Timing’s off on Junior’s retirement

In a playful batting practice session a dozen spring trainings ago, Ken Griffey Jr. was in the cage uncannily imitating the stances and swings of the best hitters of the day – Mo Vaughn, Barry Bonds, even teammate Edgar Martinez.

The mechanics were improvised on the spot, and yet ball after ball rocketed out of the park accompanied by nonstop Junior commentary and verbal chest-thumping. Standing beside the cage, Martinez smiled and shook his head.

“He hits like me,” Martinez said, “better than I do.”

But now it’s 2010, the passing of time having robbed Griffey of the skills to imitate even average big-league hitters, never mind his former self.

So on Wednesday, barely an hour before another BP, his agent informed the Seattle Mariners that Griffey’s baseball career was over after 22 major league seasons – 21 really, plus an encore drowning in sentimentality that, sadly, did not work out for anyone.

Baseball is one cruel dude, especially when abetted by aged superstar’s hubris.

This is exactly what everyone didn’t want – Griffey excusing himself from the shadows, an afterthought when he wasn’t being scorned by the hard-shell consumerfans breeding like mad in the snarky fen of professional sports. A more ideal getaway presented itself on closing day 2009, the M’s concluding an improbable 24-win jump and Griffey being hoisted on the shoulders of teammates on a victory lap of Safeco Field, that carbon-arc smile at full wattage.

But Griffey was not going to retire while he was still mining delight from the game, and so the game itself would have to take that from him, too – as it had his bat speed the last several years, and his legs before that.

And it took all the game’s tentacles of mercilessness to do it.

One strangled what was left of Griffey’s offensive skills – did he ever reach the warning track this season? Another choked off the rest of the lineup, leaving the M’s reeling in a season of giddy expectation. And, finally, a last one infected the esprit of the clubhouse which was Griffey’s bailiwick a year ago – two young teammates anonymously ratting him out for purportedly napping in front of his locker during a game, a swipe at his integrity he could not stomach.

The Refuse-to-Snooze affair eventually ebbed. But so did Griffey’s role on the team, to the point where he was the 25th man making a weekly appearance, weakly.

“Nobody in the Mariners front office has asked me to retire,” read the statement Griffey had released to the media, “(but) 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 team is what the ultimate goal should be.”

A limited role he could handle. No role he could not.

Postponed as it was, this was as graceful a withdrawal as Griffey could make it, and Seattle owes him its thanks for that favor on top of those for his biggest contribution of all: saving major league baseball for the city.

Yes, yes, yes – there were many co-conspirators in that campaign, not the least of which being the taxpayers stuck with the bill for building Safeco. But years before Edgar’s double and Junior’s smile under the pile at home plate that remains the franchise’s iconic image, Griffey’s presence, prestige, bat, glove, charisma – everything – gave an indifferent citizenry a reason to be even mildly interested in what was going in on that old gray tub on Occidental.

It’s improper to suggest that Griffey bellying up for one more round was born only of selfish motives; having delivered everything to Seattle other than a world championship, Junior surely felt he could still be a part of that story, too.

That he stayed too long in that pursuit is no sin. It’s happened to the best – beginning with Babe Ruth, who retired 75 years ago to the day, also at the age of 40, with a batting average three points lower than Junior’s .184. His legacy was not diminished, any more than Griffey’s 630 home runs and general incandescence will be dimmed by a clubhouse nap and a clumsy adieu.

In time, he’ll return for a proper sendoff. It’s the only debt he owes.