KEN GRIFFEY JR.
COMMENTARY / GUEST EDITORIAL
Vol. 59 No. 11 | November 2010
Flying and Baseball
You get back what you put in
THE FIRST TIME I REMEMBER flying in a small
airplane I was 12 or 13 years old. I went up
a couple of times with my dad, but when he
signed with the New York Yankees, he was
not allowed to fly, and I never thought about
flying after that. It was never something I
really wanted to do.
But as I got older, and my wife and I had
kids, I started thinking about it. I was 36
when I decided to take flying lessons. My
kids were getting older, and I saw flying as a
way to see new places. When they went off
to college, I could fly wherever they were,
spend the day with them, and be home in
time for dinner. I earned my pilot certificate
in February 2007 at age 37. I had 93 hours of
flying time with my instructor, Mark Griffin,
before I flew by myself.
For me, learning to fly was similar to going
through spring training to prepare for the
regular season opener, when you get your
first at-bat. You know it’s going to come, and
you have to prepare for it the best you can.
But I’m not sure I was as prepared for my
first solo flight as I was for my first big-league
at-bat against Dave Stewart, a big right-handed pitcher for the Oakland Athletics.
But that first at-bat was nothing compared
to my first solo flight. We were taxiing to
the runway when Mark stopped the plane
and told me, “You’re ready for your first
solo.” When I get nervous, I laugh. When he
jumped out, I started laughing. I regained my
composure, taxied to the runway, and made
my call-out, still laughing.
You never really know how much an
instructor helps you until he’s not sitting
beside you, his hand always on the yoke. I
was by myself, and I had to go around the
flight pattern and make my first touch-and-
go landing. I did a second, and then a third,
which was my best of the three, maybe
because I knew I was stopping. One of the
things I still remember thinking was how
light the plane, a Cirrus SR22, really was.
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Ken Griffey Jr., EAA 1037788, was a Major League Baseball
player for 21 years. He hit 630 home runs, was a 12-time all-star and was the 1997 American League Most Valuable Player.
He owns and flies a Cirrus SR22.
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