Ken Griffey Jr. returns to Seattle a grown man

Ken Griffey Jr. is back, and it's tempting to add the traditional addendum: It's like he never left.

On the surface, that seems to be true. The face may be a bit more weathered, and the body a little more padded. But when he puts on the iconic No. 24 and steps in the box, bat cocked, Griffey still strikes the same imposing image.

Griffey once again is the hub of the Mariners' clubhouse, just as he was in his Seattle glory days, minus the recliner — a veritable magnetic field that attracts players, media, team employees and anyone else who wanders by into his web.

"When he starts talking and telling stories, you'll see everybody in the locker room just start circling around him," observed Mike Morse.

He still gives off that intoxicating mix of energy, humor, bravado, charisma and, when something crosses him, flashes of rancor.

"To me, everything seems the same," said longtime Mariners trainer Rick Griffin. "I think he's glad he came back. I think he's very comfortable."

That much is undeniably true. Griffey noted that his adjustment period in his second Seattle incarnation is greatly accelerated from that of the traditional free agent trying to find his place among new teammates and team personnel.

"Who's who, who can you trust — I pretty much have that down pat," he said.

But let's get past the notion that Griffey has somehow been frozen in time and will be unleashed on Monday as a slightly grizzled version of his old self.

Obviously, from a baseball standpoint, his career has been in steady decline since he left Seattle after the 1999 season, ravaged by a staggering rash of injuries. Griffey is 39, coming off a season in which he was hampered much of the second half by a gimpy knee that required October surgery.

The Mariners know they're not going to get the Griffey who ruled baseball in the 1990s, the one who averaged 52 homers from 1996 to 1999, won the 1997 Most Valuable Player award and vied with Barry Bonds for the title of Best Player in the World.

And their more realistic fans know it, too.

"What I'd like to have is have Ken Griffey for 162 games," said general manager Jack Zduriencik. "We as a group have to be cautious and careful, realizing he's had injuries in the past. He's coming off a surgery this year alone.

"We acquired him because we think his at-bats are going to help us. If he's healthy for 162 games, he can be a productive player for us, and that's what we're counting on."

But beyond what Griffey has to offer on the playing field — and remember, his career arc is not abnormal, although conspicuously different from peers like Bonds and Roger Clemens who had miraculous upswings in their late 30s — are the unseen changes.

Not from the amalgam of knee, hamstring, calf, ankle and wrist injuries that derailed him in Cincinnati, leaving Griffey with 611 home runs that somehow feel like a mere shadow of what could have been.

The ones in his heart. The ones in his soul.

"I don't think people realize how much I've changed since I left," Griffey said in a wide-ranging, 90-minute interview during spring training. "They just think of me as a 19-year-old kid.

"I have a son now that's 15 — four years younger than I was when I was there. He's at that stage of his life, a lot of people can be an influence on him. I have to be there to guide him."

Talk about déjà vu — just as when he pushed for his Seattle departure a decade ago, Griffey had to wrestle with family considerations when his decision for a 2009 destiny came down to Seattle or Atlanta.

The Mariners offered roots, the completion of a journey. But Atlanta offered a much more feasible opportunity to watch his three children — Trey, 15; Taryn, 13; and Tevin, 6 — in their sports and school ventures.

It was, as has been well-chronicled, an agonizing decision, one in which just about everyone seemed to have a tip or piece of advice. Harold Reynolds, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, et al.

In the end, however, it came down to Griffey, wife Melissa, and the three children. And, at its fundamental level, to Junior himself.

"It was just a matter of what I felt was best," he said. "Not what everyone else bleeping wanted me to think. Everybody calling my house — 'you should do that, you should do this.'

"I can't be persuaded by what someone else says. I'm going to make up my own mind, because I'm the one that has to live with it. How can someone tell you where to go, someone who had nothing to do with my life, never been inside my walls?

"At 19, that might have happened. At 39, no. Like I told everybody, I'm a grown-ass man. Simple and plain."

In the end, Griffey laid out all of his kids' sports schedules — high school football for Trey, AAU basketball for Taryn — on the kitchen counter, juxtaposed against the schedules of the Mariners and Braves, and hashed out the logistics.

Hard as it was to give up the proximity to Orlando that Atlanta would have brought, it might have been the wisdom of Taryn that sealed the deal for Seattle.

"It was Wednesday, and Kenny had promised by the end of that day to make a decision," related Brian Goldberg, Griffey's longtime agent. "That was when he had his conversation with Willie Mays, who asked him about all the years left in his life, how he wanted his legacy to be remembered.

"Taryn came home a couple of hours later. Melissa said, 'Ken, Taryn has something to tell you.' She said, 'Dad, I know you want input from all us kids. I have to tell you, even though my games are the ones you'll miss the most, I think you should finish up your baseball career in Seattle.'

"That seemed to put things right over the top. It was just an hour or two after that Junior decided Seattle was where he wanted to end up."

And so now Junior returns — a senior, really; just a year younger than his father when he joined Ken Jr. in Seattle in 1990 as the first father-son pairing in baseball history. Griffey has been tempered, as so many middle-aged people have, by tragedy and family trauma.

His parents, Birdie and Ken Sr., both have had cancer battles. One close friend died of sickle-cell anemia, and another acquaintance, a stuntman, died recently in a motorcycle accident.

His best friend — the man that Griffey says was the solitary member of his "inner circle," Frank King — died of cancer last May at age 38.

"I've probably learned a lot over the last three years — both my parents having problems, my best friend dying," he said. "A guy I know decided to do a back flip and not make it and die. Payne Stewart. I've had some people check out on me.

"You really learn not to take things for granted. One day, your best friend is there, looking at you and laughing. The next day, he's lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life. Five months later, you're planning for his funeral."

King and Griffey met as kids in Cincinnati and forged a lifelong friendship. When Griffey was drafted by the Mariners, King joined him in Seattle, and he followed him back to Cincinnati when Griffey signed with the Reds. He lived just a few miles from the Griffeys in Orlando.

"This is my first spring training since 1990 [that] Frank hasn't been here," Griffey said quietly. "One of my friends drove my car in; usually, that would be Frank. There's certain things I do, and I'll just start laughing, because I'd know, that's Frank."

From King's cancer diagnosis early in 2008, to chemotherapy, to surgery, to death was just a matter of months. His last call from the hospital was to Griffey, who was with the Reds. Melissa Griffey was with King in the hospital when he died. Although manager Dusty Baker gave Griffey the opportunity to sit out, he played that night for the Reds.

"Everyone said, 'Man, take the day off.' I looked at them and said, 'No, because Frank King wouldn't want it that way.' So our motto is, 'Frank King wouldn't want it that way.' "

The hardest part, Griffey said, was telling his children, who had grown close to King.

"Taryn's my rock. Oh, my God," Griffey said, smiling. "Melissa brought Taryn and Tevin, and Taryn said, 'Frank died.' Before Melissa even said anything."

Griffey attended two funerals for King, one in Florida and one in Cincinnati.

"Everyone wanted me to say something about Frank, and I couldn't," he said.

But he reminisced warmly about King this spring, his fondness for his buddy evident.

"Frank fixed a whole lot of stuff in other people's houses," he said. "Well, all the stuff he fixed? Within a week after he died, something else broke in their house. Something was wrong in about five people's houses — like a pipe busted behind the toilet, the fan broke, the garage door. Everything Frank knew how to fix. Everyone was like, 'Damn it, Frank.'

"His prized possession was his toolbox. And I have his toolbox. Jen, his wife, was like, 'What's the one thing you want?' I said, 'His toolbox.' So I got it. I put it in my trailer. He cared about his tools. I could call him to fix something, and he'd say, 'I'll be there in a minute. Got to get my tools.' "

Any conversation with Griffey, he invariably reroutes to friends and family, and it rarely takes long. While he is loath to talk about himself, and merely tolerates talking about baseball, he absolutely adores discussing his family, which dovetails with the description of himself he offered.

"I'm a parent with an abnormal job," he said. "That's all I am. If I wasn't on TV, and I didn't hit a home run, would you really care who I was? Probably not."

Griffey has long rebelled against the lack of privacy that comes with being a celebrity. He regrets that caution and prudence in dealing with the public has at times been misconstrued as petulance.

"It doesn't mean I'm a [jerk] at all," he said. "It's just in the back of my mind, I wonder what you're thinking when you run up to me. You know what you're thinking when you come to me. I have no idea. And I think people don't understand that."

It's no wonder, then, that his happiest times are at home with Melissa and his "rockheads," as he affectionately calls his children.

"There's no interviews, no contracts," he said. "I'm just Dad."

Now that Trey has entered high school, "I think he still considers me one of his friends. I told him, 'When you go to college, I'm going with you. You can introduce me as your older roommate.' He didn't like that. 'No, you can't do that, Dad. Please.' "

One of Griffey's concerns this year is to keep the Mariners' season from turning into a wave of Junior nostalgia, aimed backward rather than at the Mariners' present and future.

"This is a baseball decision, bringing him here," team president Chuck Armstrong said. "Ken told me he didn't come back for some sort of Cal Ripken farewell tour.

"We lost 101 games. Jack and [manager] Don [Wakamatsu] are looking to turn this thing around and establish our own foundation of success. When Jack came to me and said, 'We really think Griffey will help us; he can be the bat and personality we need,' only then I went to work to sign him."

Griffey comes back knowing that, at least initially, everyone will want a piece of him.

"I can hide really well," he said with a glint.

Griffey, of course, is being counted on by the Mariners to facilitate a different sort of interaction. Their clubhouse was a toxic mess last year, and they hope that veterans like Griffey and Mike Sweeney will help forge a new cohesiveness — a role Griffey embraces.

Under Griffey's watch, the clubhouse in spring was an inclusive place, and will continue to be, he vowed. It can also be a raunchy place, where no one is safe from his needle.

"For the most part, from No. 1 to number ... how many other guys are in here ... 45? Nobody's untouchable," he said.

Including Griffey himself? "Yeah. The difference is I've been around, so I'm a little more witty about what I can say."

Griffey's firm belief is that horseplay and ribbing in spring fosters meaningful dialogue when issues inevitably crop up.

"It's all about getting together, making good friendships, and carrying that onto the field," he said. "It's trust — like, hey, if he can get on me, and I can get on him, we can talk later if there's something I need to bring up. Instead of not talking to somebody, and all of a sudden you need to confront him on something. If you don't have that friendship, they'll look at you like you're crazy.

"It's a little different with me, because I have 20 years. People look at it a little differently than someone with four or five. But I'm not going to be the guy to embarrass somebody. I've never done that. If I have something to say, I'll pull them aside. Because that's the way I'd want someone to do it to me.

"We can agree to disagree, or come to some sort of understanding. But there's not 15 guys trying to take sides. It's just two guys. No one wants to be backed into a corner. First thing they do is come out swinging."

After one game this spring, a weary looking Russ Branyan entered the clubhouse.

"Where do you find the energy to lift after these games," he asked Griffey.

"You just got to dig deep. Dig deep," Griffey responded.

Branyan turned to the writers surrounding Griffey at the time. "See the type of leader we've got?"

He was being whimsical, but the M's hope there's truth behind that statement as well.

Wakamatsu has been delighted with what he saw from Griffey in spring.

"When you talk about some of the anxieties or pressures that come with this game, I think Ken takes some of that away," he said. "Just by his presence and his calmness and, really, his spirit, being there every day. He's been a joy to be around."

Adds Armstrong, "I think he's become a very wise man, a baseball sage. He understands the game and its importance."

Junior, who came here to Seattle as a teenager, returns as a parent with an abnormal job.

A grown-ass man.

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com