Awesome bordering on creepy
“You can’t forget about him,” Suzuki said through an interpreter. “I believe that even in this winter, in my sleep, he will appear in my dreams.
“To play together with that hero of mine, in the same uniform — and on top of that, in Seattle — that time we got, even now, seems like a dream. I believe that time with him will continue.”
Also notable: Griffey could have made another $200k if they M’s had attracted “4,716 more fans” according to that article. I’m not sure if I agree with that — attendance was counted at 2,195,533 so you’d think the next milestone would be at 2,200,000 which would require +4,467 … but it raises an interesting question.
Why didn’t Griffey just buy up five thousand cheap tickets and give them to the local orphanarium or something? Write them off as a charity donation, and tada! Even if he was uncertain of how many tickets to buy headed into that last homestand and decided to buy a lot more than that, it’s still a really good gamble.
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Ever worked in the music Biz? I worked for guy once who pushed one of his bands into ‘Gold’ status with a $42,500 cashiers check to a distributor. (Days of vinyl).
Me: Gold record! Gold record!
My boss: Yeah, I just paid for it.
Maybe JR hides his light under a bushel, and doesn’t need an extra 200k?
yeah, I think maybe he has enough money and quite frankly your idea, charity or not would seem a little tacky. If he donated the extra cash as well that would be okay.
Who is arguing it’s not tacky? And when Boeing et al were buying up tickets to trigger lease clauses to keep the team in town, was that tacky?
Yeah, tacky was my thought as well. But it did bring back memories of Boeing and I think Microsoft and some other companies (not sure about Safeco) buying up tickets by the tens of thousands in the 80s to keep the team’s escape clause from triggering. Too bad Junior’s probably gonna play one more year in another uniform.
Turnabout is fair play. Clubs will bench or release players to prevent their option from vesting.
A good thing too, if you’ll remember we released Jose Vidro last year to keep his 2009 player option from vesting, God help us.
I figure he and his agent were smart enough to think about this. After all, they used Atlanta as the stooge in the offseason to weasel a little more money out of Armstrong.
But in this case, they didn’t figure it would be necessary–after all, how could the stadium not be filled to see the Mariner Messiah in what might have been his last game?
Actually, that’s a pretty good question. Why wasn’t it filled?
That “try to weasel out money” comment is way out of line in my opinion.
I sure am happy that Junior chose Seattle over Atlanta, despite disadvantages geographically (far from his family) and the season has been a great success.
I remember that after Griffey’s return was unexpectedly announced, feeling irrationally happy myself, and Dave putting up a post with similar sentiments.
And then the first day Ichiro came back after the WBC, Griffey having his back during a press conference which tried to rehash the ugliness of last year.
Things just got better from there.
5,000 tickets at $20 a pop adds up to real money, and while I’m sure $100K in profit feels pretty good in your pocket, floating $100K on your Amex is probably something to generally avoid.
You think he’d have to put it on Amex? I’d bet his finances are a little better-managed than that.
Also: at 100% profit that fast, he could go get a bank loan if he wanted.
This seems like an appropriate moment for a flashback to 1995.
I would have loved to have seen the headline:
Griffey and Sweeney give 20,000 tickets to final weekend of baseball to Seattle children.
It would have been awesome PR for the Mariners.
I didn’t expect people to actually be giving reasons since it seems so obvious (to me at least)…
Wouldn’t that kind of piss of the M’s brass? If he really wants to come back that wouldn’t be a step in the right direction.
BUT, it’s still awesome that you thought of the possibility.
I’d definitely buy you a beer if you came into my bar saying something like that.
I don’t know if it would have pissed off the Mariner’s brass too much. They put the attendence bonus in Griff’s contract for a reason – they thought that he would put more butts in the seats. The fact that he was able to easily buy the neccessary tickets means that this plan was largely successful. Further, if he would have given them away publically, it would have been incredibly good PR. PR you can’t normally buy.
I disagree with the PR stuff from this. Were it to be discovered that he somehow just barely made that attendance bonus, immediately after such a ‘generous’ offering to local kids, the tacky discussion would be all over the media. That PR would have soured in a hurry. We all know he’s smarter than that.
I just assumed Melissa took care of his allowance…
How do we know he didn’t buy tickets…and just missed the mark by 5k??
I would have gone if Jr was buying!
Those were the days! Man, when Boeing rec bought up M’s tickets, my dad was working for them and we got half season plans every year through 1996, and 20-game plans through 1998 (before Safeco and its prices…love the ballpark, but damn), on the cheap. It was a great deal. We still paid for tickets, subsidized by Boeing, and got lots of Mariner baseball…
I found a better translation of Ichiro’s comments here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=caple/091007&sportCat=mlb
(On Ken Griffey Jr.) “He’s always been a hero of mine,” Ichiro said through his interpreter. “To get to play with that hero of mine in the same uniform and in the city of Seattle, that time I got to spend together even now seems like a dream. I believe that the time I got to spend with him is going to continue. And he’s a person that even if you want to forget him, you can’t forget him. I imagine that this offseason, even when I sleep, he will pop up in my dreams.”