Long before he’d become known to baseball fans around the world as Junior or The Kid or just “the superstar with the backward baseball cap and the big smile,” young George Kenneth Griffey learned life lessons around the family dinner table.
Not just about the importance of eating his vegetables, but about knowing history. And because his dad was a baseball player, baseball was often used to teach the lessons.
“Growing up, there were certain people in the household we talked about,” Griffey told The Sporting News in a Zoom interview this week. “It was Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente … those are names who were brought up at the dinner table.”
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And because his dad was a ballplayer, the lessons came to life in a different setting.
“It wouldn’t be anything to go into the locker room and see Hank, to go in and see Willie Stargell,” he said. “I wasn’t starstruck, and because I was so young I didn’t understand the magnitude of what these guys brought to the table.”
It didn’t take long for the magnitude to sink in, though.
Griffey, who was doing interviews this week on behalf of Capital One as part of the company’s partnership with the Jackie Robinson Foundation, was a star from the moment he set foot in the majors in 1989.
Heading into the 1997 season, he had yet to win an MVP award, but he was a perennial All-Star, Gold Glove winner and had finished fourth and second in the voting in his previous two healthy seasons (he only played 75 games in 1995). The best player in baseball thought of a way he wanted to honor one of those people his dad had talked about often at the dinner table.
“I was sitting there one day and thought, ‘It’s time that we celebrate certain people who have played this game and had an unbelievable impact on millions and millions of people,’” he said.
On April 15, 1997 — the 50th anniversary of the day Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier — Griffey wore the number 42 on his uniform, with the name “Griffey” in its normal spot. He went 2-for-4 that day, with two runs scored, an RBI and a walk.
It’s the only time he wore the 42 with his name on the jersey. Major League Baseball retired Robinson’s No. 42 that day, in a ceremony during the Dodgers-Mets game. Only players currently wearing 42 — a group famously including Mariano Rivera — were allowed to wear a number that would never again be issued to an individual player.
Ten years later, Griffey wanted to honor Robinson again, on the 60th anniversary.
“I called Commissioner (Bud) Selig and said ‘Can I wear 42?’ And I called him at home, wasn’t like I called him at the office. He said, ‘Can you give me a minute and let me talk to Rachel and I’ll see what she says?’”
Rachel Robinson agreed. Griffey wasn’t the only one this time. Derek Jeter wore 42 for the Yankees. So did Ray Durham with the Giants. Six Cubs players — Griffey’s Reds were in Chicago for a day game at Wrigley Field — wore the number. Torii Hunter and Rondell White with the Twins did, too. The entire Dodgers team wore 42 that day, beating the Padres 9-3.
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That day marked the beginning of the celebration of Robinson that continues to this day.
Starting in 2009, every single player in the majors has worn 42 on April 15.
“To me, that’s how you celebrate somebody. I was just doing it because I wanted to celebrate him in my own way, but it turned into something much bigger,” Griffey told TSN. “To see it every year get bigger and bigger, and to have the guys understand the history … that’s what it does. It helps teach a little bit of history, bring back history of the sport. Everybody looks at numbers and that’s it, what did this guy do last year, what’s he doing. But it also starts a conversation about what these guys went through and how they became who they are.”
It's a conversation worth having each and every year.