M’S, Griffey Melodrama Hasn’T Peaked

Just one question about the death threat:

When Ken Griffey Jr. signs his new I’ll-take-less-dough-to-play-where-Dad-did contract with the Reds and some nut job - a Cardinals fan, or an Astros fan perhaps - mails him a death threat with a Cincinnati postmark, will that suddenly be “the last straw” for Junior there, too?

Where in Major League Baseball will Griffey find a whacko-free environment?

And is this condition now more of a priority than being closer to his family home in Orlando? Or less than playing on a championship contender?

OK, busted. That’s more than one question.

Should have known that any discussion of Junior and the Seattle Mariners would have more angles of tinny melodrama than an episode of “90210,” and be about as stiffly acted.

Between the transparent bravado Mariners leadership displayed at a preseason function this week and Junior’s own R.P. McMurphy routine in between bunker shots at Poppy Hills over the weekend, a good many of us are just about ready to accept the Reds’ trade offer of three pairs of sanitary socks and a lefthanded catcher’s mitt in exchange for the Best Player in Baseball.

When divorce is inevitable, is it really worth it to keep the lawyers wrangling in hopes of scoring the good china in the settlement? Especially if the unhappy couple is going to keep punching holes in the walls until this thing is over?

That’s the knee-jerk logic, anyway. This has been a knee-jerk kind of soap opera. And the jerks just keep on coming.

Now comes word out of Seattle that Mariners deal wizard Pat Gillick has been back in touch with the Atlanta Braves on a possible Griffey deal. The Braves, you’ll recall, were on Griffey’s original list of acceptable trade teams, until his first hissy of the winter resulted in a narrowing of the market to the Reds and the Reds only.

Perhaps Griffey could still be talked into Atlanta. It’s the closest franchise to his Orlando home, obviously, and the Braves even spring train in Goofy’s backyard.

But guess who the Braves are trying to peddle?

Yep. Archie Rocker, the free speech martyr.

Hey, at least he won’t have to worry about who he’s sitting next to on the subway in Seattle.

Man, you saw what happened when the WTO came to Seattle. Is there enough security to keep the peace if Rocker puts on the teal?

At least Griffey would no longer see himself as the Most Hated Man in Seattle, which he isn’t - no matter how hard he keeps working at it.

The fan will almost always side with the ballclub in matters like this, for the simple reason that the franchise can’t be traded. Somehow, the Mariners are going to get screwed in all of this - either by not getting fair value for Griffey, or by getting no value at all or merely by having to put up with the clubhouse distraction - and it will be Junior’s fault because he didn’t love us enough to stay.

Ironically, it’s the same thing which seems to trouble Griffey the most - that the community won’t love him unconditionally, even if he stays.

It’s possible there has never been a superstar athlete so hyper-sensitive to public approval, even as he shrugs and postures that he has no care about what other people think.

“The front office, the fans and the media - everybody’s ripped me,” he said at his recent golf outing. “Think I can come back?”

Doesn’t seem to bother Barry Bonds, Griff.

It is true that Griffey took unreasonable heat for propping up his family as a shield when he first voiced his rationale for wanting to be traded (though he somehow insists it wasn’t a demand). Whatever his reasons, he was perfectly within his baseball-mandated 10-and-5 rights to limit where he wanted to go. Would we have felt better had he said he wasn’t going to re-sign with Seattle because he was sick of Chuck Armstrong and the musty smell of wet Doc Martens and Starbucks?

It is just as true that he’s been petulant and erratic in limiting Gillick’s options, though the front-office manipulations have been obvious and inflammatory. Don’t think the M’s didn’t know what they were doing in making Junior as villainous as possible, if not as villainous as he insists we believe.

The revelation of the death threat, alas, was Griffey’s stab at manipulation, and it took on the worst possible odor. He didn’t bother to pass it on to baseball, to the Mariners or even the police, but rather save it for a fairway interview - either in the hopes of currying sympathy with a public he in the next breath writes off, or in somehow forcing the hand of Mariners management.

To do what? Try harder to trade him.

Meanwhile, Gillick, CEO Howard Lincoln and manager Lou Piniella put on their grimmest smiles and insist it won’t be a distraction if spring training opens with Griffey batting third in the lineup.

We’re all professionals here, is the party line. Too bad we haven’t seen much professionalism in this escapade.

Griffey says one thing. The M’s say another. Neither party has much credibility left.

Even less, perhaps, than we have patience.