It would take a completely crazy person to suggest that Ken Griffey Junior should play any position but designated hitter in 2009. His legs are on their last... well, legs, and he's lost enough of his youthful zip to make Raul Ibanez look like a shaved perversion of Sonic the Hedgehog*. If, two months ago, you had told me that a National League team would be attempting to poach him from the clutches of our collective nostalgia, I would have happily bet Jeff's liver that you were wrong.
Three days ago his signing with us seemed like a certainty. Those of us against the deal were braced to make the best of what felt like a bad situation, those for were in a jubilant mood over his return. We've gone through the pros and cons of a Junior signing more than enough times, and this isn't the place to rehash it, but what it came down to is that he looked like he'd make a serviceable DH for a rebuilding Seattle team in 2009.
And now it doesn't.
As it turns out, the Atlanta Braves are run by crazy persons. For some reason they've decided not only that Griffey can still hit and play a full season without tripping over a puppy and impaling both thighs on a pair of socks, they think he's capable of playing the field. Some reports are hinting that they're hopeful that he can play centre field on occasion.
Frankly, you can't come to that conclusion without being totally insane. The only way he's comparable to any of the outfielders currently on the roster is if you forced everyone else to wear blindfolds and filled their shoes with burning coals, and even if he was, he'd be more likely to be injured if he was forced to gambol about chasing pop flies down in a corner.
When you engineer a situation where something probably wouldn't work even if it did work, something has gone terribly wrong in the decision-making process. To compound matters for the Braves, Garrett Anderson is still available. He's roughly as valuable as Griffey overall but can actually play defence without being in violation of the Geneva Convention, and he probably wouldn't cost as much. Atlanta can't even claim the same sort of value from him that the M's can off the field, so they'd be worse off than us in both a baseball sense and a ticket-selling sense. I'd dismiss the whole thing as nothing but posturing if everyone else didn't seem so damn sure about it.
The most amazing part of all of this is that for the first time in ages, Griffey is available, makes some sort of sense for the team, and there's been mutual interest - and a deal still isn't getting done. And if Junior's move to Seattle falls through, Zduriencik and co. are going to get trashed for not giving #24 the respect he deserves, while Griffey gets remembered as some sort of saint, despite twice spurning the city.
I guess we should thank Frank Wren for keeping us on our toes. Because goodness knows I hate it when divisive Mariner personnel moves aren't horribly protracted.
The last time Ken Griffey Junior screwed us we somehow ended up with the best of the bargain. I can only hope that if he does indeed head over to the East Coast, we turn to a Swisher or Johnson trade rather than to Anderson. If we get back into the trade market because of this, things could get interesting very quickly.
*I hope we get some hilarious search hits for this simile.