Griffey, Jr. Hits 600th Homer, Best Suicide Survivor Story Ever

Last night, Ken Griffey, Jr., a right fielder with the Cincinnati Reds and a former star center fielder with the Seattle Mariners hit his 600th home run in the Majors. Although it's not getting much fanfare, the feat puts him in rarefied company: Aaron, Mays and Ruth (Bonds and Sosa also have 600-plus homers but they were steroid cheaters and are dead to me). Griffey never cheated with performance enhancing drugs or corked bats a la Sosa.

What hasn't shown up at all in the press accounts of The Kid's career, which have been coming out the last few days, is that when he was 17 years old, he tried to kill himself and somehow cheated death.

Think I am joking. Here it is in this 1992 article in the Seattle Times.

"In January 1988, Junior swallowed 277 aspirin, by his own count, and wound up in intensive care in Providence Hospital in Mount Airy, Ohio. He thought about killing himself a couple of times, he said, 'with my father's gun or something.'

"'The aspirin thing was the only time I acted,' he said. 'It was such a dumb thing.'

"The story emerged during a recent wide-ranging interview, in which Griffey spoke about some of the ups and downs of his teenage years. He agreed to make it public in the hope it might dissuade someone else from seeing suicide as a solution.

"'Don't ever try to commit suicide,' Griffey said he wants to tell kids. 'I am living proof how stupid it is.'"

It's not clear to me when Junior will retire--maybe this year, maybe next--but he will surely go into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot five years after he does retire. His suicide attempt happened a year before he took his first AB in the Big Leagues, the result of some kind of panic and psychic pain he was in is my nearest guess. So, in a way, he'd already won a very large fight before he ever faced down a 98 MPH fastball. And, 20 years later he'll remain one of the biggest symbols against the empty solution of suicide.

For those of you who want to dork out on his career stats, go here. The amazing thing--and the sad thing--is that Junior has missed about three-and-one-half years of games due to various injuries over the years and he could just as easily have topped 700 homers. Somehow, I bet he doesn't care.

Here's one of his many classic Nike commercials from the 1990s. All the background scenes are in Seattle.