Rosecrans: A different kind of Ken Griffey Jr. story

We all have memories of Ken Griffey Jr. — the swing (oh, that swing), the over-the-wall-catches, the back-to-back home runs with his father and the dogpile at the Kingdome.

Mine is different. Much different.

When I think of Ken Griffey Jr., I think of a nearly empty clubhouse in Sarasota, Fla., in the spring of 2008. It was just two people, one of whom happened to be headed to the Hall of Fame and the other was me.

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I was covering Reds spring training and on the way back from Ft. Myers the day before, I got a call from my father and the news wasn’t good. My mom had cancer, specifically colon cancer.

Many things ran through my head, just as millions of others have heard similar news. And one of the first things I wanted to do was find someone I could talk to, someone who had been through all this. I remembered someone who had — Griffey.

I knew Griffey’s mother, Birdie, had battled colon cancer, and she was the only person I knew of in my circles who had dealt with this, so I went to get advice.

“Ken, you got a second?” I said as I approached Griffey like I had many times before, with the same words, but a different tone.

Griffey understood the tone.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Your mom had colon cancer, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Yesterday my mom was diagnosed…”

He stopped me right there.

“Sit down,” he said. “Write this down — 513…”

And it was his mom’s phone number.

“Have your mom call my mom,” he said.

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I wrote it down and later relayed it to my mother. And then we sat and talked. We talked for an hour, not a superstar and a lowly reporter, but two sons who love their mothers.

Griffey went through what to expect, from the different options, to how I’d feel, to the hopelessness and ultimately the hope.

Every day that spring, he’d ask me if I’d talked to my mom, what the next step was, when chemo would start, when her surgery was. He asked if she liked where she was being treated, he was on the board of a hospital in Orlando, anything I needed — anything she needed — was at our disposal.

My mom didn’t take him up on that, but she did call Birdie Griffey.

Birdie was the only person my mom talked to who had actually been through the treatment, who had survived and beat it. Who told her the good, the bad and the ugly. Who told her exactly how she would feel, what exactly could go wrong and what exactly could go right.

More than that, they talked about their families, their sons, both of whom loved baseball and knew each other professionally. They bragged in the way only mothers can brag, and told stories that only mothers could appreciate — with the comfort of hindsight.

I can’t tell you how much it meant to our family to have someone my mother could talk to about her treatment, someone to encourage her, but also be frank with the realities of the situation. Birdie Griffey was that to my family and I am eternally grateful.

That same year, Ken Griffey Jr. was traded from the Reds to the White Sox. In August of that year, the Rays were in town to play the White Sox, and Marc Lancaster, who is one of my best friends and preceded me on the Reds beat at the Cincinnati Post, went to the White Sox clubhouse to say hello to Griffey, who he knew from his time covering the Reds.

According to Marc, Griffey’s first words to him were, “How’s Trent’s mom?”

Ken has asked me that question many, many times since, and almost every time I’m able to give him the same answer — she’s doing well, the cancer is gone and has (for the most part) stayed gone. But he keeps asking.

That’s the Ken Griffey Jr. I know.

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