my father played with Ken Griffey Sr in colt(15-17) travel team. He actually hit like a 100 points higher then Griffey did, but he said Griffey got bigger his senior year and was very fast.
Back in like 1998, I was teammates on an unlimited adult team with a guy who was the shortstop for the tiger's AAA minor league team back when Allen Trammell was detroit's all star shortstop, he was pretty good but never got up to the majors much because Allen Trammel was a fixture there. I remember he still had his wood bats from the tigers and he would use them and he had a quick swing and never got jammed to break a bat.(and u know pitchers tried , seeing the wood). Another guy on that team was a great natural hitter he was like 6'3" 250 and out of shape, One time he absolutely crushed a homerun at a field where there was no fence - the crazy part was he pulled his rib muscle on the swing and follow thru and had to hobble his slow self around the bases , and still made it all the way against a good well schooled team. Ive seen guys like Canseco pull a rib muscle on a miss, but that was the only time ive seen a guy swing so hard and crush the ball that he pulled a rib muscle, you just dont see that injury often on a hit!- He could of hit in any league. We played against some amature teams in the baltimore area and i remember that there ere several guys on those teams that had been drafted. Didn't see them enough to remember them to know if they made it or not.
I was a hell of a hitter myself , i have/had a genetic disease (and recently some major cardiovascular surgeries). but i was 6'8" 210 in highschool and got up to like 225 after school. I was really into baseball as a young man, I used to always swing a bat trying to perfect my swing. i remember i hit an opposite field hr to right about 400feet when i was just a skinny sophmore and everyone said looked like a lefty hit it and had some memorable blasts some at least 450feet. One thing , in all my baseball experience i never had a game or practice where I felt their was another guy on the field(within my age limits) who could hit as good as me. Even the time I tried out for the braves in 99' at an uninvited open tryout in Macon Georgia , and i was actually confident that i was going to impress them with my hitting and make the organization , but the first thing we did was run a 60yard dash and my hamstring completely tore. I also pitched pretty good, had a forkball that i could easily grip , but i wasn't a great pitcher my elbow had a hard time holding up and would constantly get sore so i would end up throwing knuckleballs and splitfinger pitches and only threw like 75mph when you would expect a guy who is 6'8 to be throwing 90 or something. I think if i had been healthy i would have had a good shot at doing something (but if i didn't have the disease probably be closer to my fathers height of 5'11 and might have been a totally different type of player (2ndbaseman?))
There were a few guys i remember playing with who had the ability to have made it had they been in the right program.
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