By Pete Williams

Ken Griffey Jr. apparently can’t stay awake long enough to make it through a Seattle Mariners game. According to reports, he has sleep issues and often naps in the Mariners clubhouse.

Last week, according to a report by respected Mariners writer Larry LaRue in the Tacoma News Tribune, Griffey was sleeping in the clubhouse during the game when the Mariners were looking for him to pinch hit.

The man once known as Junior or “The Kid” is 40, after all, and apparently that’s enough reason to act like an old man. Just ask new grandfather Brett Favre, also 40, who has been retiring and unretiring for three years.

As someone three days older than Favre and six weeks older than Junior, I used to root for those two to keep playing as long as they wanted. As long as my contemporaries (and elders like Jamie Moyer) keep playing, I won’t feel old.

But the more I watch Favre and Griffey, the more I look in the mirror and ask, “Do I look as old as those guys?”

Favre still has good hair, though he started going gray in his mid-30s. He also had to kick alcohol and an addiction to Vicodin, and has endured two decades of getting slammed into the ground by angry defensive lineman. Fair enough.

But what’s Junior’s excuse? We used to applaud Griffey for being perhaps the only slugger in baseball we were absolutely positive had never used performance-enhancing drugs. Junior is such an old school guy that he has no off-season conditioning program, barely works out.

And that’s the problem. Over the last decade, Griffey has morphed into his father, with the same thick, almost pear-shaped body. Since turning 31 in November of 2000, he’s rarely been healthy, reaching 500 at-bats just once. He missed most of the 2002, ’03, and ’04 seasons with injuries and has played in 140 games just twice since the 2000 season.

Our view of baseball and drugs has become so warped that we applaud Griffey for this. If he had taken steroids and HGH like everyone else, the argument goes, he would have hit another 200 home runs. Instead, he’s played clean and for that he gets a pass.

Nobody ever suggests that Griffey squandered his talent and genes. After all, he still hit 630 home runs. Only Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, and Willie Mays hit more without the use of chemicals.

But 438 of Griffey’s home runs came before George W. Bush took office. What if he had committed himself to the type of brutal off-season workouts endured by guys like Carl Crawford and Roy Halladay? It’s too early to say how they’ll hold up in their mid 30s, of course, but we only have to look at Griffey to see what happens when you do nothing.

Griffey is no different than players from his father’s generation, where outfielders contributed little after the age of 31. But even without PEDs, guys should be able to play longer today based on modern core conditioning programs.

Look at it this way: Griffey and I both graduated high school in 1987. He was the best high school baseball player in the country. I was one of the worst, but my high school program was so lousy I earned two varsity letters as an outfielder.

Today I’m a better athlete than Junior. Seven years ago I began writing “Core Performance” books with Mark Verstegen, who has trained numerous MLB players, including Crawford, Evan Longoria, Chase Utley and Dustin Pedroia. Three years ago, I took up triathlon. I have an arthritic right ankle stemming from a high school basketball injury, but the Core program has helped me improve the mobility and stability of the ankle to where it’s not an issue.

Several years ago, I had my V02 max tested at Verstegen’s Athletes’ Performance training center. My numbers were better than Crawford’s. Admittedly, I’m an endurance athlete and Crawford’s specialty is anaerobic activity, sprinting from first to third.

Still, by one measuring stick this 40-year-old sportswriter is a superior athlete than 28-year-old Carl Crawford, perhaps the best athlete in baseball.

Imagine what a program like Verstegen’s could have done for Griffey. Yes, he’ll still go down as one of the all-time greats, a first-ballot Hall of Famer who has earned $150 million on the field and millions more in endorsements.

Maybe if things had not come so easy to him early in his career, he would have committed himself more to his career longevity. He could have gone down as the greatest ever, perhaps even leading a team to the World Series.

With $150 million in the bank, I’d sleep well at night. But if Junior is having sleep issues, perhaps it comes from wondering what might have been.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 12:36 pm and is filed under Sports Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.