) Griffey hit the warehouse, but Juan Gone got the trophy.īut this was a time before MLB Network and interleague play, before streaming video, before so, so much, so I was resigned to only seeing Rangers games on TV a half-dozen times a season, and mainly connecting with the team through baseball cards and SportsCenter highlights.
Juan Gonzalez's win in the home run derby at Camden Yards that season solidified my fandom (the derby happened on the same day I got my headgear tightened, and it was really, really tight. I was drawn to baseball by my parents, who were both big fans (my mom the Big Red Machine Cincinnati teams of the 1970s, my dad the hard-luck Phillies) and in 1993, after reading a newspaper article about the ageless Nolan Ryan, I found my team - the Texas Rangers. or Barry Bonds, who has lots of name recognition outside of the game.Ĭlick here to pre-order a copy of my upcoming book “Playing Through the Pain: Ken Caminiti and the Steroids Confession That Changed Baseball Forever.” He was a solid player - a three-time all-star, the 1996 National League MVP - but not a major star, like Ken Griffey Jr.
Ken Caminiti is one of those baseball names that many have forgotten or overlooked (A Guy, as they say ). During the decade or so I spent working on my book, I received one question more than any other: why Ken Caminiti?
