The cherry and strawberry seasons have passed; the apples are reddening. Only a few games remain. A Pit Spitter lays down a bunt, and the runner on third crashes in: a perfect suicide squeeze.
— “Snap, Go, Fling,” for Hobart
Ken Griffey
Dispatch #3: The sense of an ending
Who tells the future Hall of Famer that his time is up? Is it up to the future Hall of Famer to know it himself? That’s what leads, of course, to potentially uncomfortable situations like this one. But maybe there isn’t another way. Maybe that fire which made a player like Ichiro as good as he for so long was is the same heat which prevents such individuals from giving up the fight until they’re forced to do so.
— “Dispatch #3: The sense of an ending,” for Sinkhole magazine
Ken Griffey, Jr., Greatness, and the Way Things Were
If you wanted to affirm a belief in heaven, Griffey’s swing was all the evidence you needed. The effortless motion’s provenance was clear. It was archetypal, a natural marriage of grace and power, something rare and intoxicating. We all just wanted to watch him hit.
— “Ken Griffey, Jr., Greatness, and the Way Things Were,” for The Cauldron
