It was never happening. Not the way it unfolded, anyway. But that did not stop the New York Mets from pushing aggressively to bring baseball’s most electrifying player to a team on the rise. Imagine Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza sharing the middle of the lineup in Flushing. The Mets sure did.
They had just fallen two games short of the World Series with elite production from Piazza at catcher, Edgardo Alfonzo at second base and Robin Ventura at third base. Their outfield was much weaker, and the Seattle Mariners were looking for a place to trade Griffey, one of the best center fielders in history. The Mets scrambled to make it work.
“We thought there was a chance, especially coming off the year that we had, and with the expectation that we would be good again,” said Jim Duquette, then the Mets’ assistant general manager. “We would have had Alfonzo, Griffey and then Piazza. We were salivating over that.”
Griffey had just turned 30 years old and was already, by then, a certain Hall of Famer. He had been an All-Star and a Gold Glove winner every season of the 1990s and had just led the American League in homers for the third year in a row. His home run total for the previous four seasons was 209, with no hint of the steroid rumors that would soon engulf other sluggers.
The Mariners, meanwhile, were in a curious state. They had just moved from the drab Kingdome to glittering Safeco Field, a ballpark made possible by the momentum generated in 1995, when Griffey led the team on an exhilarating, unexpected charge to the playoffs. Yet the team had traded Randy Johnson, spent modestly on free agents and tumbled below .500.
Beyond that, the Mariners seemed to be facing a crisis. They had recalled Alex Rodriguez at age 18, in 1994, which helped Rodriguez accrue enough service time to be a free agent after the 2000 season. Griffey’s contract also expired then.
Griffey, an intensely devoted family man, made his off-season home in Florida. His children’s school obligations would soon keep him away from them for longer stretches. The golfer Payne Stewart, a neighbor in Orlando, had just died in a plane crash, reinforcing Griffey’s commitment to putting family first. He did not want to devote the bulk of his remaining career to a team based so far away.
As a player with 10 years of service, the last five with the same team, Griffey had veto power over trades. East Coast teams that trained in Florida, like the Mets, initially held some appeal as potential destinations. But the most alluring spot was Cincinnati, where Griffey’s father, Ken Griffey Sr., had been a star outfielder for the Reds.
“I always knew where Junior wanted to go,” said Jim Bowden, then the Reds’ general manager. “The whole point was for him to come home to Cincinnati. The whole point was to wear the Reds uniform like his dad. He wanted to be closer to home, to family. I always believed he would come to Cincinnati; we just had to navigate through it.”
The Reds were coming off a 96-win season that had ended with a loss to the Mets in a one-game wild-card playoff. But affording a contract extension for a superstar, even at a hometown discount, caused the Reds to hesitate. Publicly, they had dropped out of trade talks by the winter meetings in Anaheim, California, in early December. The Mets saw an opportunity.
“Nelson Doubleday was always big on trying to inquire on Griffey,” said Steve Phillips, then the Mets general manager, referring to the team’s co-owner at the time, who died last June. “He was dying to get Griffey. But it was really a nonstarter that he did not want to come to New York.”
Pat Gillick, the future Hall of Fame executive who had just started as Mariners’ general manager, hoped Griffey would change his mind. (“He changes it quite a bit,” Gillick said then. “It’s sort of like sand dunes.”) Gillick engaged the Mets, and the teams agreed to the framework of a deal, reported then to be pitchers Armando Benitez and Octavio Dotel and outfielder Roger Cedeno for Griffey.
“We agreed in principle on the players,” said Duquette, who remembered outfielder Jay Payton being discussed as well. “It was in Griffey’s hands.”
If so, it was more like a Hail Mary pass to a receiver just putting on his shoulder pads and thrust suddenly onto the field. Chuck Armstrong, then the Mariners’ president, called Brian Goldberg, Griffey’s agent, to ask if he would consider a deal with the Mets — but said the Mets needed to know immediately. Griffey — not wanting to rush into a major life decision — declined.
“It was so confusing and fast that I never thought it was anything that was going to happen at that moment,” Goldberg said. “It was quick, and it was done with.”
At a stalemate for his future, Goldberg said Griffey was open to a one-year contract extension through 2001, which would have ensured that the Mariners would retain at least one of their megastars for the next two seasons.
But a trade was inevitable, and it finally happened on Feb. 10, 2000. Bowden shipped outfielder Mike Cameron, pitcher Brett Tomko and two prospects to Seattle, and the Reds’ owners signed Griffey to a nine-year, $116.5 million contract.
“There’s no doubt my favorite moment as GM was trading for Ken Griffey Jr.,” Bowden said, “walking up to the podium and saying, ‘Baseball is back in Cincinnati.’”
Griffey would battle injuries for much of his tenure with the Reds, who did not reach the playoffs with him. But he hit 210 homers, made three All-Star teams, spent more time with his family — and enjoyed a warm return to the Mariners in 2009, erasing any leftover hard feelings. Griffey now works for the team as a special consultant.
“Junior’s such a wonderful guy, and I feel very close to Ken and his family,” said Armstrong, who retired in 2014. “I think it came down to family and geography, and I’m glad he came back to the Mariners when he did. He’s the foremost player we’ve ever had, he’s maybe the greatest player I’ve ever seen, and we were lucky to have him.”
The Mets never did get Griffey — or Rodriguez, whom they also coveted at the time — but they moved on quickly from their flirtation. Less than two weeks later, Phillips got a surprise call from Gerry Hunsicker, the general manager of the Houston Astros, who told him his ace left-hander, Mike Hampton, was available.
The Mets used two of the pieces in the proposed Griffey deal — Dotel and Cedeno — to acquire outfielder Derek Bell along with Hampton, who would win 15 games and be named most valuable player of the National League Championship Series against St. Louis.
The Yankees beat the Mets in the 2000 World Series, and Hampton then signed with the Colorado Rockies. But as compensation for his departure, the Mets received the 38th pick in the 2001 draft — and used it on a high school third baseman from Virginia named David Wright.
“How crazy is that?” Duquette asked. “We didn’t get Ken Griffey Jr. We got Hampton instead, which led to David Wright — and we got to the World Series with Hampton, and I don’t know if our pitching was good enough to get there without him.”
About the Author
