Ken Griffey Jr. & The Perfect Swing
As kids, we believed in heroes. We believed in the majesty of moments and the mythic figures who authored them. We watched our heroes and held our breath, waiting for what came next.
This is Chapter 8 of The Stories We Tell, a nostalgic lookback on friendship, growing up, and the hopes we have of becoming heroes. It’s The Wonder Years meets The Sandlot with sprinklings of Friday Night Lights.
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For a list of all chapters, please visit: Chapter List - The Stories We Tell.
“The cap turned backwards. The left-handed stance, the hip wiggle, and the bat twirling in the summer sun. The smile. The swing. The sound. I remember watching, full of awe and amazement, and knowing, for this moment at least, I had witnessed perfection.”
As kids, we believed in heroes. We believed in the majesty of moments and the mythic figures who authored them. Our heroes didn’t wear capes or masks. Our heroes played the games we loved wearing smiles in the sun, legends whose heroics created the memories we imitated on sandlots and playgrounds later.
Our heroes struck out and missed jump shots. They fumbled footballs and dropped passes. They won a lot, but sometimes they lost, too.
But we always believed in them.
So, we believed Barry’s next run might be the one where the defensive lineman whiffs at air and the linebacker spins himself in a circle chasing a ghost. The next juke might be the one we never forget. The next spin the one we mimic in our living rooms zigging and zagging between chairs and couches imagining our own moment of greatness.
We believed the next time Michael took flight he might soar towards the rim, tongue wagging with the ball palmed in his right hand. Then, while still hanging in mid-air—ascendant above mere mortals—he might move the ball from right to left and lay it off the glass. All of it before the sneakers we wished we wore landed back on the hardwood.
Believing in our heroes meant believing whatever happened before only set the stage for what could happen next.
The next swing, the next pass, the next shot, the next run—that could be the moment they ran faster, leapt farther, or jumped higher than ever before. Our heroes promised to take something we’d never seen before and turn it into a real-life memory we could never forget.
As kids, we watched our heroes and held our breath, waiting for that perfect moment we always believed could come next.
In July 1993, we believed in Ken Griffey Jr.
We watched and waited as he dug his cleats into the dirt inside the Baltimore Orioles’ Camden Yards. It was the 1993 Home Run Derby, and Ryan, B, Mike, and I stood close to the small television that took up most of the entertainment center that occupied much of the living room inside Ryan's house.
We watched as Griffey didn’t just stand in the batter’s box as much as he made it his own den of coolness. He wore his Mariners cap backwards, so we all turned our hats around. His ever-present smile was one from a kid in the sandlot—playful but full of mischief, carrying some unspoken trash talk, too.
He was a young man playing a kids’ game better than all the grown-ups, and he knew it.
The late afternoon sun burned toward home plate. Griffey stood tall, only a hint of bend in his knees, and rolled his wrists slowly, almost casually, while his bat swayed in rhythm behind his head. Everything, even the Franklin batting gloves dressing his hands, felt choreographed by God.
“Pop!”
The baseball exploded like all 4th of July fireworks in one burst when it shot off his bat.
Behind Camden Yards in right field is a large warehouse. Until Ken Griffey Jr. sent a baseball more than 460-feet into history, nobody had ever hit the warehouse with a baseball. To this day, nobody has done it since.
We watched, full of wonder, as a big, bold smile spread across Griffey’s face, and he stepped out from the batter’s box soaking up the cheers from the crowd under a bright, summer sun.
We stood in awe, witnesses to something never seen before. Holders, now, of a memory we could never forget.
I still remember being a kid and believing in heroes. Believing the next story they wrote would somehow be greater than what came before.
I remember believing in the majesty of moments and in Ken Griffey Jr.’s perfect swing.