Junior’s back and the M’s hope shutout streak continues

MARINERS

There is a great picture on the front page of the Seattle Times sports web site today. Standing together on what looks to be an opening day ceremony somewhere in 1997 are Jay Buhner, Edgar Martinez, Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr. It goes with this story and this Steve Kelley column.

Only one of that quartet will be in uniform tonight (7:05; FSN; 920-AM) at Safeco, and Junior won’t be in Mariners’ garb. He’ll be wearing the Reds’ road gray.

But I’ll be sitting there with my son, thinking back to 1994, 95, 96 … all those years when Griffey roamed centerfield for Seattle, when he was young and so was Ty.

Enough of that crud. Let’s look at last night’s win, when the Felix of April returned to the mound for really the first time.

Today’s hot list …

• Felix’s performance was the lead of the game stories. Here they are from the News Tribune, the P-I, Times and the Herald. Here are the stories from Pittsburgh, from the Post-Gazette story and the Tribune-Review piece.

• John Blanchette’s column from Seattle today is about the pride of Trail, British Columbia, Jason Bay.

• Of course the Times isn’t the only paper to go all out about Griffey. The P-I’s Art Thiel and Jim Moore also had columns. That’s on top of other stories, all of which can be accessed here. The Herald adds a John Sleeper column.

• The M’s are going with Ryan Feierabend tonight on the mound instead of Cha Seung Baek.

• And our question of the day …

• What is your favorite Ken Griffey Jr. memory?