's diligent documentary work came just after his arrival in the Mariners camp for the first time this spring. It was his first time returning to the team since he suddenly bolted into retirement last June and since he didn't hold a press conference back then, Wednesday's media pow-wow served as his first official opportunity to explain why he left Seattle without, uh, telling anyone.
"I gave myself a little bit of a head start," Griffey told Seattle beat writers. "A lot of people that are friends of mine would have tried to talk me out of it. I just felt it was best for me and the organization to retire. No fault of its own. Things happen. I'm not upset. I think people thought I was upset. That wasn't the case. I just felt it was more important for me to retire ... instead of being a distraction."
The full transcript of Griffey's chat is here, but the gist is this: He's no longer talking with former manager Don Wakamatsu, he knows the exact moment he knew he was becoming a distraction but won't tell us (though it has to be NapGate, right?), and he recently went to the Phillipines on a goodwill baseball trip and enjoyed himself.
As for his new role with the team, Griffey said he'll follow the lead of fellow special consultant Jay Buhner and that "it's just a matter of what [the Mariners] need me to do."
On Wednesday, that need appeared to be either taking pictures of his trip for posterity or gathering content for the team's website, while learning a new definition for the word "hit." Welcome to the machine, Ken.
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