so long, kid

the best baseball player i've ever seen. it isn't even close.

“on a day like this, it should rain in seattle.”
~ milton bradley

i’ve been thinking a lot lately about the off-season rant i went on when the mets started piling up on backup catchers and the mariners were out trying bring the greatest baseball player of our lifetimes the championship ring he so desperately deserved. i still say the moment the mariners hoisted ken griffey jr. on their shoulders and gave him a hero’s exit off the field after the final game of the season was the highlight of the year, and now, i’m so sorry for the way this all ended for the kid.

the mariners are a disaster, and the griffey we know and love seemed to have already retired. ever since possibly-asleep-in-the-clubhouse-gate, seattle columnists have been calling for the kid’s retirement or (it hurts to type this) release. i’ve been reading those seattle sports sections regularly, and it’s been breaking my heart. if there’s one thing worse than a baseball world without griffey, it’s a baseball world in which griffey can’t compete.

i wish he could have signed off in grand fashion. one more beautiful home-run swing. one more carried-off-the-field moment. a sign-off not overshadowed by the most egregious blown call in decades. today, we should only be talking about junior.

630 steroid-free home runs. single-handedly brought baseball back in seattle. single-handedly made me and everyone else wear our baseball hats backwards. no-doubt-about-it-first-ballot-hall-of-fame career.

one more time for the kid

then again, maybe it’s a tiny bit better this way. griffey didn’t have that grand sendoff i wished for him, so when the dust from the imperfect game clears, we won’t be talking about the kid’s last at-bat, an undistinguished groundout. we’ll hopefully skip all that and move right on to celebrating the backwards hat, the pure (in so many senses of the word) swing, the i-love-this-game smile.

it’s very weird to say that milton bradley said it best, but he did: “on a day like this, it should rain in seattle.”

griffey, thank you. for playing this game with your whole heart, for capturing the attention of an entire generation of kids (and adults, i’d wager), for sacrificing the artificial enhancements that could have brought you back from injuries faster and stronger, for choosing integrity when so many of your peers (who don’t deserve to be called your peers) did not.

this game will not be the same without you.

a reading from the book of armaments …

today, at the end of church, the cantor said, “and now let us all celebrate by singing hymn #666, ‘change our hearts’ – hymn # 6-6-6.”

is that bad?

won’t forget

when it happened, i wrote about it. unfortunately, the hc newspaper editors gave the opinion piece the title of a 98 degrees song. but it still fits what i feel.

but the best expression about what happened came from someone who wrote a science fiction song in 1976 that happened to come true. this recording from the concert for new york city makes me cry every time. the words are sadly prophetic, but as billy says, “unlike the end of this song, we ain’t going anywhere.”

i’ve seen the lights go out on broadway
i saw the empire state laid low
and life went on beyond the palisades
they all bought cadillacs
and left there long ago

we held a concert out in brooklyn
to watch the island bridges blow
they turned our power down
and drove us underground
but we went right on with the show

i’ve seen the lights go out on broadway
i saw the ruins at my feet
you know we almost didn’t notice it
we’d see it all the time on 42nd street

they burned the churches up in harlem
like in that spanish civil war
the flames were everywhere
but no one really cared
it always burned up there before

i’ve seen the lights go down on broadway
i watched the mighty skyline fall
the boats were waiting at the battery
the union went on strike
they never sailed at all

they sent a carrier out from norfolk
and picked the yankees up for free
they said that queens could stay
they blew the bronx away
and sank manhattan out at sea

you know those lights were bright on broadway
but that was so many years ago
before we all lived here in florida
before the mafia took over mexico
there are not many who remember
they say a handful still survive
to tell the world about
the way the lights went out
and keep the memory alive

~ billy joel

i don’t really think i’m the kind of person who would write in a livejournal when things aren’t going well about the things that aren’t going well. i think i’m more comfortable sharing my stupid stories like constantly accidentally running into the person whose car i accidentally jumped into than writing about things like getting sick or missing school and such, which might explain the lack of updating in the past week.