Sports are a lot different nowadays than they were 40 years ago. Players bulk up using steroids and sign multi-million dollar contacts. Also, almost no player spends his whole career with one team. Fans have seen players who have been the face of their franchises for a decade traded or cut.
Brett Favre was never supposed to play for a team other than Green Bay, and last year he started for the Jets. Fred Taylor spent his whole career with the Jaguars, racking up 11,271 yards, yet Jacksonville still cut their all-time leading rusher this week in favor of the younger Maurice Jones-Drew. The Saints also released their all-time leading rusher, Deuce McAllister, to create more salary cap room. Trevor Hoffman, baseball's all-time leader in saves, had been closing out games for the Padres since 1994, but he reported on Valentine's Day to spring training as a Milwaukee Brewer.
It seems like no player stays with one team for all of his career anymore, which is exactly why I want Ken Griffey, Jr. to return to Seattle.
For all of the 1990's, Griffey roamed the outfield for the Mariners, snagging fly balls and hitting monster blasts into the stands of the Kingdome. Then, "The Kid" left Seattle for the Reds, in order to be closer to his family in Cincinnati. Griffey suddenly plunged from 10-time Golden Glove winning MVP to aging, injury-prone outfielder. He was in his ninth season with the Reds when he was traded to his third team, the White Sox.
Today, Griffey is a free agent and in negotiations with the team that drafted him, the Mariners. Him making his farewell tour in Seattle would be the best thing for baseball right now. With Alex Rodriguez's legacy tarnished by performance enhancing drugs, Griffey would be the anti-Barry Bonds, making major accomplishments without steroids (as far as we know, that is.)
Of course, it wouldn't be exactly the same. Since Junior left for Cincinnati, the Mariners have moved into a new stadium, Safeco Field, and gone through four managers. The only thing that remains from Griffey's tenure is the Mariner Moose, the mascot. But that doesn't mean the move back to the Mariners wouldn't be great for baseball.
If "The Natural" could return to the MLB's second-worst team in 2008 and turn it into a contender at age 39, it would be a storybook ending to the career of one of baseball's all-time greats
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