Drew, Weaver guilty by association?

We dip into the Insider mailbag while waiting for Ken Griffey Jr. to join the 500 home run club. Here's hoping he gets there before he slams into a wall, pulls a hamstring or sneezes his way onto the disabled list.

Jerry,
I'm glad Ken Griffey Jr. has regained his form. The notion that Junior was not a Hall of Famer has been widely discussed lately. It's absurd. No one has put together a better decade at the plate and in the field. Koufax gained entry on the basis of the six best years anyone could remember seeing. Griffey did the same for longer. Flukish injuries in the Queen City should not undermine his legacy of excellence and determination.
-- Jamal
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Jamal,

I agree with you on Junior's Hall of Fame credentials. Eleven straight All-Star Game appearances, 10 Gold Gloves, seven top 10 finishes in the Most Valuable Player voting and an MVP award in 1997 should have made him a lock for Cooperstown. Kirby Puckett certainly got there with much less. The overriding sense of disappointment, of course, comes with the sense that Junior could have achieved so much more if he had stayed healthy. Is it really "flukish'' when he suffered so many leg injuries because he was such a natural and didn't put enough time into stretching or conditioning? Griffey is still only 34, so the big question now is whether he'll enter Cooperstown in the Mays-Aaron-Bonds pantheon of greats or a notch below. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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