It’s not too often that you get to talk to one of the greatest athletes to ever play his sport – who also happens to be a proud owner of 10 Gold Glove awards and has jettisoned the most career home runs of any current ballplayer, and he says things like, “I’m just a normal dad with an abnormal job.” But such is the life of Ken Griffey Jr. He’s humble, content and proud, definitely. He’s aware of what he’s accomplished, but not eager to tell everyone else in the room. Having grown up around the Major Leagues as a youngster with a professional-playing pops of the same name, Junior was used to the bright lights, big ballparks and attention to come, even before it was his turn.
After starring at Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati a decade after his father won back-to-back World Series championships with the Reds, there was no mistaking the future for Ken Griffey Jr., as he was selected as the number one overall draft pick in 1987 by the Seattle Mariners. What was to come could only really be classified as a perfect storm moment. Just as we saw how seamlessly the worlds of heroic on-field performance, a glowing personality and a legendary signature sneaker series could align perfectly for Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan a few years before him, Junior was primed as the next in line to overtake yet another sport while repping the Swoosh. With Nike’s Tracy Teague working overtime to design both his on-field cleats and off-field turf kicks, Griffey went on to enjoy one of the most iconic signatures series of the 1990s. He was undoubtedly the first to make baseball shoes fashionable for everyday wear.
With his career now winding down after reaching nearly every statistical milestone imaginable sans an ever-present-in-baseball asterisk, we caught up with Ken Griffey Jr. on an expectedly dreary September Saturday afternoon at his downtown Seattle condo. Unlike most of our one-on-one interview formats, the hour-long conversation was fortunate to have an added bonus in the mix, as we also had Tracy Teague, now Creative Director of Nike Basketball, and Lynn Merritt, Nike’s Senior Director of Basketball Development, on hand. Merritt has long worked in the realm of sports marketing for Nike and has been instrumental in the signings of some of the brand’s biggest athletes, while Teague has designed many of the brand’s most notable cleat and turf models from the ’90s. Though modest when it came time to talk about his legacy and conversely beaming when discussing his wife Melissa and three kids, Trey, Taryn and Tevin, Ken Griffey Jr. feels privileged to have enjoyed a long-lasting career that has earned him fans across the globe.
