George Kenneth Griffey (born April 10, 1950) is an American former professional

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

player and coach. He played in

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

(MLB) as an

outfielder An outfielder is a person playing in one of the three defensive positions in baseball or softball, farthest from the batter. These defenders are the left fielder, the center fielder, and the right fielder. As an outfielder, their duty is to c ...

from through , most notably as a member of the Cincinnati Reds dynasty that won three division titles and two

World Series The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the World ...

championships between and . He also played for the

New York Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one of ...

Atlanta Braves The Atlanta Braves are an American professional baseball team based in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Braves compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) East division. The Braves were founded in Bos ...

and the

Seattle Mariners The Seattle Mariners are an American professional baseball team based in Seattle. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) West division. The team joined the American League as an expansion team ...

. A three-time All-Star, Griffey hit over .300 five times in his role as the table-setter for the powerful Cincinnati batting order that was known as the

Big Red Machine The Big Red Machine is a nickname for the Cincinnati Reds baseball team that dominated the National League from 1970 to 1979 and is widely recognized as being among the best in baseball history. The team won six National League West Division ti ...

for their dominance of the National League in the mid-1970s. In 2004, Griffey was inducted into the

Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame The Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum is an entity established by Major League Baseball's Cincinnati Reds franchise that pays homage to the team's past through displays, photographs and multimedia. It was instituted in 1958 to recognize th ...

. He is the father of Hall of Fame outfielder Ken Griffey Jr.

Early life

Griffey was raised by a single mother of six; his father Buddy—a high school teammate of another Hall of Fame outfielder, Stan Musial—left the family when Griffey was two years old. In a 2016 interview with

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). Th ...

, he said he did not see his father again until he was 16. His contemporaries in his hometown of Donora, Pennsylvania, did not think he would become a baseball star; they considered his best sport to be football, where he was a star wide receiver. Griffey himself considered football to be his best sport, followed by

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

, track, and only then baseball. At times, he would even compete in track meets during baseball games, rushing up the hill between Donora High School's baseball field and track between at-bats when it came time for his track events. However, as his high school graduation in 1969 neared, he discovered his girlfriend was pregnant. He would soon be chosen by the Reds in the 1969 draft, signed with the organization, and married his girlfriend. After his first minor-league season, Ken Jr. was born. Though Griffey left Donora in 1972 as his professional career advanced, he retains close ties to the town, making frequent visits to this day.

MLB career

Griffey made his MLB debut on August 25, 1973, with the Cincinnati Reds. That

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...

, Griffey played in only 25 games, but batted .384 with three homers. The following season, Griffey saw more playing time with 88 games. In

1975 It was also declared the ''International Women's Year'' by the United Nations and the European Architectural Heritage Year by the Council of Europe. Events January * January 1 - Watergate scandal (United States): John N. Mitchell, H. R. ...

, Griffey began to break out with a .305 batting average with four home runs and 46 RBIs. Griffey's best season came in 1976, when he came just short of winning the batting title behind

Bill Madlock Bill "Mad Dog" Madlock, Jr. (born January 12, 1951) is an American former professional baseball player and coach. He played in Major League Baseball as a third baseman from 1973 to 1987. Madlock is notable for being a four-time National League b ...

of the Chicago Cubs. Griffey chose to sit out the final day of the season to protect his batting title and it came back to haunt him as Madlock collected four hits that same day. Griffey entered the game late after hearing the news, and went 0-for-2. Many baseball purists were disappointed in Griffey (and perhaps more so in his manager,

Sparky Anderson George Lee "Sparky" Anderson (February 22, 1934 – November 4, 2010) was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) player, coach, and manager. He managed the National League's Cincinnati Reds to the 1975 and 1976 championships, then added a third ...

, for choosing to sit him out to gain an individual accolade). Griffey finished with a career high .336. He also finished eighth in the Most Valuable Player voting, and was named to ''

The Sporting News The ''Sporting News'' is a website and former magazine publication owned by Sporting News Holdings, which is a U.S.-based sports media company formed in December 2020 by a private investor consortium. It was originally established in 1886 as a pr ...

National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team ...

All-Star team. The Reds would win their second consecutive

title in 1976, but that year also marked the beginning of the end of their "

" phase. In the next four seasons, Griffey batted .318, .288, .316, and .294 with a total of 43 home runs. In Griffey's final season of his first stint with the Reds, the strike-shortened 1981 campaign, he batted .311 with only two home runs and 34 RBIs. After the 1981 season, Griffey (along with most of the remaining members of The Big Red Machine) was shipped out. Griffey was sent to the

, where he played from 1982 to 1986 as a utility player at first base and outfield. Injuries plagued Griffey, who hit .306 with 11 homers and 46 RBIs in his best season with the Yankees.

Tommy John Thomas Edward John Jr. (born May 22, 1943), nicknamed "The Bionic Man," is an American retired professional baseball pitcher who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for 26 seasons between 1963 and 1989. He played for the Cleveland Indians, ...

thought Griffey was a better player on Astroturf fields (like

Riverfront Stadium Riverfront Stadium, also known as Cinergy Field from 1996 to 2002, was a multi-purpose stadium in Cincinnati, Ohio, United States that was the home of the Cincinnati Reds of Major League Baseball from 1970 Major League Baseball season, 1970 throug ...

) than natural grass fields (like

Yankee Stadium Yankee Stadium is a baseball stadium located in the Bronx, New York City. It is the home field of the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball, and New York City FC of Major League Soccer. Opened in April 2009, the stadium replaced the orig ...

). In 1986, Griffey was shipped out mid-season to the

, where he played for only one full season. Griffey was traded back to Cincinnati in the middle of the 1988 season. He only spent the 1989 season with the Reds, and was then released in the middle of the Reds' championship 1990 season, signing with the

to conclude the season, joining his son Ken Jr. By becoming teammates with his son, they became the first father and son to be teammates in Major League Baseball. Griffey didn't play in the 1990 World Series, but he got a ring anyway. He spent only one more season with the Mariners, in 1991, before retiring after 19 seasons. In 1,997 games, Griffey compiled a lifetime

batting average Batting average is a statistic in cricket, baseball, and softball that measures the performance of batters. The development of the baseball statistic was influenced by the cricket statistic. Cricket In cricket, a player's batting average is ...

of .296, with 152

home run In baseball, a home run (abbreviated HR) is scored when the ball is hit in such a way that the batter is able to circle the bases and reach home plate safely in one play without any errors being committed by the defensive team. A home run i ...

s and 859 RBI. Griffey was also the Most Valuable Player of the 1980 All-Star Game. In 2014, Griffey published his memoir ''Big Red: Baseball, Fatherhood, and My Life in the Big Red Machine'', in which he discussed his childhood, formative years, professional career with both the Reds and the Yankees, and his relationships with friends and family.

The Griffeys

Joseph "Buddy" Griffey was a local athlete who was a teammate of Stan Musial on the Donora High School baseball team. He was the father of Ken Griffey Sr. and the grandfather of Ken Griffey Jr. The Griffeys (Ken Sr. and Ken Jr.) became one of the first father-and-son tandems to play on the same Major League Baseball team. They played their first game together for the

on August 31, 1990. On September 14, 1990, father and son hit back-to-back home runs in a game against the California Angels; this is the only time in major league history that this has happened. Griffey's younger son Craig played in the Mariners minor league system and appeared with his brother in the outfield during some

Cactus League Spring training is the preseason in Major League Baseball (MLB), a series of practices and exhibition games preceding the start of the regular season. Spring training allows new players to try out for roster and position spots, and gives establi ...

games. Craig Griffey retired from baseball after failing to make it past Triple-A, where he appeared in a handful of games with the

Tacoma Rainiers The Tacoma Rainiers are a Minor League Baseball team of the Pacific Coast League (PCL) and the Triple-A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners. They are located in Tacoma, Washington, and play their home games at Cheney Stadium, which opened in 1960 ...

. Griffey was inducted into the

in 2004, and now resides in

Winter Garden, Florida Winter Garden is a city west of Downtown Orlando in the western part of Orange County, Florida, United States. It is part of the Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford, Florida Metropolitan Statistical Area. Its population was 46,051 as of 2019. History ...

. In 2010, Griffey was hired as the

batting coach In baseball, a number of coaches assist in the smooth functioning of a team. They are assistants to the manager, who determines the starting lineup and batting order, decides how to substitute players during the game, and makes strategy decis ...

for the

Dayton Dragons The Dayton Dragons are a Minor League Baseball team of the Midwest League and the High-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. They are located in Dayton, Ohio, and play their home games at Day Air Ballpark, formerly known as Fifth Third Field. I ...

, the Reds' Single A minor league affiliate. In 2011, Griffey was named Manager of the Bakersfield Blaze, the Reds Single A affiliate of the California League. In 2014, Griffey was replaced by Pat Kelly. Griffey will remain in the organization as a roving instructor, focusing on hitting and bunting. His grandson Trey Griffey went undrafted in the

2017 NFL draft The 2017 NFL Draft was the 82nd annual meeting of National Football League (NFL) franchises to select newly eligible American football players. It was held in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art on April 27–29, returning to Philadelphia ...

, and spent time with the Indianapolis Colts,

Miami Dolphins The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football team based in the Miami metropolitan area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member team of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The team p ...

and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Personal life

Griffey is married to Valarie Griffey. He is the father of Hall of Fame outfielder Ken Griffey Jr. and former minor league player Craig Griffey. The family lived in Beckett Ridge, Ohio.Profile of a Cincinnati star
Retrieved 2018-05-16. He is also the grandfather of Trey Griffey, a former wide receiver in the NFL. He and his elder son Ken Jr. share the same birth town as

Baseball Hall of Famer The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a history museum and hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, operated by private interests. It serves as the central point of the history of baseball in the United States and displays baseball-re ...

Stan Musial. Ken Jr. also shares the same birthday as Musial, November 21.

References

External links