Notes: Griffey looks for new start
Center fielder not overreacting to recent struggles
By Mark Sheldon / MLB.com

HOUSTON -- Once, in his younger days with the Seattle Mariners, Ken Griffey Jr. went through a Spring Training slump so bad that it felt necessary for him to take drastic measures.

So, Griffey stripped off his entire uniform in the clubhouse and treated it like the late Schottzie the dog might have a fire hydrant. Then he threw everything in the garbage.

"Sometimes, you need to start over and have a fresh new everything, except the glove," Griffey said. "New hat, new wristbands, new undershirt, new jock."

While in the throws of a deep post-All-Star break slump with the Reds, Griffey was nowhere close to destroying his stuff.

"You can't go in there and break helmets and bats," the center fielder said.

Griffey went 0-for-5 in Wednesday's loss to Houston. His wife, Melissa, playfully called it "the pineapple," in a reference to the TV show "Hawaii Five-O."

Before he slugged a two-run home run in his first at-bat on Thursday, Griffey was batting .133 (6-for-45) with one homer and three RBIs since the All-Star break. He was 3-for-31 in the previous seven games and admitted things haven't felt right at the plate lately.

"What's really messed up is I felt crooked in the batter's box," said Griffey, who entered Thursday's game batting .236 with 19 homers and 53 RBIs for the season. "So I spent a lot of time looking at my feet and they were lined up. I just felt like I was looking at left field."

Conversely, the Reds came out strong in the second half and have not suffered from Griffey's lack of offensive production.

"If the team keeps going the way its going, that's the most important thing," Griffey said. "I'm going to hit. As long as I'm able to go out there and play defense and not let the team down that way. That's also important. ... If I'm not getting any hits, you guys [on the other team] aren't getting any either. That's the attitude that you have to have."

Reds manager Jerry Narron said he might give Griffey a day off soon to regroup, but had no intentions of moving the 36-year-old out of the lineup's No. 3 spot.

"At the end of April last year, everybody said he was done, through, when he was struggling," Narron said. "He ended up having a good year. I think he'll get out of it."

Griffey, who is 11th all-time with 556 career home runs, was also optimistic he would break out.

"Sometimes, it just takes a bloop," Griffey said. "I've just hit the ball at people. When you hit the ball well, it looks like there's one guy out there. When you're going bad, it looks like there's about 50. Things will change. I just have to stay positive."
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