The Swing

Ken Griffey Jr. is famous for many things: Smiles, backwards hats, leaping over walls, and dashing home. But really, it is the swing that stands above them all. It is the swing that made us fall in love, the swing that hit all those home runs. If baseball made a time capsule, and asked for every franchise to send one tangible, or intangible thing to be put into it, we'd send the swing. If we wanted to communicate through a singularity to the coming Star People what it was we loved about this game, and what made it ours, it's this:

(H/t Barstool Sports)

What is the picture/word exchange rate, again? It's one thousand words right? How many frames are in a gif? How is so much memory, meaning, and emotion packed into a silent, looping image less than three seconds long?

That's the thing that bonded me to my generation, that ensured my love of baseball meant I could find friends who also loved baseball. It made me realize being an awkward, quiet, homeschooler wasn't dooming me to being a social outcast. As long as I had Griffey, I had something in common with other kids. We would stay in the fields for hours, and we'd swing, and swing, and swing. We'd stand too upright, put our caps backward, stick out our butts, let go with one hand on the follow through, and just stand.

The Swing is Seattle baseball. The Swing is in the Hall of Fame.