I went to an interleague game at Safeco last May. Giants at Mariners: Randy Johnson was looking for career win #299 in his final start in Seattle (he gave up one run in 5.1 innings and left to a standing ovation), and the game ended in 12 innings on Jose Lopez’s RBI single off the left field wall, but the most memorable part of the night belonged to Ken Griffey, Jr.

With the bases loaded and two outs in the ninth inning of a tied game, the 39-year-old Griffey approached the plate to the loudest I’ve ever heard a sports stadium — and I’d seen Griffey hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth to tie a game in the Kingdome some sixteen or seventeen years prior. For four pitches, we were all on our feet, refusing to stop screaming or clapping, generating electricity, doing everything we could do to will this aging hero to one more feat of greatness.

On the fourth pitch, Griffey unleashed that classic swing, hit a towering fly ball to deep center, and for a few breathless seconds, as I tracked the ball’s flight, I was a kid again, full of wonder at my childhood idol… until Aaron Rowand made the catch at the wall.

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This story has been floating around the Internet for a couple days, but this is the first we’ve seen of the audio and video cut together: on Sunday, Mike Blowers, the Mariners’ former third baseman who now calls M’s games for Seattle’s KIRO with Hall of Fame announcer Dave Niehaus, predicted before the game that rookie Matt Tuiasosopo would hit his first major league home run. But that wasn’t a specific enough prediction: Blowers said that it would come in Tuiasosopo’s second at-bat, on a fastball thrown on a 3-1 pitch, into the second deck in left-centerfield.

Every bit of that prediction came true.

There really aren’t words that express how amazing this is. This is the rare wondrous slice of pro sports that is unsullied by steroids, or spoiled athletes, or million dollar contracts, or allegations of rape whatever it was consensual she’s just trying to get rich off a settlement. Just listen to Niehaus go bananas when Tuiasosopo connects and enjoy.

It’s bizarre how “Achilles‘ heel” came to be part of the medical lexicon, with the name of the large tendon running down the back of the leg to the heel now named for the legend of the Ancient Greek. But the term is also shorthand for describing a glaring weakness of an otherwise impenetrable force, which is odd. Because I totally would have called that “Achilles’ balls.” Let’s ask Mariners shortstop Adrian Beltre, who suffered a fate much more cruel than that of our Greek hero.

Beltre suffered the injury in the ninth inning when a ground ball off the bat of Chicago White Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez hit Beltre in the groin. Beltre does not wear a protective cup. He finished the 14-inning game.

Manager Don Wakamatsu said Beltre might need surgery because of bleeding in the testicle. If surgery is required, it could take months for Beltre to recover. via.

I can remember being ten years old in soccer practice and taking a ball to the nuts; it’s so painful that you wish you would die instead of endure the pain. So I applaud any dude that can take a ball of the junk and finish an extra inning game. That kind of effort takes real…balls.

That hipster moan you heard in the greater New York City area yesterday was Ufford enjoying the return of Ken Griffey’s return to the Mariners in his own special way. Junior hit a home run and the Mariners won, and then Matt had a scary trip to the dentist, but he was really nice and everything turned out fine!

And how the hell did Griffey get lauded with the public’s certainty of never having done steriods? We don’t know that he never did steroids. And if he’s really the only one that never did steroids, can we then assume that everyone else actually did do them? And then admit that Barry Bonds is being persecuted simply for being a crabby black guy that doesn’t feel like talking to people while he’s changing clothes? Or is that a crime in California, also?

Whatev. Here are some more scores, and here‘s a vid of something so creepy, it would be an injustice to even describe it. And eventually we’ll do coverage that doesn’t involve complaining about steroids and non-sequitur vomit-inducing videos. Just not today.

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.