Eliot J. Schechter / Getty Images

Ken Griffey Jr. hits his 600th career home run against the Florida Marlins in the first inning on Monday.

His game is so well-rounded that he was voted an All-Century outfielder with Seattle before his 30th birthday. By then, his backward cap and light-up smile were the face of baseball.

His statistics were setting the pace, too. When Griffey was traded to his hometown team before the 2000 season, he was significantly ahead of Aaron’s record home run pace.

It seemed like a sure bet that when his nine-year, $116.5 million contract was wrapping up this year, he’d be the next home run king, or close to it. Then, the city would have two of its own atop baseball’s revered lists — Pete Rose as the hits king, Junior as the home run king.

It hasn’t turned out that way.

Griffey hit 40 homers in his first season with the Reds, when he became the youngest to reach 400 career. Then came a succession of major injuries — torn hamstrings, torn patella tendon, separated shoulder, torn ankle — that knocked him way off Aaron’s pace.

Nearly knocked him off the map, too.

The one-time superstar got booed in his hometown and overlooked in conversation about the game’s best players. It took him more than four years to get to homer No. 500 in 2004.

It seemed he might never make it to 600.

A year later, he was back in the swing.

Griffey hit 35 homers in 2005, winning the comeback player award. He followed it with 27 homers in 2006.

Last season, he played in 144 games — his most since 2000 — and hit 30 homers, leaving him seven shy of No. 600. The Reds erected a countdown board at Great American Ball Park, and featured him on the cover of the 2008 media guide.

Griffey was the youngest player in the majors — still only 19 — on April 10, 1989, when he homered off the Chicago White Sox’s Eric King on the first pitch he saw at Seattle’s Kingdome.

Homer No. 36 was one of his most satisfying. It came one batter after his father, Ken Sr., homered off California’s Kirk McCaskill on Sept. 14, 1990, an unprecedented father-and-son moment in the majors.

Even now, Griffey says those two seasons he spent playing with his father in Seattle were the best times of his career. And he has suggested that he would like to finish his career back there.

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