Say farewell to one of the sweetest swings in baseball, folks… Ken Griffey Jr. has retired. The first-ballot Hall of Famer to-be walked away from the game in ho hum fashion, releasing a statement through the franchise he brought to prominence in the ’90s.

“While I feel I am still able to make a contribution on the field and nobody in the Mariners front office has asked me to retire, I told the Mariners when I met with them prior to the 2009 season and was invited back that I will never allow myself to become a distraction. I feel that without enough occasional starts to be sharper coming off the bench, my continued presence as a player would be an unfair distraction to my teammates and their success as a team is what the ultimate goal should be.”

We were blessed enough to see his famous home run smile 630 times (5th all time), 1,836 runs batted in and 13 all-star appearances in a 22-year career. Hell, he even had a video game named after him. Where the hell is this dudes farwell parade? Best of luck to Griffey with whatever he does next, I hope it involves some golf and softball with his pals.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 at 12:23 pm and is filed under MLB. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.