I live in a smallish town 90 miles north of Seattle. Bellingham. Beautiful, charming, on the water and the former home of the Mariner's lowest minor league affiliate. I can remeber being at the ballpark for Griffey's first professional minor league at bat. He was all of one day out of high school.
I think he was batting cleanup and was playing among older guys. Poor kid, first inning, he struck out weakly on a curve ball. Later in the game he allowed a "can of corn" flyball drop over his head in center field. But my favorite memory was standing about six feet from him between innings just outside the dugout. Griffey was being cocky and attempted to bounce a ball off the astroturf. Except it was real grass and didn't bounce back up. He meekly looked around to see if anyone was watching. Yep, I was.
He did go on to have an excellent season that year and the rest, of course, is history.