Sleeping in Seattle (One Sixty-Two: Day 20)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Twenty: Ken Griffey Jr., Seattle Mariners

I woke up in the middle of the night last week, my heart pounding. I had just dreamed that while my school’s principal was observing my class, I’d fallen asleep and left my co-teacher to take care of things. I had looked up from my desk after a half-hour, mumbled something about my students completing their journals, then conked out again. In the dream, my boss had watched intently as I snoozed the whole period.

Sleep. So often, those of us in our 30s and 40s are unable to get as much shut-eye as we know we need. Work, parenting, household duties, overall stress – they team up to sandwich themselves between us and the rest we crave. Just two nights ago, I set the timer on the bedroom TV, as I always do before going to sleep. But my wife got to bed far too late after a long night’s work, and the TV was off already. So she turned it back on, watched some news, and set no timer. A little while later, I began dreaming of partisan politics. When I awoke at 3 a.m., MSNBC greeted me with a tense debate about the news on Capitol Hill.

All of this brings us to Ken Griffey Jr., the 41-year-old Seattle Mariner whose Hall of Fame accomplishments have been overshadowed in recent days over a question of sleep. A Tacoma (Wash.) News Tribune report quoted two unnamed teammates as saying the great lefty slugger had slept through a potential pinch-hitting opportunity the other day in Seattle. Was Griffey really asleep in the clubhouse when his manager called his name? Or is this all just a tall tale?

I don’t know, and I don’t think we need to send the Law & Order crew to Seattle to investigate this. As the aforementioned dream attests, none of us wants to be caught napping on the job. I will say this, though: For the past two decades, Ken Griffey Jr. has given thousands of youngsters lots of reasons to dream through their sleepy nights beneath the covers. For many budding ballplayers, nothing was more soothing than a vision of Junior’s long, loopy swing sending a ball on a long journey into the night sky. And what was cooler than the sight of Griffey soaring above the centerfield fence to grab a ball before it landed over the wall?

For all the sleep he has helped procure throughout his extraordinary career, I say Ken Griffey Jr. gets a pass on the “Sleeping in Seattle” controversy. I see that he pinch-hit today and drove in a run. That makes for 1,835 RBI, along with 630 home runs over 21 seasons. The guy will have to sleep through a lot worse to ruin his reputation. Even if his boss is watching.