Gammons: Trey Griffey to be #1 pick of '12 draft

[guernsey]

Reminds me of Beano Cook's prediction that Ron Paulus would win two Heisman's while at Notre Dame.

Junior in good health
The first good news of the spring is that Junior Griffey's knee is healed, he feels great and he is moving very good. As Reds hitting coach Chris Chambliss says, "better than he has in a while." But after four years of seven trips to the disabled list and 274 missed games, the 35-year-old who was baseball's Michael Jordan before the injuries and the 1998-2001 home run boom knows there is a lot of luck in staying on the field. Griffey's last three injuries have been to his knee, ankle and hamstring.

"I'm not going to change the way I play," he says. "The game should be played hard. But I still have a lot of game left. I just want to be healthy."

Griffey already has 501 career home runs, and how far he goes will be determined by his health and how long he wants to be away from his children. His son Trey is 11, and if he doesn't go to college to be a premier running back, he will be the first pick in the 2012 draft. His other son Tarin is 10, and is a great basketball player. This is Junior: he plays DVD videos of them on the dashboard of his car. "They will determine how long I play," he says. "I want to see them in high school. Trey told me that if I'll playing until I'm 42, he'll play baseball, but that may be too many of his games that I'd miss."

As for the steroids controversy, as someone who twice hit 50 homers in a season (1997 and '98) and is in the 500 club, Junior says, "I don't concern myself with what someone else may or may not have done. I don't begrudge anyone anything. I just know I never even thought about using steroids. My game was speed, playing center field. My arms aren't any bigger than they were when I was 20. When I'm 50, I don't want to be hunched over or in a wheelchair, I want to be playing with my kids, because they're a lot more important than home runs."