Griffey Completes Punch Card, Gets Free Surgery

CINCINNATI--Ken Griffey Jr. completed the punch card provided him by Beacon Orthopedic Hospital in Cincinnati and is now entitled to one free surgery. He will redeem the card this offseason and have an operation on his left knee. Afterward, he hopes to attain a new card and start all over.

“I’ve really earned this,” Griffey said of the freebie. “It’s been, what, five surgeries since leaving Seattle? I kind of lost track. But when I scheduled this latest one I presented my card to the receptionist and noticed that all the holes had been punched. I’m getting a free surgery! Yes! Ouch! I think I just tore my rotator cuff.”

Griffey will have arthroscopic surgery on his left knee, which is not to be confused with his right knee, which he had surgery on in 2002.

“It’s the right knee—no, the left. It’s the left knee,” Griffey said. “I think that’s the one I’m having surgery on this time. To tell you the truth, sometimes I forget. I’ll have to draw a little ‘X’ on it so I remember which knee is the bad one when I go in for my operation. Not that it would matter which one they operated on. Either way, I would probably feel a lot better afterwards.”

To date, Griffey has had multiple surgeries on both legs, an ankle, and a shoulder. He was such a regular at the hospital that he was presented with the punch card. Hospital administrators didn’t think he’d ever fill it up.

“Ken has been a faithful, returning customer for us,” said Dr. Robert Martello, director of Beacon Orthopedic. “He’s also a celebrity so we like to treat him well. As a thank you for patronizing our hospital so many times we offered him this free surgery punch card. It was just a gesture. We had no idea he would use it. I’ve never seen somebody so injury prone in my life. That’s what he gets for not doing steroids.”

After his upcoming knee surgery, Griffey may need to address his increasingly sore right foot. The extent of that injury is not known, but it’s safe to assume that another surgery is in Griffey’s future.

“Hmm…I don’t know how bad that foot is yet, but I’ll go totally nuts here and say that Griffey is in for another surgery,” said Reds team doctor Tim Kremchek. “I feel sorry for the guy. As soon as he gets one problem fixed, another problem pops right up. I’ve been inside that guy’s body so many times that I have my initials carved into his left hamstring.”

Kremchek boasted about the number of successful surgeries he has performed on Griffey.

“It’s amazing that we’ve worked on him so much and nothing has gone wrong,” he said. “We’ve had a couple minor incidents, though. There was this one time when I couldn’t find my watch after working on Ken, and wouldn’t you know it, I realized I dropped it inside him. I never told him about it, but if he ever drops dead from some kind of mysterious infection, we’ll know where it came from. And I’ll finally be able to get my watch back.”

Griffey’s latest surgery comes on the heels of his best season in years. He has 35 home runs and 92 runs batted in, and has started to regain his old form. He plans to spend another offseason rehabbing so he can return next year at one hundred percent.

“It’s frustrating because this has really been a great year for me,” Griffey said. “I feel like I’ve turned a corner with regards to my health. Hopefully next year I’ll be back to the shape I was in when I played in Seattle. Remember that? Man, I had it good there. Everyone loved me. I could’ve killed somebody and they would’ve given me a standing ovation. Then I left and everything started falling apart. I guess that old saying is true: ‘Leaving Seattle is great until your whole goddamn career goes to shit.’”