Living Large

WELCOME TO ISLEWORTH, the 800-acre Florida enclave that is home to a growing number of sports stars and celebrities, including Seattle Mariner Ken Griffey Jr. Join the tour of his home and community.

WINDERMERE, Fla. - Call it, temporarily, trouble in paradise.

Ken Griffey Jr. is lying prone, his head about a foot above the water of Lake Louise, tinkering with one of two engines of his 200-horsepower jetboat.

One slip and the outcome could be a Mariner nightmare. But showing the same balance that enables him to shag balls up the wall in center field with amazing grace, Griffey has no trouble staying out of the drink while he somehow fixes what is wrong.

He wriggles back into the cockpit, turns up the throttle and finds he has eliminated the gargle in the powerplant that had spoiled the first tour he's given of the waterways around his family's new home at Isleworth, an 800-acre gated enclave of 400 lots that Griffey and a growing number of sports notables call home.

Off we tear, Captain Ken at the wheel, 50 mph. He takes off his hat, the familiar swoosh saved from flying overboard.

"That's Mark O'Meara's house," Griffey says, pointing to a stylish two-story mini-mansion that backs onto the water not far from the first tee of the golf clubhouse.

A second later, two more gorgeous shoreline homes tear past and Griffey says, "That's Wesley Snipes' house. It's funny, you see someone like that in here and it's like no big deal. He lives here, you live here. No big thing. The only thing you wonder is what kind of candy he's giving out at Halloween. One of the best things about living here is that the candy bars are full-size, not the little bite-size things come by the plastic bag."

Living in Florida for the five months of baseball's offseason, October to February, came to the Griffeys as they searched for a winter home three years ago.

Robert Earl, who uses Griffey in a sports galaxy that shares ownership of the All-Star Cafe chain, lives in Isleworth and recommended it.

Ken and his wife, Melissa, had been working with a realtor, whom they instructed to find a homesite with security, especially for children Trey, 3, and Taryn, 2. Melissa wanted to be on a lake. Ken wanted to be on a golf course.

It all came together 10 miles westof Orlando in Isleworth, an exclusive reserve where Robin Leach could film a lifetime library of rich and famous lifestyles.

Isleworth's main road is marked by a turnoff with a patch of red petunias. A flock of ibis, the white marsh bird common to central Florida, joins the occasional heron and flamingo, grazing the golf course that flows among the palatial estates.

Driving up to Griffey's double-winged 13,000 square-foot home, one follows the lazy bend of a long cul-de-sac, houses on the left large and imposing. Deep in this community, that standard seems redundant.

"You can't get much closer to the golf I wanted than that," Griffey says. "That's the 16th tee box."

Life in Isleworth, so near booming Orlando and Disney World, may be complicated only by hooks and slices. And the occasional glitch in the right inboard jet engine.

"And cost overruns and delayed construction," Griffey says, with a mock frown. Having made some $30 million from the Mariners thus far in his nine-year major-league career, he is not worried about money. He just doesn't want to throw it away.

With the big house still being built last winter, the Griffeys spent the offseason living in the guest house that was completed more than a year ago. "It's still my favorite place to get away," Griffey says. "Every now and then, I just like to be by myself and play my music."

The buff-colored main house dominates the end of the cul-de-sac, its massive front doors facing a semicircular cobblestone drive. Birdie Griffey, his mother, is on the double-columned portico. With family so prominent in the lives of all the Griffeys, Ken Sr. and Birdie are often in town along with younger son Craig, who owns a home in a nearby Orlando suburb.

"It's really something, isn't it?" Birdie says. "They have done a wonderful job."

Her son designed the house over a number of years and her daughter-in-law decorated it, mostly in serene linen white and creams.

Birdie leads the visitors to the massive front doors and pounds. There are no door handles to open. Griffey comes to the door; he had been parking the golf cart in the basement-level garage.

"They wanted $5,000 for the handles," he says, poking his head out. "I told them to keep them."

He drew the line on cost after going through some $3 million on the house and furnishings, including $1 million for a computer-run electrical and telephone system.

The front doors open to a wide entryway with graceful curving double staircases. The floor is of marbled Mexican macedonian stone, creamy with veins of grey and browns running throughout. Just inside the staircases, below the balcony, is a compass rose of black stone.

Steps lead down and into the room, which features a floor-to-ceiling shellstone fireplace from Mexico, flanked by bare stone shelves except for the pagoda-shaped trophy Griffey won on an all-star tour of Japan.

There is a fairy-tale element to the oversized living room. It is a place of elegant but comfortable formality, and symmetry. Like a ballclub built around a standout player, the house seems built around this room.

On the table sits a large pastel seashell-like vase. "That is our Christmas present to one another," Melissa explains. "We saw it the other day, and I knew it would take care of shopping for one another."

Melissa has done the interior design, with guidance from Gail Easley, wife of former Seahawk Ken Easley, friend and neighbor from Issaquah, who does interiors. The feeling is of openness, room to stretch out, to relax.

"I wanted a place that would be our home all our lives," Ken says. "So I wanted it right for us."

The design of the home is his own inspiration, no specific ideas from anywhere, and took years of drawing by hand during baseball offseasons, and sometimes in hotel rooms during the season. Later he transferred the work to computer.

"The house is basically as I planned it and I think we're all pretty happy with the way it's turned out."

We head out of the main room to a playroom that occupies 2,000 square feet of the lower level.

Video games are along the near wall to the left, tall windows and French doors to the back and a wall of mirrors on the far wall. Everywhere, posters and uniforms are framed and hung. They include the notable one of father and son in Cincinnati and Seattle uniforms, and one of Griffey's football uniforms from Moeller High School.

"They made me a big one for hanging," he laughs. "The real one is upstairs and it's so small, it's tiny."

Griffey points out a white uniform top, black pinstriped, No. 23. "It's Michael's (Jordan), the only one from a baseball all-star game he was in."

True to his reputation for never working out, there are no muscle machines.

"You see any weights?" Griffey asks. There are only Melissa's Stairmaster and treadmill. "All I wanted was a bicycle."

Trey and Taryn take over the tour from here. This is their side of the house. Taryn leads the way upstairs.

"This is my room," the little one says. "This is my closet. These are my shoes."

Visitors admire the angels handpainted on the ceiling by Ann Meinecke, who hails from Seattle but runs an Orlando arts company with her husband.

Taryn's brother's room is also artfully done. A Meinecke mural looms behind the bed: two race cars with a banner reading, "Trey's Raceway."

Back across the balcony to the adult wing, we pass through a sitting room. "Not much here," Griffey says. "This was going to be a baby room, but we've pretty much decided we may not need it."

Looking out on the backyard is his office. "Ken didn't want an office at first, but I talked him into it," Melissa says. With his trademark grin, Griffey says that all he needed was a fax machine "in the bathroom, cause that's where I do all my reading."

The room has trophies and awards wall to wall, All-Star things, seven Gold Gloves, a hunk of wall padding (not the pad) signed by Phil Knight and Nike people wishing Griffey a speedy return from suffering a broken wrist on the Kingdome wall in May, 1995.

A suite along the back of the house has about 1,000 square feet. Master suite? Part of it. It's the bathroom grouping, sharp in blacks and whites. On one side is a shower that could handle the Mariner starting lineup. Beside that, a woman's salon.

Griffey leads into the master bedroom, plops down on the edge of the four-poster king bed and starts pushing buttons on two remotes. The curtains are automatically drawn, the lights dim and a screen of some 50 square feet lowers from the far wall.

Another button, and a tape runs of Griffey homers from 1996. "Part of the tour is watching all 49 of 'em," he says. He is scarcely joking this time. For a short while there is an all-work air to him. "On this one," he says of a shot against the White Sox, "Pop called during the game and said they are pitching me away, go that way."

On another clip, he is pointing to the stands as he touches the plate. Asked why, Griffey says, "For a Make-A-Wish kid."

An endless walk-in closet is split into his/her halves. Griffey must have a hundred T-shirts folded on shelf after shelf. He holds up his fave, a sleeveless Mariner vest.

"This is what I wore when I hit No. 56," he said of the game against Oakland on Sept. 26 this year.

He has almost as many hats, "including one I stole from Tiger," he says of the golf star who also lives in Isleworth and occasionally hangs with Griffey in their offseasons.

Going down a set of back stairs, we emerge in the space between the kitchen and the family room - a sort of great room - with a big-screen television set in a wall of bookcases.

"I love my kitchen," Melissa says. "But my favorite room is the family room. This is the place we gather most of the time; the couch is big enough for all of us to sit together and we do, a lot."

The lounge has a pool table, small tables with chairs and a bar. "What do you have here," Griffey wonders, "for someone who doesn't drink?" While the bar is well-stocked for guests, Griffey stays with juices, grape soda and Sprite.

Separate doors in the curving wall lead to a mini-theater, a dozen joined seats in two rows, cushy as a first-class cabin. Griffey plunks down in one, invites visitors to grab others and starts punching a remote that is labeled, "Beyond the Experience."

There is VCR, digital vidio disc, a satellite disc, all with surround sound. He even controls heating and cooling, room lighting and landscape lighting from his seat.

"Back here," Griffey points to the circular wall between the lounge and the theater, "is where the fish tank was going to go. I figured it wasn't worth the $70,000."

The money instead went into the swimming pool. A kiddie pool sits to one side, surrounded by a concrete hillock with a diving board and two water slides. "We had just one, but it was too short," Ken explains. "So we're having one put in that starts higher and bends."

We head through a gate, through a thin grove of cypress trees to the boat dock and, yes, there are crocodiles and snakes in the chain of lakes at Isleworth. "Six-foot water moccasins," Griffey says. "But when the crocs get bigger than three feet, they take them out. Hey, this is Florida; they come with the country."

Finally, we leave the house for a motor tour of Isleworth, which in the past decade has become home to executives from Disney, Fuji film and Tupperware as well as being better known as the reserve of a growing number of star athletes.

Griffey, naturally, knows more about the jocks than other neighbors. Turning right out of the cul-de-sac, we travel along the community's main road; on the left, set well back and backing onto another fairway, is the home of NFL wide receiver Andre Reed.

"Over there," Griffey points right, "Orel Hershiser just bought a house. Two doors down John Daly used to live until he got divorced and his wife got the house."

On the street that leads to the golf course, a few doors beyond the clubhouse is Tiger Woods' villa. Woods is living there - his living-room sofa adorned with tiger-patterned fabric pillows - while a bigger house is under construction.

Griffey says Jordan considered moving into Isleworth, but opted not to. "I think he may change his mind, though," Griffey says. "You want to be in here."

He points across Lake Isleworth to a big house on the far side. It belongs to Barry Larkin, Cincinnati Reds' shortstop. "It's just outside Isleworth, outside it's security," Griffey says. "He wishes he was on the inside."

We pass Shaquille O'Neal's $6 million, 25,000-square foot home (twice the size and cost of Griffey's), and its customized putting course on his front lawn. Griffey says the athletes also gather there to play basketball on the Los Angeles Laker center's full-size court. It can get interesting if many of Isleworth's NBA stars come over - Penny Hardaway, Dee Brown, Brian Shaw and Dennis Scott. Brown once said Isleworth is like a college campus, "a very expensive college campus."

"It's fun and, you know I stand out in that group," Griffey says, talking jive. "Tiger? He's not bad, but he can't dribble with his left hand, so you just play him strong to his right and tie him up all day."

We drive out the front gate of the community, just past the home of tennis player Todd Woodbridge, from whom Griffey has taken lessons.

Griffey nods to the gate security officer and says his name is Arlen, who once said he had mixed emotions watching Griffey's pursuit of Roger Maris' home-run record. "He said he wanted me to do it, but also didn't," Griffey says. "Then he says, `Roger Maris was my cousin.' Amazing."

Later, back at the house, we are preparing to leave. Melissa says she wishes we could have seen the big living room fully furnished, with the the baby grand piano that is coming.

"I play the piano; I can read music," she says. "Ken can play, too, and he's not bad. He kids a lot and makes a lot of fun. But inside it all there's a good man who can really do a lot of things."