Griffey leaving is ending a marriage that has really been over for years.  I hope he stays and rides off into the sunset at the end of the year, but I know he really wants to win a ring.  He needs to do what's best for him and his family.

In related trade news, it was comical to see that Manny Ramirez said that Boston "doesn't deserve him."  If that's true, then I'm ready for the salary cap in baseball.  It must be nice to kick players around, win a World Series, and then go out and pick up your next whipping boy.

Which leads me to my point: this city never deserved Griffey.  Griffey is guilty of two things - thinking he still has the body of a 21-year-old and injuring himself while playing hard.  At least at 38 years old he's not sitting out a few games for a strained ring finger.

I've lived in Cincinnati for all of my 30 years, and it's been embarrassing to see how people have treated him - on blogs, at the ballpark, in the media, and on talk radio.  When it comes to football, we still cheer for guys like Ocho Whino and Chris Henry - people seemingly short on character - when they score.  We ignore the fact that Chris Perry hasn't produced since joining the Bengals.  But when it comes to baseball, the nay-sayers come out in full force when a legend doesn't make the catch after diving and tearing his rotator cuff.

I'll say it to whoever will listen: signing a contract in sports, regardless of its length, is a gamble.  Listening to callers complain "we're paying him all of that money to sit on the bench" made my stomach turn.  Nobody came out and immediately complained like I did when the Reds gave millions to a guy like Eric Milton.  But we ride the case of an icon because he has to have major surgery that could end his career.

Eric Davis never played more than 135 games a season, but the city loves him.  Hall-of-famer? Nope.

Pete Rose goes to jail for tax evasion and finally tells the truth about betting on the game after more than a decade.  We cry that he should be in the Hall and raise our beer glasses when his name is mentioned.

The "Kid" comes home and signs a contract for less than the market value to a team whose front office lied to him.  No pitching.  No defense. Just sitting back and riding the Griffey mania wave and hoping the dollars will flow.  And we expected to ride Junior to the World Series?

How long can we continue to wear out the memories of the Big Red Machine and the Wire-to-wire season?  Junior never had that kind of team along side of him and it was obvious that it wasn't going to happen.  So people thought it bright to take shots at the superstar because they needed someone to blame.  Never mind "Uncle Carl," minor league managers, bad trades, and a litany of other media parades that were nothing more than a smokescreen to hide the fact that they had no intention of building a contender.

I will miss the time we've had with one of the greatest players of all time.  It's sad that the city will never wake up and realize what it had.