Junior's still Junior: Charming, stubborn and unapologetic

"Ken Griffey Jr. came back to the Mariners' fold on Wednesday, and it was as if he had never left.

In his first public comments since he drove off into the sunset last June — 20 minutes of interrogation while sitting on a table in the press room, a solemn expression on his face most of that time — Griffey was by turns defiant, stubborn and unapologetic. He also had flashes of charm, humor and empathy.

In other words, the whole Griffey package, the complicated personality mix that has polarized Mariners fans for as long as I can remember.

If anyone thought nine months of reflection at home in Florida was going to lead him to an epiphany of contrition, then you don't know Griffey cheap griffeys.

In Griffey's mind, his abrupt departure had been forewarned, and doesn't warrant the apology that many fans are seeking.

"I mean, you want me to apologize for something I felt was right?" he said. "I felt it was right for me to leave. I'm not going to do it. It was not intended to hurt people. It was a decision I made that 15 years ago (to retire without a news conference). It wasn't like it was something you guys hadn't heard before. I mean, you guys have heard it from day one. There are some people that are upset, and there are some people that are not. I can't worry about it. I had to do what I thought was best for me."

Griffey had an explanation for why he "gave himself a bit of a head start" with his two-day, cross-country drive home, during which he was mostly incommunicado: He was afraid his friends might talk him out of retirement, and he was ready to quit — for the good, Griffey said, of the team.

He bristled a bit when asked why, if he left without hard feelings, as he said, he hadn't called manager Don Wakamatsu since his retirement.

"My phone rings," he said pointedly, implying that he was waiting for Wakamatsu to make the first overture.

And Griffey insisted that he did not regret his decision to return for the 2010 season, even though, in retrospect, his legacy would have been so much cleaner if he had retired after being carried off the field by teammates following the last game of 2009."

Bryan LaHair and Ian Stewart hit solo homers - a major outburst for the power-challenged Chicago Cubs - and Jeff Samardzija pitched into the eighth inning on Wednesday night for a 3-1 victory over the Cincinnati Reds.

The Cubs opened the rain-shortened series with only their third multihomer game of the season.Nike Free 3.0 They managed only nine home runs in April, the fewest in the majors. LaHair's shot off Bronson Arroyo (1-1) gave him six overall.

Samardzija (3-1) allowed three hits in 7 2-3 innings and contained Jay Bruce,tiger shoes holding the NL's player of the week to a harmless double. Carlos Marmol retired all three batters in the ninth for his second save in four chances, finishing off the combined three-hitter.

The Cubs have had only six save opportunities this season, underscoring their early struggles.

It was the second straight impressive start for Samardzija, who spent much of the last four seasons in the bullpen. In his last outing May 24, he struck out a career-high nine Cardinals in 6 2-3 innings of a win.

His fastball was still regularly hitting 96 mph in the eighth inning Wednesday,asics tiger shoes when he left after giving up a two-out walk. He threw 94 pitches, 60 of them strikes, and fanned seven.

Bruce went 10 for 21 last week with homers in four straight games. He needed a homer on Wednesday to tie the club record - Ted Kluszewski, Johnny Bench, Ken Griffey Jr. and Adam Dunn all homered in five straight.

Bruce flied out, grounded out and doubled.

LaHair led off the second inning with his sixth of the season off Arroyo,ken griffey shoes who gave up a club-record 46 homers last season when he pitched with mononucleosis and a sore lower back. He's been better so far, giving up only two homers in his four previous starts.

Manager Dusty Baker said before the game that Arroyo has been bothered by a sore lower back again.asics tiger Arroyo got an extra day to rest when Tuesday night's series opener was postponed because of rain.

Stewart homered in the fourth inning, matching the Cubs' season high for homers in one game. They put together three singles for another run in the sixth off Arroyo,cheap asics tiger the run scoring on Geovany Soto's hit. Arroyo gave up nine hits and a walk in six innings, throwing 99 pitches.

The Reds scored in the fourth when Brandon Phillips got caught in a rundown and extended it long enough to let Joey Votto cross home plate.

NOTES: The final game of the series will feature two starting pitchers celebrating their birthdays.cheap Nike Free 3.0 The Cubs plan to activate RHP Ryan Dempster from the 15-day DL, where he's been letting his strained right thigh heal. Dempster turns 35 on Thursday. Cincinnati will start Homer Bailey, who turns 26. ... Tuesday's rainout will likely be made up as part of a doubleheader on Saturday, Aug. 18 during the Cubs' only other visit. ... Arroyo picked Starlin Castro off second base in the first inning. ... Cubs 2B Blake DeWitt made a diving stop and flip to second base to start a slick double play in the fifth. ... The Reds signed former Cubs and A's reliever Michael Wuertz to a minor league deal. He's working out at the team's spring training complex in Arizona.

NBA All-Star Notebook -- Griffey Jr. Joins Stars On Hardcourt

Ken Griffey Jr. of the Seattle Mariners is scheduled to compete in two fun activities today at the NBA Jam Session, which is several buildings full of interactive games and side events for NBA fans at San Antonio's Cisneros Convention Center.

Griffey is to take on 13 other famous athletes and would-be athletes in the Fleer Halfcourt Hustle, a basketball skills contest, and then play in a celebrity basketball game. Among his competition is Kenny Lofton of the Cleveland Indians, Tyrone Wheatley of the New York Giants, Natrone Means of the San Diego Chargers, and rapper LL Cool J.

Gary Payton of the Seattle SuperSonics will be busy at practice for the Western Conference All-Star team at the same time today, but he said he had already played basketball with Griffey at MTV Rock N Jock games in the past.

"He was all right. He's got a little game," Payton said with a nod of approval.

Asked if he had ever played baseball with Griffey, Payton said no thanks.

"He came to my sport, (but) I ain't going and doing nothing like that," he said. "He'd make me look bad."

Demi a no-show

Many businesses in San Antonio offer specials linked to the All-Star weekend, which is projected to draw 100,000 fans to the city over the three days.

Uncle Hoppy's Bar-B-Cue, a restaurant across from The Alamo, had a sign outside that offered "A Free Meal If You're Over 7 Feet Tall." Then in smaller letters, it said, "Or If You're Demi Moore."

By yesterday, the manager said she had not given up a meal yet. But restaurant employee John DeShazo added wistfully, "We're still waiting for Demi."

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Moore and her husband Bruce Willis are in San Antonio for the opening of another of his Planet Hollywood restaurants this weekend.

Oldest rookie plays with pain

Arvydas Sabonis has gone to San Antonio to participate in the rookie game during All-Star weekend, despite the Portland Trail Blazers' appeal that he be removed from the roster.

The Oregonian reported that the Blazers asked the NBA to remove the 7-foot-3 Lithuanian from the West squad because of the persistent lower back pain.

Sabonis, the NBA's oldest rookie at 31, averages 23 minutes per game, usually playing only in the second and fourth quarters.

The Blazers limit his minutes because of his long history of injuries. Despite those limitations, he is the team's No. 3 scorer and No. 2 rebounder.

Notes

-- NBA Commissioner David Stern on Dennis Rodman's distress over not being selected to the All-Star Game: "I can assure Dennis that there's no conspiracy to keep him out of the Game."

-- Seahawk owner Ken Behring took a tour of the Alamodome, according to a San Antonio television report.

-- Gary Payton's prediction for the flow of tomorrow's game: "About the third quarter, it'll get serious. . . . Then we'll find out who's best, East or West." Payton is 1-1 in his All-Star appearances the past two years. But he said by tomorrow night, "it'll be 2-1."

-- "Media Availability Day" came with a subplot - call it "Blow Off The Media Day." Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley were off playing golf, either in Las Vegas or Phoenix - nobody could say for sure. Hakeem Olajuwon allegedly had airline trouble and Shaquille O'Neal simply had enough. After 15 minutes of questions and answers, he turned to a reporter, asked what time it was, shrugged, got up and walked out.

Information from Associated Press is included in this report.

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Young Cry For Help -- At 17, Griffey Jr. Attempted Suicide; Now He Warns Others

Contrary to what people might imagine, not everything was easy for Ken Griffey Jr. growing up. The eldest son in a well-known, well-to-do family, talented enough to be picked first in baseball's amateur draft, he still had the same problems experienced by other teenagers.

"It seemed like my father and I were always fighting," Griffey said. "I know a lot of kids go through that with their families, but it was hard for me. You see, I'm real stubborn."

The problems increased when he became a professional athlete while still a teenager, away from home for the first time. Missed curfews. A conflict that involved one kid hurling a racial slur at him and another kid, he said, looking for him with a gun.

He has since become perhaps the brightest, most exciting player in baseball. But at age 17, all he felt was hurt and confusion.

"It seemed like everyone was yelling at me in baseball, then I came home and everyone was yelling at me there," Griffey recalled. "I got depressed. I got angry. I didn't want to live."

So he took a step that too many take. He tried to take his life.

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."

Griffey came home in the fall of 1987 after his first year in pro ball. He had spent the season at Bellingham and then gone to the instructional league in Arizona.

"He had no supervision," said Ken Griffey Sr., who retired last year after a respected 17-year major-league career and now is a special-assignment scout and instructor in the Seattle organization. "I had people tell me what he was going through, keeping late hours and all, very late hours."

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In Bellingham, he had a serious conflict with the teenage sons of the team bus driver. One of them allegedly called him a "nigger" and another allegedly was looking for Kenny with a gun. "I was really upset, mad," Griffey said. "Growing up back home I never had to deal with anything like that."

When Junior came home, he kept staying out very late.

"I understood and all, but at 17 years old you can't be out until 3 or 4 in the morning," Senior said. "I was able to sleep. But my wife was staying up worrying. So I tried to talk with him. My idea was that if he was living with us, he should be more thoughtful. I said he should be home by 1 o'clock, which I think is plenty enough for a 17 year old."

"Dad wanted me to pay rent or get my own place," the son said. "I was confused. I was hurting and I wanted to cause some hurt for others."

So Griffey emptied a large bottle of aspirin and swallowed them, despite efforts of a girlfriend and her brother to stop him.

According to Dr. Larry Pedegana, one of the Mariners' doctors, what Junior did could have killed him, in a slow and painful way. "Ingesting a lot of aspirin will cause metabolic acidosis, which can be fatal," he said. "It causes tremendous problems."

Junior said he got in his car and threw up ("What I brought up was blue"). The girlfriend's mother drove him to the hospital, where his stomach was pumped and he was placed in intensive care.

Senior said that when he found out, he "was scared. I was angry, too."

He rushed to the hospital, where he and his son had another argument. "I ripped the IV out of my arm," Griffey, Jr. said. "That stopped him yelling."

"I was mad, but what could I do?" Senior said. "It made me realize kids have their own set of problems and pressures. They forget that parents were kids, too, not always Mom or Dad. But we forget life has changed a lot. It can be tougher in a lot of ways."

Griffey's mother, Birdie, stayed out of it. "She knew the problem was between my father and me," Junior said. "And our relationship changed. Maybe it was a case of me growing up. I did need to do that."

Later, Griffey and his parents decided he should get a condominium.

"Birdie didn't like that much, but it was best, so she helped him get it," Senior said. "Then he started coming over all the time. I said to him, `What are you doing here after I threw your butt out?' He said, `I just came over to talk to you.'

"And we did talk. Oh, we'd still argue. But there was more understanding on both parts. I think we realized we didn't know everything there was to know about life."

Apparently, the father-son talks were enough. Griffey said he never spoke to any doctors after the incident. "The problem was with me and my father," he said. "I'm smarter than most people think I am, although what I did was not smart. I knew what I had done and got over it. There weren't any deep problems with me afterwards."

Just over a year later, Junior not only made the Mariner team, but began making the organization credible. In the three years since, he has made himself a role model for kids while turning center field into a wonderland, a Gold Glove playhouse.

"I play to have fun, and I love to see kids have fun," he said. "I love kids. When I get married I want a lot of them. I just like to see them laughing and happy, just as I always want to be."

Life in such high profile is not always thus, of course. Griffey has his down times, and then he seeks privacy.

"Junior deals with it all well, overall," his father said. "Sometimes all the attention gets to him. It would get to anyone. But sometimes the only privacy he gets is out in center field."

"I try, really, to talk with kids, to sign (autographs) for them," Junior said. "I can say no to adults easy, and have, but not to kids. It tears me up to see one put his head down disappointed."

For all his talent and accomplishments, though, something was lacking until the middle of last season. He had made the All-Star team for the second consecutive season, leading American League players in votes, but he had not achieved the true greatness expected of him.

A talk with his father, he said, turned him around. He had been hitting .280 with nine homers and 36 runs batted in; the rest of the season he hit .372 with 13 homers and 64 RBI.

"It all came down to patience," Senior said. "He sometimes expects it all to come easy. Even Junior has to work. He was talking `I . . . me . . . me.' I told him to stop that and think of the team. Do the little things to help them and you'll see changes go on all around you. He did and he saw what happened."

At times, he has been accused of being spoiled. Son of a star player, he has become a star player. He has a young person's penchant for collecting. Now it is automobiles. He has two Mercedes, two trucks, loads of audio equipment.

"When people have said he is spoiled, it may be so in terms of material things," Senior said. "I wanted the boys to have the things I never had. But while Kenny was growing up, if he screwed up, he didn't get any access to those things. So I don't think he ever really was spoiled. Neither boy. They've always been good boys and they still are."

This spring, Ken Jr. has been a joy to his team, fun and funny, boisterous but not obnoxious. A kid, but a young man confident, knowing what he has done and that he can do it again - for many years.

"Some things change," he said. "But I'll always be The Kid."

But even now, burdened by the terminal liver cancer of his grandmother, Katherine Crump, he has lost his patient approach.

"We talked this week," his father said. "We talked about his grandmom. They were really close and it is tearing him up.

"But baseball makes demands on you that compete with personal problems. And here in camp, Junior wants to be ready in one day, yesterday. He has to realize you have four weeks of camp to get sharp. Patience, patience. Hard work and patience. And believe me, he works. He may not look it, but he works."

The talks with his father, so much easier since the Mariners signed Senior in August 1990 to make them the first father-son teammates in major-league history, have become part of their life's rhythm. And now the connections are constructive where once they were conflicting.

"The biggest change is that I learned my dad wasn't just trying to boss me around," Griffey said. "He was trying to help me. I listen to him a lot more than I used to. It may not look it, but I do."

Senior said he learned to let Junior talk out his problems. "Even to this day in baseball, he talks fast and can be silly. But I realize now that's just him blowing off steam. I let him do it and then we talk seriously. Most of all, we talk of patience."

Junior said the biggest change in him as a player is patience.

"I don't know if I'll ever have it completely, that's why I need to talk to him all the time," he said. "He's my best friend . . . along with Mom and my brother, of course."

Looking back on the time he tried to kill himself, Junior says, "It scared all of us. It scared me for sure, but I didn't take the time to think.

"Kids shouldn't act impulsively. Talk to people. Go another way. Don't kill yourself. It ain't worth it and I'm a great example. No matter how bad it seems at the time, work your way through it. Who knows how your life is going to turn out?"

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Griffey Jr. No. 1 In Al With Fans -- Only Sandberg Gets More All- Star Votes

Imagine, if you can, that your son was the top vote-getter for the American League All-Star team.

"I still get goose-bumps and all that good stuff. The problem for me is it's hard to express how I feel," said Ken Griffey, the Seattle Mariner whose son, Ken Jr., received the fans' highest honor.

Griffey Jr. collected 2,248,396 votes, most in the American League, to win the starting berth in Tuesday's 62nd All-Star Game in Toronto. It was the second straight year Griffey was voted into the starting lineup. He had 2,159,700 votes a year ago.

Another Junior, Baltimore's Cal Ripken Jr., the AL's batting leader, had the second highest total in the league at 2,060,109. Overall, Chicago Cubs' second baseman Ryne Sandberg had the most votes, 2,526,747. Sandberg, who injured his hand sliding into second on Wednesday, still hopes to play in the game.

"It means a lot to me," Senior said. "It means someone else knows about Junior."

Junior mused, "my father is on the DL (disabled list) and sitting at home stuffing the ballots."

Oakland outfielders Dave Henderson and Rickey Henderson will flank Griffey Jr.

Mariner third baseman Edgar Martinez was third in the voting at his position with 562,917.

Pitchers and reserves will be named today.

TOP ALL-STAR VOTE GETTERS American League

1. Ken Griffey Jr. 2,248,396; 2. Cal Ripken Jr. 2,060,109; 3. Roberto Alomar 1,661,039; 4. Wade Boggs 1,651,716; 5. Dave Henderson 1,570,507;

NATIONAL LEAGUE; 1. Ryne Sandberg 2,526,747; 2. Benito Santiago 1,751,399; 3. Will Clark 1,534,203; 4. Fred McGriff 1,474,502; 5. Darryl Strawberry 1,393,009;

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Marlins top Reds, take vocal jabs at Griffey Jr.

Ken Griffey Jr. no doubt figured the furor he caused when he glared toward the Florida Marlins' dugout on Tuesday night would die to a simmer within a couple of days. But pitcher Brad Penny was still smoldering yesterday.

"Something like that just fires you up a little more," Penny said after taking out his wrath on Griffey and the Cincinnati Reds in a 5-2 win at Great American Ball Park. "You won't let a guy like that beat you because you know he's going to show you up."

Penny resisted temptation by not throwing at Griffey yesterday. But he took dead aim at Cincinnati's center fielder with a series of verbal barbs after holding him hitless in four at-bats. The rest of the Reds managed only six hits off Penny, who improved to 6-2.

"He's been the stud on our club so far," manager Jack McKeon said of Penny, who has quietly blossomed into the staff ace. "He was a guy who thought he could throw through a brick wall. Now he's pitching."

Penny is 14-6 since July and notched a pair of World Series wins against the New York Yankees.

He doesn't say much, usually letting his pitching do the talking. Yesterday, though, he didn't spare words when the talk turned to Griffey, who appeared to stare into Florida's dugout after hitting a home run Tuesday.

Griffey, an ex-Mariner, told reporters the next day he was merely looking at some friends seated behind the dugout, but Penny didn't buy that.

"Yeah, I believe that," Penny said facetiously.

Asked if he could recall a player looking toward an opposing dugout after hitting a home run, Penny, alluding to Griffey's .241 batting average, replied: "If you do, you're usually hitting over .300."

Circle Tuesday on your calendar. That's when Penny is scheduled to make his next start — against Griffey and the Reds at Pro Player Stadium in Miami.

Until then, the Marlins will be content to savor taking two of three in Cincinnati.

The Marlins struck for four runs on four doubles in the fifth inning yesterday, knocking out Reds starter Aaron Harang (4-2) and essentially putting the game on ice. It also cooled the red-hot Reds, who owned the best record in the National League entering the series finale and are now tied with Florida at 27-20.

Penny was strong at the outset, but gave up a pair of runs in the third as the Reds took a 2-0 lead.

But Miguel Cabrera, Hee Seop Choi, Mike Redmond and Alex Gonzalez each doubled in the fifth as the Marlins showed some life at the bottom of the order. Choi, Redmond and Gonzalez — the sixth, seventh and eighth hitters — combined for five hits, and each of the eight starting position players had at least one.

The Reds managed only two hits — both singles — off Penny after first baseman Sean Casey's run-scoring single in the third. Penny made it through eight innings before Armando Benitez took over to record his 18th save.

Benitez also set the club record of 26-2/3 innings without allowing an earned run. Luis Aquino held the previous mark of 26-1/3, set in 1994.

Penny relied heavily on his fastball. But he spotted it with precision.

"I located my fastball well," Penny said. "If you work both sides of the plate, you'll be OK."

Penny struck out five, including Griffey in the third, and walked one.

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Game of the day: Griffey Jr. equals Gehrig

Ken Griffey Jr. pulled even with Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig on the career home-run list, the last man between him and the 500-homer club.

Griffey hit his 493rd homer, and Sean Casey went 4 for 5 with three runs batted in as the Cincinnati Reds held on for a 7-6 win over the Montreal Expos last night.

Griffey hit a two-run shot off Claudio Vargas (4-2) following Casey's RBI double in the fifth to tie Gehrig for 20th on the career list.

"It's just one of those things that I'll take one day at a time and see what happens — I'm still a few away," said Griffey, who hit 398 home runs as a Mariner from 1989-99. "My main objective is to win ballgames and see what happens from there."

The homer capped Cincinnati's second three-run outburst and increased its lead to 6-2.

Three of Casey's hits were for extra bases, including a double in the first and a two-run homer in the third, his seventh of the season. He singled off Jeremy Fikac in the sixth.

"It's just a matter of having quality at-bats," said Casey, who raised his National League-leading average to .390. "I've swung the bat like this before so I have had some stretches where I've done this, so for me it's really not looking at the numbers so much but just trying to lock in on every at-bat, every pitch and having good at-bats."

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Cory Lidle (4-4) allowed five hits and five runs in 6-2/3 innings. He pitched his NL-leading third complete game in his last outing, a six-hitter for his third career shutout in a 7-0 win over Houston on Sunday.

Jose Vidro had an RBI grounder and Tony Batista homered in the first for Montreal, which saw its NL-worst record drop to 15-32.

Lidle also allowed a solo homer to Brad Wilkerson, whose leadoff shot in the sixth cut the lead to 6-3.

The Reds' starter contributed an RBI single in the seventh off Luis Ayala to make it 7-3.

"Ayala just didn't do the job and at the time in the dugout we said, 'that's a big run.' " Expos manager Frank Robinson said. "And I meant that sincerely, it was a big run because he gave it up to a non-offensive player, and that hurts."

The hit proved to be the difference as the Expos scored three in the bottom half to close to within one.

Orlando Cabrera and Carl Everett led off the inning with consecutive doubles to draw the Expos to 7-4. Everett advanced to third on Nick Johnson's grounder and scored on Brian Schneider's sacrifice fly, which brought Montreal to within two.

Pinch-hitter Matt Cepicky homered off lefty Mike Matthews to make it a one-run game.

"It felt good to see them battle back and get back in the ballgame, and at least give ourselves an opportunity to win it," Robinson said. "But there's still that mystery where we can go inning after inning after inning of doing nothing. You look at it as wasted innings, but it certainly was refreshing to see the ballclub keep fighting and battle back and get themselves back in the ballgame."

Vargas, who left after Griffey's homer, allowed nine hits and four runs in four-plus innings. He struck out six and walked one.

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Jr. Makes Nl See Stars -- Griffey's Mvp, Homer Duplicate Dad's Feats

Ken Griffey Jr. hefted the trophy with both hands, surprised at its weight but graceful enough not to drop it.

"This thing is heavy," he said as photographers clamored for him to turn their way and display his prize for being voted most valuable player in last night's All-Star Game.

No burden seems unbearable for Griffey, who homered, singled and doubled in his three at-bats to lead the American League to its 13-6 victory.

He has excelled for the sixth-place Seattle Mariners despite being hampered by a sprained ligament in his right hand that forced him onto the disabled list last month.

Expected to measure up to the feats of his father, who played on the great Cincinnati Red teams of the 1970s, the younger Griffey is showing signs of equaling his father's exploits and more.

Junior's home run during the third inning made the Griffeys the first father and son to hit homers in an All-Star game, and his MVP award represented another father-son first. The elder Griffey, who missed the postgame crush around his son, won his MVP award for hitting a home run during the 1980 game at Dodger Stadium.

Junior was 10 at the time, but he never forgot that homer.

"I was at home when he hit it," he recalled. "I was sitting in the living room when he hit it. I called it."

Griffey Jr. also remembered it as he rounded the bases last night. "That's all I could think about," he said.

Griffey Sr. didn't call this one. He didn't even make it over to Jack Murphy Stadium from the headquarters hotel downtown.

"I was in my room watching by myself, putting an icepack to my knee," he said. His knee was injured in Monday's old-timer's game.

Still, it didn't stop him from beaming. As soon as he saw the ball clear the fence, MVP flashed through dad's mind.

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"My first thought was the fact that he had talked earlier that he wanted to win MVP," Senior said. "Just about everything he talks about that he wants to do, he's done."

Griffey Jr. was just proud he could do something his father could remember.

"It means a lot, knowing he played in the All-Star game and he homered, too," said Junior, whose drive against the Chicago Cubs' Greg Maddux gave the American League a 6-0 lead. "It's not like I wanted to duplicate what he did; I just wanted to have fun."

All-Star teammates had fun watching him and were glad a national television audience could see him.

"He's playing in a market that most people can't see him playing all the time, so it's great to see him display his talent in a game like this," said Mark McGwire of the Oakland Athletics.

"People know his name, but they may not know what he can do. They'll know now."

Said AL Manager Tom Kelly: "He's an excellent hitter, as we all know, and he's an exceptional talent who has a great future."

NL Manager Bobby Cox had a flashback while watching Griffey. "I saw Ken Griffey Jr. at Moeller High School in Cincinnati. He was the best high-school prospect I've ever seen," Cox said.

Although Edgar Martinez plays with Griffey every day, he still marveled at Griffey's performance.

"It was fun to see him have that kind of game," said Martinez, who went 0 for 1 in his pinch-hit appearance last night. "Before the game, he said that he was going to hit a home run. He told me, `I'm going out today.' . . . Afterward I went to him and said, `Man, you told me you were going to hit one and you did.' He just said, `Yup.' "

Griffey smiled upon hearing that Martinez had made his prediction public. "No comment," he said.

Griffey singled during the first inning, the sixth of a record seven consecutive hits by the AL. He also doubled and scored during the the AL's four-run sixth.

He was taken out of the game before he could try to hit a triple, but that didn't bother him. Getting three hits - the most by one player in an All-Star game since Tim Raines had two singles and a triple in Oakland in 1987 - was enough for Griffey.

"The manager said, `Let's win this one in the first and put pressure on them,' so we had to follow orders," said Griffey, who at age 22 has gone 5 for 8 in three All-Star games.

Despite the home run, Griffey Jr. still has a lot of catching up to do to match dad. His father had a career batting average of .297 with 147 home runs and 824 runs batted in. But Junior, hitting .296 in his career, already has 75 homers and 291 RBI in 3 1/2 years.

"I think he's going to do a lot better," Griffey Sr. said. "I just want to see him win the MVP as the player of the year."

Junior, of course, is even with his father in All-Star homers and MVP awards, but his father has the edge in one important category: World Series titles.

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