Quotes from Ken Griffey Jr.

Father and son games - that was the best day. We'd be dressed at 6 o'clock in the morning. The game would be at 7 o'clock at night... And we'd play at, like, 5.

I came up as a number 2 hitter. My first year I hit 16 homers, and I was like, Whoa, I'm rollin'!

My wife is from Seattle.

I like how in little league they have nine kids who play the field but we have 17 kids on the roster and all 17 kids should hit. I like that we do that down here in Florida.

I go out there every day, take early batting practice, fly balls.

A franchise player, to me, is a guy like Kirby Puckett, Cal Ripken, a guy who's been in one organization through their entire career.

Anybody can be a dad. I just want to be a good parent. I want to be a dad that my kids can talk to. I want to have a relationship with them.

Playing in the big leagues while my father is still active is the biggest thrill of my life. I try to see him play whenever I can.

Baseball and golf have a lot of things in common, including the fact that players in both games love hitting for power. However, in both sports, trying to do so strictly with muscle strength doesn't work very well. In fact, I see a lot of guys in both baseball and golf struggle when they try to swing with tight arms.

It doesn't bother me that I didn't get all the recognition. It really doesn't. I tried to keep things as honest as possible. People will either appreciate it over the years or they won't.

Just because I made it look easy doesn't mean that it was and you don't work hard and become a Hall of Famer without working day in and day out.

My dad wasn't a power hitter, and I didn't think I'd be a power hitter because the person I wanted to be like was him, and he was the one that taught me to play the game.

My dad hit 152 home runs and that's the person I wanted to be like. My hero growing up.

I may not hit 50, 40 or 30 home runs, but I can do the little things like moving runners over that don't show up in the box score.

I don't know what my numbers are as a DH, but the fact that you're sitting basically for three hours and 38 minutes of a baseball game, you're hoping you get four or five at-bats.

I think that it takes one person in the household to be a baseball fan for people to love baseball. And if you don't love baseball as a parent, your kids are not going to love it because you're not watching it.

It doesn't matter how much money you make; it's where you feel happy.

To win a World Series, the whole team has to be hot, everything has to go your way.

Sometimes I'm like, Wow, 'Criminal Minds' is deep.

My dad had a 'fro, and I didn't. So I wore his hat and it always hit me in the face, so I just turned it around and it just stuck. It wasn't like I was trying to be a tough guy or change the way that baseball is played. It was just that my dad wore a size 7 1/2, and I had a 6 1/4. It was just too big.

Injuries are a part of the game.

I don't think it's the intent of baseball not to have black ballplayers, but we have to find a way to get these kids back. We lost them to football. We lost them to basketball. We lost them to golf. People don't see how cool and exciting this game is.

Most of the people that I still talk to and hang out with, to them, I'm just Ken.

Nobody wanted to run back kicks until you saw Billy 'White Shoes'' Johnson.