How do you define Ken Griffey Jr.? Maybe it's a question without a specific answer. Asking him gets an awkward pause and a look of exasperation. "Really?" he said.
Asking others, it prompts memories, numbers, anecdotes and reverence without a definitive summary.
"Well, there's a lot more to him than that," Edgar Martinez said.
Still, as Griffey prepares for enshrinement in the Baseball Hall of Fame _ the game's most prestigious honor _ it's a question that lingers more for him than for some other inductees because of his influence on the game and its fans.
So many words have been written about his greatness and exploits on and off the field. But there really is no way to encapsulate it all _ what he meant to the game, to a city and to a generation of fans.
How do you take his massive accomplishments over 22 years and wedge them into a description that the attention-span-challenged youth of today might understand?
