May 26, 1995: As future of baseball in Seattle hangs in balance, Ken Griffey Jr. breaks wrist

Melodramatic as it may sound, the Seattle Mariners were fighting for their very existence.

In 1995, the team was playing its 19th season in the crumbling Kingdome, a dismal, multipurpose, indoor stadium with all the character of an airplane hangar. Ceiling tiles had plummeted 180 feet into a section of seating behind home plate the previous year,1 and both the Mariners and the National Football League’s Seattle Seahawks, who also called the venue home, cited safety as a concern in their requests for new stadiums.

In March, after a proposal to fund a new stadium with lottery money died in the state legislature, Mariners ownership declared that the team would move after the 1996 season unless a stadium deal was reached. The City of Seattle and King County examined the costs and logistics of building a new open-air ballpark, but approval would require public support, and even the team’s best-known player recognized they didn’t have much of that.2

In December 1994, Ken Griffey Jr. called out ownership for not cultivating fans. Jay Buhner was a free agent and the Mariners front office seemed content to let him walk away.3 “How can you win when you’re constantly rebuilding like this? This is brutal,” Griffey said. “It isn’t right for players, not right for fans.”4 In response, the Mariners re-signed Buhner, but that, on its own, wasn’t enough to undo a long history of apathy.

Immediately after a players strike had severely derailed enthusiasm among even the most loyal fanbases, Mariners ownership was demanding that the public fund a ballpark for a team whose 18 seasons had yielded a majors’-worst .432 overall winning percentage,5 just two winning records,6 and no postseason play.7 While every team struggled to win back fans in 1995, the Mariners needed to win over fans and nonfans alike, both in King County and across the state of Washington. It wasn’t exaggeration to say that getting approval to replace the Kingdome would likely require the best year in franchise history – at least a winning record and a postseason berth – and anything less could spell the end of the Seattle Mariners.

After a month of play, they were 14-12, the fifth-best record in the American League, yet only good enough for third in the competitive four-team AL West. The odds they’d climb to 15-12, something no previous Mariners team had ever done, looked good with Randy Johnson taking the mound on May 26.

The Mariners were undefeated in Johnson’s six starts, in which he’d recorded a 4-0 record and a major-league-leading 1.21 earned-run average. Standing 6-feet-10, the tallest player in major-league history, Johnson had always been intimidating with his triple-digit fastball, but since 1993 he’d cut his walk rate by nearly 40 percent, a vital turning point in his path to the Hall of Fame.

He was matched up against Baltimore’s Ben McDonald,8 who’d been on pace for a 20-win season in 1994 before the strike limited him to a career-best 14. Unlike Johnson, who’d carried his dominance into 1995, McDonald was 0-1 with a 5.33 ERA, and Baltimore was winless in his five starts.

Brady Anderson led off the game with a single and Cal Ripken Jr. moved him to second with another, but Johnson kept the Orioles off the scoreboard with back-to-back strikeouts of Chris Hoiles and Jeff Manto. His K-streak continued into the second with Rafael Palmeiro and Leo Gómez.

Palmeiro, who’d had just one hit in 17 plate appearances against Johnson, was supposed to have the day off. Orioles manager Phil Regan had tried to pack his lineup with as many right-handed hitters as possible, but the flight bringing Double-A call-up Jeffrey Hammonds across the country was delayed, so Palmeiro started at first base.

Seattle threatened in the bottom of the second, but McDonald bailed himself out. After Alex Diaz singled, McDonald attempted to pick him off first, but threw wildly, allowing Diaz to get safely to third. But two batters later, McDonald scooped a dribbler off the bat of Darren Bragg to nail Diaz at the plate.

After Johnson retired the side in order in the top of the third, striking out Anderson and Ripken, the Mariners got their first run. Griffey drew a walk on four pitches, then scored when Buhner smashed an RBI double to the wall in right-center field. Johnson then made it a nine-strikeout game by fanning Hoiles, Palmeiro, and Gómez each for the second time in the top of the fourth.

Seattle broke the game open in the fifth. Griffey led off with a home run down the right-field line, his seventh of the season. McDonald walked Buhner on four pitches and struck out Edgar Martínez on three. Then Tino Martinez smashed a two-run homer into the left-center-field stands, his fifth of 1995.

With a 4-0 lead, Johnson finally showed a glimpse of mortality, giving up a leadoff double down the third-base line to Kevin Bass. Ripken reached on an infield single because second baseman Joey Cora’s throw to first pulled Tino Martinez off the bag. With runners at the corners, Hoiles worked the count full, then fouled off four fastballs and a slider. When Johnson threw another fastball, Hoiles timed it perfectly and crushed the ball over the left-field fence for his fifth homer of the season.9

Johnson surrendered a walk and a single before ending the inning, striking out Palmeiro for a third time and doing the same to the pinch-hitting Hammonds, who’d arrived from the airport less than an hour earlier. But in the seventh inning, the Mariners nearly lost their lead, their season, and their future in Seattle.

Johnson struck out Anderson for a third time, his 13th K of the game, to start the inning.10 Then Bass fouled off pitch after pitch until finally lacing a fly ball to deep left-center that fell just short of the fence. He lowered his head and sprinted, certain he had at least a double. “That wasn’t a catchable ball,” Bass stated.11

Except for Griffey.

The five-time Gold Glove winner streaked across the turf and launched himself at the wall, backhanding the ball with his glove. “I’ll tell you how fast he was moving when he hit the fence,” Mariners manager Lou Piniella described. “He didn’t just leave spike marks where his feet hit, you could see the imprint of the entire bottom of his shoe.”12

Griffey slammed into the wall and fell to the warning track on his back, retaining the ball. Johnson comedically fell to his knees and flopped onto his back. Bass rounded second and was confused when third-base coach Steve Boros told him to stop. The crowd of 15,256 roared in celebration and then fell silent.

Right fielder Diaz signaled the dugout for help. Griffey sat up gingerly, cradling his left arm, and started walking off the field. Piniella’s first thought was a dislocated shoulder. “Then as I was going out there, I saw him cradling his hand,” he recounted.13

As he went up to make the play against the thin pads on the outfield wall, Griffey’s throwing hand got wedged between two sections of padding, twisting the hand and driving the wrist into the plywood-covered concrete wall.

“My team needed to win. I had to go get that ball,” Griffey explained.14 “I thought I had just jammed it pretty good at first. Then I looked at it and I could tell it was broken.”15

X-rays confirmed Griffey’s diagnosis before the game ended. Team surgeon Larry Pedagana explained, “It was like the bones exploded. There were six or seven fragments, three major pieces.”16 Griffey had surgery the next day to have a four-inch metal plate attached to his ulna and radius with seven screws holding all the shattered pieces together. Pedagana predicted that Griffey might be back by Labor Day.

In the bottom of the inning, Seattle tacked on four more runs off reliever Jesse Orosco and went on to win, 8-3, though the team didn’t feel much like celebrating.

“That’s probably the greatest catch I’ve ever seen …” Mike Blowers summed up. “We won a game [but] do you think anybody cares?”17

“I’ve seen him go into that wall too many times, seen the force it generates,” said Buhner. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say this is going to be the toughest thing this team has ever been through.”18

Even in the visitors clubhouse, the mood was sour. “This is the last thing baseball needed, to lose someone like him,” losing pitcher McDonald lamented. “More kids look up to him more than anyone in the game.”19

Griffey beat the doctors’ predictions, making a minor-league rehab start in mid-August and returning to the Mariners’ lineup three weeks before Labor Day. He helped the team erase an 11-game deficit to the California Angels to force a one-game playoff for the AL West title, which Seattle won, 9-1, to secure its first playoff berth.

During the playoff run, the Washington State Legislature approved a financing plan for a retractable-roof ballpark. The Metropolitan King County Council voted to proceed with the plan and Safeco Field opened on July 15, 1999.20

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, Retrosheet.org, and Ballparks.com.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SEA/SEA199505260.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1995/B05260SEA1995.htm

Notes

1 The Mariners were forced to play the rest of the 1994 season on the road, a 20-game road trip that would have gone longer if not for the players strike. The Seahawks played their first three home games at the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium. Two construction workers were killed in a crane accident during the cleanup effort.

2 Heath Foster, “Panel Urges New Mariners Stadium,” Tacoma News Tribune, January 12, 1995: B1; Eric Sorensen, “Safeco Field Timeline – How It Got to Where It Is Now,” Seattle Times, June 23, 1999, https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/19990623/2968121/safeco-field-timeline—-how-it-got-to-where-it-is-now.

3 The right fielder agreed to a four-year contract with the Baltimore Orioles worth up to $18 million. Griffey had even offered to defer money from his own contract in order to make Buhner a competitive offer.

4 “Mariners, Griffey Wooing Buhner,” Baltimore Sun, December 16, 1994: 6D.

5 The Mariners’ winning percentage was the lowest among franchises that had existed throughout the 1977-1994 period. The 1993 expansion Colorado Rockies (.430) and Florida Marlins (.415) had lower winning percentages for their two seasons of play.

6 The Mariners went 83-79 in 1991 and 82-80 in 1993, good for fifth and fourth place, respectively, in the AL West. In 18 seasons, the team finished last or second to last in the division 11 times.

7 Further complicating ownership’s efforts to relocate, the major leagues had just awarded expansion teams to Phoenix and Tampa, the two cities that would have been best equipped to accept a fleeing Mariners franchise. Instead, Orlando and Washington, DC/Northern Virginia were the most likely candidates.

8 McDonald stood 6-feet-7, making this the tallest matchup of two starters in major-league history at a combined 13 feet 5 inches. This was the third time the two had gone head-to-head. In 1997, Seattle was rumored to be in trade talks to acquire McDonald, which would have made Johnson and McDonald the tallest one-two starting combo in history, but not the tallest pair of pitching teammates. That distinction belonged to Johnson and 6-foot-8 reliever Jeff Nelson.

9 Before the game, Hoiles had recalled another game in which Johnson had struck him out twice, and then he hit a home run in his third at-bat. Hearing that, backup catcher Matt Nokes predicted, “Chris, you’re taking him deep tonight.” Buster Olney, “Orioles Go Down Swinging in 8-3 Loss to Mariners,” Baltimore Sun, May 27, 1995: 1C. While it’s a great story, it doesn’t appear to have happened. Hoiles had previously hit one home run off Johnson, on April 11, 1993. In that game, Hoiles had four plate appearances against Johnson, in which he singled, was hit by a pitch, homered in his third at-bat, and walked. Hoiles and Johnson never crossed paths in the minors and the author also could not find any evidence of the two going head-to-head in college.

10 This was the first of six games in 1995 in which Johnson struck out 13 or more batters. Johnson finished the season 18-2 with a 2.48 ERA, winning his first of five Cy Young Awards.

11 Larry LaRue, “Life Without Junior: Mariners Must Replace One of Baseball’s Best,” Tacoma News Tribune, May 28, 1995: C1.

12 LaRue, “Life Without Junior.”

13 LaRue, “Life Without Junior.” After Griffey was taken off the field, Piniella had to shuffle his outfielders around to find the ideal fit, something he’d find himself doing almost daily for the next several weeks. Diaz took over center field, Bragg moved from left to replace him in right, and Rich Amaral came off the bench to play left.

14 Buster Olney, “Griffey’s Great Grab Exacts High Price: Shattered Wrist,” Baltimore Sun, May 28, 1995: 8D.

15 Associated Press, “M’s Griffey Breaks Bone,” Bellingham (Washington) Herald, May 27, 1995: A1.

16 LaRue, “Life Without Junior.”

17 Larry LaRue, “Griffey’s Broken Wrist Shakes M’s,” Tacoma News Herald, May 27, 1995: C1.

18 LaRue, “Griffey’s Broken Wrist Shakes M’s.”

19 LaRue, “Life Without Junior.”

20 The Kingdome was demolished on March 26, 2000. Video of the controlled implosion can be seen here: Seattle Seahawks, “Kingdome Implosion HD | Seattle Seahawks,” YouTube, March 20, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt2ekbkDVv4.