Ken Griffey Jr. played an incredible prank on a rookie Alex Rodriguez
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Ken Griffey Jr. is known for many outstanding accomplishments during his baseball career.
Griffey’s 630 home runs, 13 Gold Gloves and MVP Award make up just a fraction of the accolades he racked up during his career. It turns out Grifffey’s many talents extended off the field, where he was also an incredible prankster. Seriously.
Griffey is a subject of Sports Illustrated’s Where Are They Now series, and Ben Reiter's story about the slugger brings to light an outstanding prank Griffey played on a rookie Alex Rodriguez when both were on the Mariners:
Griffey enlisted Seattle’s trainer, Rick Griffin, to convince Rodriguez that the club’s stars—including Buhner and Randy Johnson—were involved in a scheme to sell their sperm to the highest bidder, as if they were thoroughbred stallions, and that Rodriguez might himself attract an appreciable stud fee. He brought in a fake doctor. “Dude, you got great genes,” Griffey told the rookie. The callow Rodriguez was skeptical at first. Then he started to come around. “How much money do you think we could make?” he asked. Griffey, mercifully, pulled the plug before donations were to be harvested. “Everybody has rookie hazing,” he says. “That was his.”
Great prank, but who knows to what lengths the hazing drove Rodriguez to try to impress his teammates.
