By Amelia Rayno

IT was a chilly October night at The Kingdome; the Seattle Mariners were clenched in a battle for the Division Series with the New York Yankees. The 10th inning had come and gone, and the score was locked at a New York 5-4. Young Ken Griffey Jr. was leading off first base—hovering along the edge of the diamond in front of 57,411 breathless fans who were praying for The Kid to save baseball in their city. Jack McDowell unloaded the pitch to Edgar Martinez, who belted it deep into left field. Joey Cora scored from third, while Griffey nimbly whipped around the bases, his signature cleats barely touching the grainy infield beneath him. Sliding home safely, Griffey was thrust into the open arms of the team, who began celebrating wildly. He was thrust into the opened arms of Seattle, for whom he rescued baseball from the threats of relocation. He was thrust into the opened arms of America, who embraced him as The Chosen One. The One who had all the tools. The One who had the spirit. The One to break the record.

In a sad tangle of irony, chronic hamstring problems, and general bad luck, however, Junior never could manage his destiny. Passed are the days in which kids wearing backwards caps mimicked his eminent stance in the park. The days in which his face was posted faithfully on every cereal box and his number engraved on every Nike sneaker. The days in which starry-eyed young fans would amuse themselves in their backyards to the tune of game memories, tossing a ball high up in the air only to scurry around to catch it over their shoulders. Just like The Kid.

No, the times have changed now. Ken Griffey Junior is still in baseball, and now the One with so much talent and potential and expectation stands on the cusp of his 600th home run. He flirts with a feat that has only been attained by six other individuals, with the most recent two buried in a fog of deceit and unmerited arrival. But The Kid is no longer tearing through the milestones, he is merely holding on to sport that denied him nearly as much as it gave him, reminding us again that in a game played with strict governed rules and regulations, there is no such thing as a promise in baseball.

It is too sad to think of what could have been, what was meant to be. Breaking into the league in 1989, Griffey quickly answered all of the highly touted anticipation, promptly hitting 16 home runs and stealing the same number of bases. But his rookie-of-the-year campaign was cut short when he slipped and fell in the shower, breaking a bone in his right hand. It was, perhaps, a foreshadowing of what was to come for the amiable slugger. After being traded to Cincinnati, his father’s team, at the end of ’99, Griffey was raked with one injury after another. A tear in his hamstring haunted Griffey for years, a mulish condition that left him in the perpetual state of rehabilitation and relapse, and cost him 260 games between the years of 2002 and 2004. As an unfortunate side effect, the consequence of his relentless injuries also stripped him of significant bat speed and power. His home run totals diminished, and with them, his place in the lime light. After surgery at the end of ’04, it looked as if the Old Junior was back, as he slammed 35 home runs and seemed to have a renewed energy. But in early September, a completely unrelated problem, a strained tendon in his left foot, put him back on the bench for the rest of the season. In 2006, Griffey suffered a knee injury, and in the off-season, broke his wrist while wrestling with his daughter. When he came back in 2007, he was diagnosed with Pleurisy, a condition that causes painful respiratory problems. His career had been ravaged, stolen from him by a heartrending fate, the numbers essential to his anticipated triumph lying dormant in all of the days Junior sat and waited on the bench. He waited for the injuries to pass, he waited for his health to return, and as he waited, years slipped cruelly by.

Now Griffey lingers, perhaps only days away from the quietly heralded accomplishment, amidst all of the new young promises. He is a rock in baseball—a steady force even as he grows older, persisting in the game that once crowned him the Natural. But he is no longer the centerpiece, the weight of the game no longer rests on his now broad, thickened shoulders. He has shifted to right field these days, unable to deliver those game-saving catches he once could. Ten-year old fans of baseball may not even know exactly who The Kid is, and what a remarkable but flickering past he encountered.

The time will come any day now, and Ken Griffey Jr. will launch yet another stitching-ripped ball out of some fence, at some park. Only this one will have the number 600 tagged to its pallid leather. When this moment happens, I can only hope the crowd will rise to recognize this incredible feat—not only on the field, but in the perseverance of a man. The epitome of what a baseball hero of old should be: an honest and untarnished reputation, Griffey’s career status deserves to be so much farther. It should have been him. Soon we will watch what may be the final big win of his long career. The Kid is sliding home…and America should be there to greet him with open arms, once again.