Ken Griffey Jr. statue unveiled outside Safeco Field (Video)

Ken Griffey Jr. became a Hall of Famer last year, and now he’ll be further immortalized in Seattle.

Ken Griffey Jr. is clearly the greatest player in Seattle Mariners history, and he earned induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame last year while getting a record 99.3 percent of the vote. The Mariners retired his number (24) last year too, and they will honor Griffey in another very permanent way Friday night.

The first 45,000 fans to arrive at Friday night’s home game against the Texas Rangers will get a miniature statue of the “The Kid” as a keepsake. But the bigger version is being dedicated to the man himself outside Safeco Field before the game, and the statue was delivered to the ballpark Wednesday with an unveiling taking place on Thursday.

Here is another angle, with Griffey posing next to his likeness depicting a trademark home run swing.

Griffey’s statue, outside the home plate gate, is actually the second at Safeco Field. Former Mariners’ broadcaster Dave Niehaus, who did the team’s games for 34 years and died in 2010, has a statue in his honor on a main concourse in right-center field.

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If Griffey’s place in Mariners’ history was not already cemented in the hearts of the team’s fans, now it literally is for all time. Younger fans that don’t remember his best days can now learn about Griffey in a more organic, non-Internet way, as his long list of career accolades appears to be on full display around the base of the statue.