Ken Griffey may be out for the rest of the season because of a strained foot tendon that is potentially worse than first anticipated. Even so, his 128 games so far this year would be the most he has recorded since 200, his first season in Cincinnati. Appropriately, Griffey is having his best season since 2000, which makes you wonder what his career numbers would like if he hadn't missed so much time this millennium.

Oddly, through his first 12 seasons (1989-2000), Griffey had played 89.55% of his teams' games. Other than missing 73 of 145 games in 1995 and getting a late start in his rookie year (35 games missed), Griffey never missed more than 20 games in a season. He missed fewer than ten seven season, including none missed in 1998 (161 games).

From 2001 through this season, Griffey missed almost half the Reds' games (54.94% played). He will have missed 365 games in five years, almost double what he missed in his first dozen seasons (196 games). The nadir was 109 missed or 53 played in 2003.

Projecting his 2001-2005 stats to a 89.55% game availability rate, he would have 595 home runs and 2540 hits. And those numbers include some dismal, injury-debased seasons—he projects to 17 home runs in 2002. If Griffey had those types of numbers at age 35, he could have become baseball's third 600-homer/3000-hit man after Mays and Aaron.

Anyway, the missed opportunities in the second half of Griffey's career made me wonder if Griffey's career ranks among the worst at missed time of those in the Hall of Fame (of course, if president Bush had actually won admittance via the Veterans Committee—he was on the last ballot—he would have set the all-time record). I ran the numbers for all Hall of Famers in their prime for those who went in as a player and who were position players for the majority of their careers. That is, I looked at the years from the first season each became a starter (played in half his team's games) until his last.

Keep in mind that Griffey has played 2125 of his teams; 2686 games or 79.11% and 561 games missed. That's an average of 128 games per year in a 162-game schedule.

Here are the lowest numbers for the current Hall-of-Famers:

You'll note that a number of the names at the top lost time to military service. Now, here are the worst by games missed:

Name	G	Tm G	PCT	G Missed
Ted Williams	2292	3393	67.55%	1,101
Enos Slaughter	2380	3412	69.76%	1,032
Hank Greenberg	1393	2318	60.09%	925
Johnny Mize	1884	2782	67.73%	898
Roger Bresnahan	1438	2280	63.07%	842
Willie Stargell	2350	3176	73.99%	826
Pee Wee Reese	2166	2945	73.55%	779
Carlton Fisk	2396	3170	75.58%	774
Gabby Hartnett	1858	2624	70.81%	766
Chick Hafey	1259	2001	62.92%	742
Joe DiMaggio	1736	2473	70.20%	737
Willie McCovey	2488	3224	77.18%	736
Tony Perez	2765	3500	79.00%	735
Buck Ewing	1314	2041	64.38%	727
Edd Roush	1884	2586	72.85%	702
Phil Rizzuto	1630	2311	70.53%	681
Rick Ferrell	1783	2461	72.46%	678
Paul Molitor	2683	3281	81.77%	598
Bill Dickey	1725	2315	74.51%	590
Red Schoendienst	2210	2799	78.97%	589

So Griffey would not even be among the worst in either group. Then again he has probably another five season or so of games to miss.

By the way, the average Hall-of-Famer played 2082 of his team's 2466 games or 84.41% with 385 games missed. Here are the ones with the highest "attendance" rates and least games missed: