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KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Ken Griffey Jr. hadn’t eaten in about a day. He was jittery a couple of hours before the game. Even in the seventh inning, when new teammate Jermaine Dye asked how he was doing, Griffey still felt it.
He was nervous.
The Kid might not be a kid anymore, but he sure felt like it in his return to the American League.
Griffey drove in two runs and nearly hit a homer in his debut with Chicago, Javier Vazquez won for the first time in seven starts, and the White Sox beat the Kansas City Royals 4-2 on Friday night.
“I’m all right now, but we’ll find out tomorrow morning,” Griffey said of his nerves.
Clinging to a half-game lead over Minnesota in the AL Central after losing four of five, the White Sox could have used an extra arm at the trade deadline with a pitching staff that had a 6.20 ERA in its previous 16 games.
Instead, Chicago traded for Griffey, a 38-year-old slugger who’s battled injuries and struggled most of this season. The White Sox dealt reliever Nick Masset and minor leaguer Danny Richar to Cincinnati to get him, hoping the 13-time All-Star could find some of the brilliance that shot him up the career home run list early in his career.
Griffey delivered, driving in half of Chicago’s runs in a tight game before coming out for a pinch runner in the eighth inning.
“He did just what he always does,” White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said. “It didn’t surprise me at all what he did.”
White Sox players were thrilled to have Griffey in their lineup and a bigger-than-usual crowd seemed to be glad to see him at Kaufman Stadium for the first time since July 29, 1999, letting out a loud cheer when his image came up on the scoreboard during introductions.
More cheers followed when Griffey came to bat the first time in the second inning, and he didn’t take long to deliver for his new team.
Batting seventh for the first time since his rookie season in 1989 — he hit third for the Reds — Griffey fought off a tough pitch from Luke Hochevar (6-9) with two strikes, then lined a two-out single up the middle for the game’s first run. He made solid contact again in the fourth inning, posing for a second before the ball came down in the glove of center fielder David DeJesus at the warning track.
“I hit it off the end of the bat,” said Griffey, who has a 17-game hitting streak at Kaufman. “I hit it OK, but you never know until you don’t see it anymore.”
Griffey came up again with two outs and runners on the corners in the sixth, and fisted a ball between first and second for a single that put Chicago up 2-0. He advanced on Nick Swisher’s run-scoring infield hit, and scored on Juan Uribe’s single to make it 4-0.
Griffey walked in the eighth and was replaced by pinch-runner Brian Anderson, finishing 2-for-3 in his first AL game since 1999. He didn’t get much action in center, easily settling under a high flyball from John Buck in the third inning in his only chance to make an out.
Even some of the Royals, many of whom had Griffey’s baseball cards as kids, were impressed with the older Kid.
“He’s a good hitter. He’s been in the game for a long time,” Hochevar said. “With a transaction that happens that quick, I was able to see very limited film on him, but I watched him growing up my whole life.”
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