Griffey Would Be King

When Barry Bonds breaks the all-time home run record this season, surpassing Hank Aaron and grabbing hold of arguably the most coveted record in all of sports, steroid rumors will swirl more fiercely than the winds at Candlestick Park.

There will be a large contingency of people who spend countless time questioning the validity of Bonds’ accomplishment and cry out that he’s a cheater and a liar. There will be another, smaller group of people who stand there and cheer Bonds; they will celebrate his accomplishment and brush away those accusations.

Then there will be me, and my thoughts won’t even be about Bonds – they’ll be about Ken Griffey Jr.

They’ll be about the man who would eventually hold the hallowed record if he had not been injured.

Yesterday, Griffey hit home runs No. 583 and 584, surpassing Mark McGwire on the all-time home run list for seventh place. And it got me thinking.

What if Griffey hadn’t lost nearly four full seasons during his tenure in Cincinnati? What if he had continued his torrid pace that marked his last few years in Seattle? The answer is pretty clear – Bonds wouldn’t be king for long.

Griffey hit 460 home runs from 1989 through 2001, the last season being his first in Cincinnati. That stretch averages out to about 35 home runs each year, and let’s not forget that there were three years where he played less than 111 games or less.

Now, Griffey’s biggest power surge came from 1996 to 2000, when he hit no fewer than 40 homers in each season and had 56 twice.

In 2001, Griffey played only 111 games, and hit 22 home runs. Assuming he had stayed healthy for the remainder of that season, we’ll assume that he hits another 8 home runs, bringing his total through 2001 to 468, which is 287 homers shy of Hank Aaron’s record.

Over the past five seasons, which have been marred by injury, Junior showed that he has not run out of power. He has hit at least 20 homers three times without playing more than 128 games, 20 in 2004 when he played only 83 games and 35 in 2005 when he played only 128. That leads me to believe that Griffey still had enough in the tank to put up 40 per season.

So let’s do that – 40 home runs each season for five seasons is 200, putting Griffey at 668 going into this year, and only 87 home runs shy. As it stands, he’s 37 years old and has 21 home runs halfway through the season. That means right now, he’s at 689, 66 shy of tying Aaron.

If he hits another 25 in the second half, Griffey would finish 2007 with over 700 blasts, and 41 shy of tying Aaron. And if Griffey’s production goes down, it would be 2009 when the 39-year old Griffey would tie and break the record that the then-40 year old Aaron set, possibly on the same day that baseball crowned a new home run king.

I know the numbers may be a little sketchy, and I’m not saying that my mathematical computations are an exact science. In fact, they’re definitely not. But what they represent his a hypothetical situation where the future Hall of Famer stayed healthy, where he kept hitting home runs, and where he continued to be the most well-rounded player ever to play the game.

It’s a hypothetical where Griffey would make Bonds’ tumultuous time as home run king brief.

If only it weren’t a hypothetical.