600 Home Runs, Hooray! Ah....My Back, Lungs and Colon!

So, the lead up to the milestone may have been a little more drawn out than people, especially Junior, preferred, but he got there tonight. His first inning shot off Mark Hendrickson, who is truly a very fine Major League pitcher, placed him on a plateau only occupied by five others: Dusty's best friend Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Barry Bonds and, of course the most deserving of the group, Sammy Sosa.

To commemorate the achievement, we here at the Reds Rocket have compiled a list of our favorite home runs hit by Ken Griffey Jr. Due to the length of time between 599 and 600, we were able to put quite a bit of time into the research. The list, of course, only includes those bombs anyone cares about, those hit between the years of 2000 and 2008. Please enjoy:

- April 9, 2000: Junior's first bomb as a Red. Hit against the Cubs off Scott Downs who was probably most famous for his nickname, Scott "Bell's Palsy" Downs, which was odd because he had Down's Syndrome.

- July 12, 2003: Junior rounded the bases one final time after taking Mike DeJean out of the ballpark. He sat out the rest of the season after rupturing his right ankle tendon

*Note: this joke was also available for the 2001, 20002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, or 2007 seasons. The author would have preferred 2007, had Casey not been pictured, so the season-ending testicular injury (torn coin purse) could have been mentioned.

- May 20, 2006: He stepped in with the bases loaded and turned around a 99 mph Joel Zumaya fastball to give the Reds the lead in the 7th. Reds still lost when the Saigon Kid, Danny Graves, gave it back in the 9th. Interesting side note, players in the Independent League are encouraged to flip off the fans, it adds to the experience.

- April 5, 2006: against Jerome Williams of the Cubs took one deep to right and off Sosa's dome. Sammy was in the midst of his one year sabbatical and, fortunately, was wearing that batting helmet in the stands. We could have lost one of the true ambassadors of the game. Baseball been very, very good to him.

- April 11, 2006: [pictured at the top] Glendon Rusch? Come on, eyes closed.

- April 23 2007: made his return from diverticulitis against the A's, just in time to hit his first bomb of the year off Chad Gaudin. Unfortunately, he also had a bad case of the mud butt and requested the grounds crew set the field up accordingly.

- July 6, 2007: Griffey took Arizona's Micah Owings out of the yard while eating a whole smoked turkey. Barbecue is his performance enhancing drugs. He plans a transition into competitive eating following his retirement from baseball.