No doubt about it, without Junior, there would be no Safeco Field (a/k/a the Happiest Place in Seattle in our household). While we fell in love with him, Junior made Seattle fall in love with baseball. In the raging age of cheaters, Junior was always a class act. We loved how he entered at center field, across the turf painted with his number. ...
Junior's speech was vintage Junior. No script. No 'bullet points,' no agenda. It was just him speaking from the heart. He spoke of his love of his teammates, and the game. The crux of the speech: "I may have sometimes been standoffish, I didn't mean to. I just wanted to play baseball. That's the only thing that mattered, playing and winning ballgames for this team. I want to thank all of you, and the Mariners organization, for letting me be part of something special. I just want to say thank you."
And that's why Seattle loves him so. The entire sell out crowd of 46,000 plus (the ONLY sell out crowd of the season) stood when he entered the field and didn't sit until the ceremony concluded, over an hour later. The Mariners have posted his entire 24-minute (appropriately!) speech here: http://wapc.mlb.com/play?content_id=29610499&partnerId=as_sea_20130812_10700924#
I know there's no crying in baseball, but Junior's message was so heartfelt. There were so many poignant moments. Perhaps the most touching was when he was talking about teammate Jay Buhner, whom he had almost nothing (initially) in common with. However, standing before 46,000 plus people Saturday night, he said if anything every happened to him and his wife, Buhner is the man whom he'd want to raise his children. It had Buhner and countess others [not naming names] blubbering. ;)
Junior's speech ran long (not that anyone minded!) but the game was quick. No score into the sixth inning. 
Then the wheels feel off and the Ms ended up losing miserably. :/ Sorry, Junior. But Junior had a message for the current, very young, Mariners team. (Loved how they all flipped their lids in tribute to Jr!) Graphic from Seattle Mariners, of course ...
During Jr's speech, one of CJ's teeth fell out. Fortunately, he was the only one in our party of 6 to lose a tooth that night. :)
Also, it's worth noting the air was absolutely electric the night of Junior's induction. I saw several flashes of lightning and the stormy skies made for some pretty colors.
ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL?: Just a few hours after getting home from the Griffey celebration, we refocused ourselves toward September, and the NFL.
Rick had secured us Seahawks training camp tickets, which are surprisingly hard to get. They sell out ever single practice session way in advance, so we were lucky to have our spots.
We had to drive to a shopping center in Renton to catch a shuttle to the practice facility, the Virginia Mason Athletic Center. It's a pretty place, on the shores of Lake Washington.
DRY RUN: Monday morning we headed to Group Health for Christian's third rabies shot (since a wee small hours o' the morn encounter with a raccoon going after one of our dogs, not pleasant). While he was in getting shot up, I walked the kids to Red Balloon, where they got to pick from a rainbow-plus of M&Ms.
From there, we drove north and checked out Marymoor Park, where we'll be tomorrow night for a Hall & Oats concert. We went to scope out the area where the concert will be (it looks really small - it will be interesting to see how the shoehorn us all in there), and we checked out some of the rest of the park.
Afterward, we stopped at Chuck's on 85th for a late lunch and some board game fun. Today, Annabelle bested us at Robot Explorers (below) CJ had the lead in Dixit.
I wondered about that raccoon post on Christian's FB page......
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