Mariners thank Trainer Emeritus Rick Griffin for 38 years of service

Griffin joined the Mariners in 1983 as only the club’s second-ever Head Athletic Trainer

The 2021 Seattle Mariners season will be the first since 1983 during which Trainer Emeritus Rick Griffin will not have specific responsibilities with the club.

“Rick made a lifetime commitment to the Mariners organization,” said Mariners chairman John Stanton. “Not just in the 38 years he devoted to the club, but in the manner of that devotion. It was truly a 24–7, 365 commitment to the players and the organization that never wavered.

“I want to thank Rick for the work, the passion and the loyalty he showed our organization and players. Very, very few in our franchise’s history have had the impact that Rick has.”

Griffin joined the Mariners on Feb. 3, 1983 as only its second-ever Head Athletic Trainer. He finished the 2017 season, his 35th, leading the Athletic Training Department, having worked 5,543 career regular-season games as well as an additional 34 Postseason games. Following the 2017 season, he transitioned to the Trainer Emeritus position, stepping back from the day-to-day grind while still pursing special projects, and assisting the Mariners High Performance Department.

Griffin will retain the Trainer Emeritus title moving forward.

In his honor, a plaque honoring his career will be placed at the entrance to the Rick Griffin Athletic Training room in the Mariners clubhouse.

Griffin helped invent the modern Athletic Training function here in Seattle, across Major League Baseball and around the world, particularly in Japan where he visited over 25 times lecturing and providing seminars on baseball sports medicine.

When he began his career, “trainers” were often viewed as the guys taping ankles and stretching players. Through his work with the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society (PBATS), including six years (1990–95) as the American League representative to PBATS, and his own passion, Rick helped lead the change to modern Athletic Training with increased education, sharing of best practices, working more closely with doctors and surgeons, and creating a focus on diversifying Athletic Training Staffs. Now Athletic Trainers are properly viewed as one of the keys to any successful professional or collegiate team.

Following the 1999 season the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society named Rick and his staff the Major League Baseball Athletic Training Staff of the Year, and following the 2013 season Rick and his staff were honored with the Martin-Monahan Award as the best medical staff in MLB. Rick was inducted into the Washington State Athletic Trainers Association (WSATA) Hall of Fame in 2016.

Rick is a member of the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society, American College of Sports Medicine, National Athletic Trainers Society, and the Northwest Athletic Trainers Society. In addition to his work in baseball, he has spent the past four decades providing medical coverage at professional rodeos in Montana in the off-season.

Rick plans to stay involved in athletic training endeavors serving as the Chairman of the prestigious National Athletic Trainers Association Hall of Fame Committee and the Chairman of the International Committee for the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society.

“When I started working for the Mariners in 1983, I could never have imagined that 38 years later I would have held a position that allowed me to love going to work every day,” Griffin said. “I have had a wonderful career and the many friendships and special acquaintances I have made with players, coaches, my fellow athletic trainers, the scouts, media, front office and entire Mariners family has truly been the love of my life and has made this incredible journey so worthwhile.”

Hall of Fame center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. remembers the day he met Griffin was almost a measuring-up process for both of them.

“I was 17 years old,” Griffey said. “I was looking at him and he was looking at me.”

Their relationship grew into a life-long friendship.

“Rick is more than a trainer, he’s a family friend,” Griffey said. “That’s what separates Rick from a lot of people. It’s not just the job, it’s the relationship he has with each player on the field, off the field and in retirement.”

After Griffey was traded to the Cincinnati Reds in 2000, he often consulted Griffin during times he was hurt.

“I would still call Rick to make sure that the process of my rehab was where it should be,” he said. “You don’t get that from a lot of people. When my kids get hurt, he’s the first person I call.”

When Griffey broke his left wrist while making a spectacular catch against the Kingdome wall in 1995, Griffin helped ease the anguish almost immediately.

“As we were walking off the field, the question I asked was, ‘Will I play again?’ He said, ‘Absolutely!’ The reassurance of that helped me through my rehab.”

Griffey says Griffin is the best of his profession because he became personally invested in players, and it became much more than a player-trainer relationship. They would go on offseason hunting and fishing trips together, and Griffin often visited Griffey at his Florida home whenever he was in the area.

“When the winter meetings were down in Orlando, he would come down a couple days early to hang out with us,” Griffey said. “If it’s a former player and Rick is in that same town, he’s going to make sure to see him.

“There are certain people who are more than their job titles. They take a personal interest in not only you as a player, but also you as a person and your family. That was a huge thing for me — the relationship. I know that I’m not the only one who feels this way. There are tons of guys out there who Rick has helped.

“I can’t say enough about him.”

Players credit Griffin not only with keeping them on the field or bringing them back from injuries, but also helping them achieve greatness.

“I don’t know if I would have had the career I had if he wasn’t there,” said Edgar Martinez, the former designated hitter who was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2019. “He was a big part of my success. Our friendship grew through the years because I got hurt too many times! We spent a lot of time together through those injuries, we became friends and it’s been a longterm relationship.

“Rick cares about the player and the person. He doesn’t just think about the player’s body to keep him healthy. He thinks about what can help him mentally, what can help his overall health. It’s deeper than just trying to keep him on the field.”

Griffin knew how to read a player’s body language on the field, whether it was how he walked to home plate before an at-bat or the way he stood in the batter’s box.

“His attention to detail went beyond medicine,” said former second baseman Harold Reynolds. “I remember going through a little bit of a skid and Rick said, ‘I’ve been looking at you and you’re not upright at the plate the way you were a week ago. Is your toe hurting? Is your knee hurting?’ He had this keen eye. He was probably my best hitting instructor.

“You look at so many other teams that played on (artificial turf) in those days and those guys were hobbling all over the place. But we were healthy. He took care of us. I’m 60 years old and never had an injury. A lot of it had to do with the training we had.”

Few players became as close with Griffin as former right fielder Jay Buhner.

“He could read a player’s tone of voice and body language and know if was ready to play that night,” Buhner said. “He’s got to know who’s having a good day and who’s not, what buttons to push and what not to push. He would see everything and hear everything, and he had to walk that fine line of talking (in confidence) with a player who’s hurting, and then dealing with a manager who needs to know if that guy can play or not. A player is always going to say they’re ready to go, but there’s a fine line in being able to tell the manager that this guy’s hurt and it’s probably in the best interest to give him a day off. And then he would go back to the player and say, ‘I just told Skip you need a day. Let’s be smart and do the right thing.’ Rick was really good at being able to do that; it’s a lost art. He did that remarkably well for a long time.

“Rick was a psychologist, a team doctor, a trainer, a hitting coach, a pitching coach, even a shoe guru in his work with Nike. When I was going through my plantar fasciitis he was designing special shoes and insoles. We were like brothers and we’re still extremely close. He’s a great human being and he will do anything in the world for somebody.”

Former first baseman Alvin Davis learned early in his career how much Griffin cared for the players.

“Rick and I got really close, both during the offseasons working out but (also) him keeping me healthy and keeping me on the field,” Davis said. “I think he was the first trainer that I really understood felt his job was to keep you on the field. Just a really, really caring trainer who was there for the players 100 percent.”

Griffin’s training room became a place for camaraderie after games, Reynolds remembers.

“After the games we grabbed our food, we sat in there and we iced and we talked and hung out,” Reynolds said. “Rick made it inviting. We talked about pitching, we talked about plays in the game, we talked about family, whatever it might be. There might be 10, 15 guys sitting in the training room after the game.”

Griffin may have saved pitcher Randy Johnson’s career, Reynolds said, by introducing the Mariners’ then-inconsistent left-hander to Nolan Ryan in 1992. Griffin had met Ryan at a series of celebrity blackjack tournaments, and he set up a meeting between Ryan and Johnson during the 1992 season. They talked about mechanics, conditioning and off-day throwing programs. Johnson won 19 games the next season and became a key in the Mariners’ rise to their first division championship in 1995, a season that helped secure the franchise’s future in Seattle when it appeared they might be leaving.

“Randy Johnson couldn’t throw a strike, and who sets up the meeting with Nolan Ryan? Rick does,” Reynolds said. “That changes Randy’s career. The Mariners are not where they are without Rick Griffin. Rick changed our careers and our lives.”

Mark Langston and Griffin made it to the Majors at nearly the same time, but while Langston may have felt like a rookie, Griffin didn’t seem to be.

“Rick, to me, he was cutting edge back in 1984,” Langston said. “To me, he is the best trainer to have ever been in the game. He is so smart; he knows his craft inside and out.”

But more than his skills as an athletic trainer stood out.

“There were no strength coaches back in ’84. None. No team had a strength coach. I think it was 1986 Rick hired Pete Shmock who was a 2-time Olympian shot-putter. Rick thinks so far out the box. He brought somebody who was an Olympic athlete to do the training. Him and Pete, they were very tight as far as coordinating plans from a training standpoint, throwing standpoint. So, we were doing plyometric stuff back when nobody knew what that word meant. We were doing rebounding stuff, which was weird. Most of us lived up there, up in Seattle, so we would all train together in the wintertime, too.

“Rick was to me at the forefront of everything. I was an elbow guy. I always had my elbow issues. Rick, you always felt like he had to put you together every five days. He was so good at having his pulse on everyone’s needs.

And not only their physical needs.

“Back in those days, there were no sports psychologists. He was my sports psychologist,” Langston continued. “There were many days in ’84, ’85…really the whole time I was with Seattle when I was icing my arm down, if it was a horrible game, Rick would have to talk me off the ledge. He would come in there and provide an outlet for me to be able to talk through some of the things that went on. He knew the game, so it was always really constructive conversations with him.

For Langston, one story encapsulates both the relationships Rick had with players, and his skills.

“We’re in Texas, we have an off-day, and the hotel we stayed at was right across the street from Wet N’ Wild, the water park,” Langston said.

“So, we decide, myself, Mike Moore and Rick were going over to the water park for our off day. So, we go over there, we’re having a blast going down all the water slides, just having a great time. We go to this one slide, and Mike Moore decides to go down this slide backwards. So, he goes down, he hits it. The little sheep that I am, I just follow him. I go down backwards so we go ‘gosh, that was unbelievable, let’s do it again.’ So, we go down the slide backwards again. The second time, when I reached out, and Rick was with us too, the second time, I reached out my hand and it jarred my back to the point where, man, I was in trouble, I was in trouble getting to the surface.

“So, I got to the surface, and there was a little kid there and I looked, and I go ‘I need help. I need help.’ And so, the little kid looked at me, big eyes and is like ‘Stranger danger! Stranger danger!’ And he completely swam away from me. So, then I crawled to the edge, and was able to get out. By that time Rick realized something was not right, and he came over.

“I told him I didn’t know what I did, I jacked up my back. I was supposed to pitch in two days in Texas. My back was messed up, I remember our manager came up to him and said, ‘if he doesn’t make this start, you’re gone.’ So, Rick worked on me hard. I did make the start, in fact, I pitched really, really well in that start. It was a great feather in our cap for both of us.

“I’ve got a million stories like that, but that one right there, was something that starting out to have a fun day and it turned out to be that I didn’t know if I was going to go on the DL, or what the heck was going to happen because my back was messed up. Sure enough, Rick put the pieces of the puzzle back together, and I did not miss my start.

“He’s the best, nobody better, in all the years that I played, nobody better than Rick,” Langston concluded. “If there is a Hall of Fame for trainers, Rick should be in it. He was truly one of the most innovative guys. Always on the cutting edge of everything. One of the all-time greats, and one of the all-time great people on top of it. That combination is rare, to me, I could never say enough good things about him. “