Reversing course on what seemed like a done deal with the Braves, Ken Griffey Jr instead opted to return to the Seattle Mariners, signing a one-year deal worth everything in the world to me $2 million, plus incentives.

It’s important that we few Seattle fans celebrate this signing not just with nostalgia, but with spite and vengeance.  To wit: IN YOUR FACE ATLANTA!!!  What were those assholes trying to do, anyway?  Griffey is an oft-injured 39-year-old who’s a liability in the field — he’s not exactly the missing component from a team that needs just one more piece to be a contender.  But dammit, he’s SEATTLE’S oft-injured 39-year-old defensive liability.  And those Atlanta assholes tried to ruin it.

Man, this really couldn’t have worked out any better.  I get to celebrate the return of Junior to an M’s uniform AND I get to hate something new.  Suck it, Braves.

I usually don’t write about being “happy” or “liking” things, but the word of Ken Griffey Jr’s imminent return to the Seattle Mariners — pending a physical this weekend — is making me feel… what is this?  Nostalgia? Wow, what a feeling.  I can see why Baby Boomers are such self-indulgent dicks.

It was almost 20 years ago that I began collecting everything and anything Griffey — baseball cards, posters, t-shirts, even the crappy candy bars that bore his visage — and I did it all while living outside a pair of NL towns (Philly and St. Louis) before interleague play or the internet.  I lived to read box scores, and I cursed the Eastern time zone for late games.  But in the span of just a couple years, major league baseball had a strike, Griffey left for Cincinnati, the steroid scandal exploded, and before I knew it I liked football better than baseball.  Which is fine.  We get older; our tastes change.

I know that Griffey’s old now.  I know that he’s useless in the field and can only help the team as a DH.  And I don’t care.  I’m going to watch more baseball this summer than I have in a decade.  For nine innings at a time, I’m going to feel a little younger.  Here’s hoping Junior will, too.

The White Sox earned the AL Central pennant last night, winning a 1-0 nailbiter over the Twins in a 163rd-game tiebreaker.  It was like overtime for the regular season.

The heroes were a pair of 38-year-olds: Jim Thome’s mammoth 7th inning blast was the only run of the game, and Ken Griffey Jr’s outfield assist kept the Twins off the board.  John Danks got the win, Bobby Jenks got the save, and somewhere, Brianna Banks got the money shot.  High five?  High five.

A quick round-up of MLB trade deadline action.

MANNY RAMIREZ TO THE DODGERS — L.A. and Boston each send two prospects to the Pirates, while the Red Sox get Jason Bay.  Bay is a minuscule downgrade at the plate, a remarkable improvement in the field, and his salary is less than one-third what Manny makes.  Minus the loss of the prospects, nice work by Theo Epstein.  He gets his choice of Boston skanks tonight. [Update: Written before I realized Sox were paying the remaining $7M for Manny. Still, if you're coming here for analysis, you're in the wrong place, my friend.]

KEN GRIFFEY JR TO THE WHITE SOX — News of the proposed trade broke this morning, but Junior approved the deal, so it's official.  Chicago, which has an outfield of Jermaine Dye/Nick Swisher/Carlos Quentin and a 1B/DH combo of Paul Konerko and Jim Thome, successfully filled a hole it didn't really have.

ARTHUR RHODES TO THE MARLINS –  So, okay: not nearly as big of a name as Manny or Griffey, but I felt like I really needed a third story to go with this.  Rhodes couldn't have been moved farther away from the Mariners, both geographically and — what with the Marlins not sucking — metaphorically.

The news of Ken Griffey Jr.'s 600th home run was already covered here and elsewhere today, but I never really got to have my moment of earnest sincerity about the moment.

Because I grew up a Mariners fan who lived nowhere near the Northwest (and we didn't have cable and the Internet didn't exist), I got my sports information from three places: box scores, baseball cards, and Sports Illustrated.  Of course, I lived on the East Coast, so all the M's box scores were two-day-old "late" games, and until Ken Griffey came along, there wasn't really such a thing as Mariners news in SI or a cherished M's baseball card (Mark Langston?  Alvin Davis?  Oy.).  This SI cover was a watershed for a young Seattle fan like myself: someone on the Mariners actually mattered.

You know the rest of the story: back-to-back home runs with his dad, the 1995 playoff run that saved baseball in Seattle, a return home to Cincy, and about 70-odd injuries along the way.  Most people forget or don't realize that he didn't win the Rookie of the Year his first season because a broken hand limited him to 16 HR, 16 SB, 64 runs, and 64 RBI.  Yes, I have those numbers memorized.

Anyway, congratulations, Ken.  It's good to see a class act still do things the right way.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have crude humor to attend to.  This smut won't peddle itself, you know.

MLB – After sitting on 599 homers since May 31, Ken Griffey Jr. launched no. 600 in the 1st inning of last night's game in front of a dozen or so people at Dolphin Stadium to join Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Babe Ruth and Willie Mays in the exclusive 600 Club, which is a lot less scary and religious than the 700 Club. How's it feel to be the only Vanilla Face in the club you started, Great Bambino? What? You'll tell me after you put a cigar out on my crotch? Hokay. Awful Announcing comes through with video of the historic blast. 

In other non-historic home run related news, the White Sox won their 7th in a row by completing a 4-game sweep over the Twinkies, galvinized by Ozzie Guillen saying some stupid shit the other week. Way to enable him, fellas…Benches cleared in Pittsburgh during the Bucs 5-3 win over the D-Backs when Randy Johnson took a few imposing steps toward Doug Mientkiewicz after the Pirate stepped out of the box a few too many times. "He's intense, I'm intense, and it probably didn't help that it was 1,000 degrees out there," Mientkiewicz said, the flesh dripping from his body…Evan Longoria, Willy Aybar and Dioner Navarro hit the first back-to-back-to-back homers in Rays' history in Tampa's 13-4 win over the Angels. Wait, those are marginally historic homers! My transition, ruined!

NBA – Gilbert Arenas opted out of the final year of his contract with the Wizards to the surprise of all his online Halo buddies. Gilbert apparently wants more money to get injured and miss 50 or 60 games a year.

EURO 2008 – Dutch trip up the flopping Italian assholes 3-0. A quick lesson when insulting Italians: Vaffanculo means literally "Go fuck yourself in the ass." Don't tell them to do something they'll enjoy. Find other insults.