UIC’s big leaguer: ‘start with the dream, get to the hard work’
“I was determined to finish my studies,” says Curtis Granderson, who graduated from UIC in 2003 after being drafted by the Detroit Tigers in 2002. Photo: Marc S. Levine/New York Mets
By Kevin Cook
Curtis Granderson was a skinny teenager from Lynwood, half an hour south of the Loop, when he made a recruiting visit to UIC.
“I liked what I saw, but I wasn’t convinced,” he recalls. “Then I saw the baseball coaches suit up for practice — in catchers’ gear. I thought, ‘These guys are getting after it. They want to get dirty out there.’”
Granderson is known for getting after it. Today the 2003 UIC business graduate is a Major League standout, a three-time All-Star with more than 200 career home runs.
After seven seasons with the Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees, he joined the New York Mets in 2014 as their shiny new prize in the free-agent sweepstakes, a $60 million outfielder who’s expected to help third-baseman and team captain David Wright lead the doormat ball club back into contention.
None of this was inevitable 14 years ago. Or even likely. Or even plausible.
“Did I dream he’d be a star in the big leagues?” asks longtime UIC head coach Mike Dee. “No. Nobody did, including Curtis.”
Granderson agrees — sort of.
“I didn’t expect it,” he says with his 100-watt smile. “But dream? Well, sure. You start with the dream, then get to the hard work.”
No superstar in high school, Granderson was an honorable mention All-Stater. At that point, he saw himself as a two-sport athlete. Granderson chose UIC partly because Dee promised he could play basketball as well as baseball “as long as baseball comes first and your grades don’t suffer.”
But the workload wore Granderson down. In the fall of his freshman year, he dropped basketball.
“To make a hard choice like that took guts. But that’s CG all over,” Dee says.
Granderson batted just .271 his freshman season with the Flames. He improved to .304 as a sophomore, but his nine homers were a mild disappointment to coaches accustomed to seeing him launch tape-measure shots in practice.
“CG used to hit balls that you’d swear were speeding up as they went over the fence,” Dee recalls. “But he wasn’t as special in games as he could have been. So we sent him to the Northwoods League,” a summer circuit for elite collegians.
“He worked his tail off, and something clicked,” Dee says. “He comes back and hits .483 as a junior.”
Granderson set school and conference records that still stand, taking a giant step from Horizon League hotshot to pro prospect. Pro scouts were jostling for position at Les Miller Field, taking notes, quizzing Dee on his star player’s work ethic (“Off the charts,” he told them), moving the formerly unknown outfielder toward the top of their wish lists.
The Tigers selected him in the 2002 draft, signing Granderson for a bonus of $469,000.
“I was determined to finish my studies,” recalls Granderson, who zipped through Detroit’s farm system while taking online courses to pursue his double major in marketing and management.
In 2004, he became the first UIC alumnus to start a Major League Baseball game.
Yankees All-Star
Initially seen as a good-but-not-great big leaguer, Granderson twice led the American League in triples — a sign of his speed — and added power as long hours in the weight room put muscle on his 6-foot-1 frame.
Traded to the Yankees as the centerpiece of a blockbuster deal in 2009, he hit 24 homers a year later but heard grumbles from fans and reporters.
“Granderson’s good, but not great,” they said. “For one thing, he can’t hit left-handers.”
Such talk about his shortcomings riled him, mostly because he agreed. In 2009, he’d batted only .183 against left-handed pitchers. The next season wasn’t much better. He called an old Flame, former UIC teammate David Haehnel (’04 AHS).
Curtis Granderson is all business during batting practice at the New York Mets 2014 training camp. Photo: Marc S. Levine/New York Mets
“He threw lefty, threw strikes and threw hard,” says Granderson, who spent much of the offseason drilling line drives as Haehnel fired pitch after pitch after pitch. “That made a real difference in my career. When the season started, I was ready.”
In 2011, the man Sports Illustrated called “baseball’s friendliest player” made enemies of left-handed pitchers, slugging 16 of his team-leading 41 homers off them. Granderson led the league in runs scored as well as runs batted in, previously the domain of Yankees named Ruth, Gehrig and Mantle.
A year later, he clouted 43 home runs, made his second straight All-Star team and helped lead the Yankees to the playoffs while radio announcer John Sterling punctuated every Granderson homer with a joyous shout: “The Grandy Man can!”
Today, the 33-year-old Grandy Man has nothing left to prove, except to himself. Can he approach 40 homers in the spacious confines of the Mets’ Citi Field? Can he and Wright revive an anemic Mets lineup?
“I like the guy. Who doesn’t?” asks New York Post sports columnist Mike Vaccaro. “But is he on the downside of his career? How much can he help a team that’ll be lucky to win as many games as it loses?”
Granderson takes a sunnier view.
“I can help a lot,” he says. “There’s change in the air at Citi Field. We’ve got a young, energetic team. We’ve got as good a chance as anybody.”
Of course, that’s what everybody says in the spring, when hope springs eternal even for Mets fans. But Granderson did more than hope during the offseason. He tossed his gear into a gym bag and drove from his South Side home to the Flames Athletic Center. He trained with Dee’s current players, who had no idea how to address the multimillionaire in their midst.
“He acts like anybody else — like a player who’s still in our program,” Dee says.
Granderson couldn’t care less what they call him. “Curtis is fine, or CG or ‘Hey you.’ We’re all on the same team.”
Only he’s the one with his name on the ballpark.
Granderson Stadium
At last year’s inaugural Diamond Dinner celebrating Flames baseball, Dee and UIC Athletic Director Jim Schmidt announced that the team was retiring the number 28 once worn by its most illustrious alumnus.
“I can’t think of a better representative for UIC athletics than Curtis Granderson,” Schmidt said.
Granderson joined the Mets in 2014. “There’s change in the air at Citi Field,” he said. Photo: Marc S. Levine/New York Mets
The guest of honor then announced that he would donate funds to pay for a new baseball complex on campus, not only for the Flames, but for local high schools and youth groups.
Curtis Granderson Stadium opened in April, a $10 million facility with 1,284 fixed seats, grassy berms and the Chicago skyline.
“That’s some hitter’s background, isn’t it?” Granderson asks. “It’s going to be a fan-friendly place with the kind of ‘Wow’ factor I want to bring to the UIC community.”
On July 16, Granderson is scheduled to host the first youth sports event at the stadium — a free baseball clinic for 125 Chicago kids through his Grand Kids Foundation.
Granderson still lives a short walk from campus and stays in contact with old teammates. He leaves tickets for them at Mets games; they text him congratulations when he hits a game-winning homer, “unless it’s against the Cubs or White Sox.”
When the season ends, Granderson comes home. His routine is the same every fall. After a couple of weeks to unwind and “rejuve,” he heads to campus to work out with Flames players a dozen or more years his junior.
“When I made my college choice, I didn’t know that much about the school or the campus,” Granderson says. “Now it seems better every time I come back. You see UIC students walking and tossing Frisbees and riding bicycles, a transformation that keeps going.
“And pretty soon they’ll be going to Curtis Granderson Stadium. Sounds kinda weird, doesn’t it? But it’s not the name that matters. It’s the process.
“I’m proud to be part of that ongoing transformation, proud to be part of UIC.”
