Raised in Brooklyn, Ottavino went on to pitch for both of his hometown teams, finding success in the Bronx and Queens. He remains the only pitcher to record a season with 65 or more appearances and a sub-2.10 ERA for both the New York Yankees (2019) and the New York Mets (2022).

Over his career, the right-hander appeared in 727 major league games, compiling a 3.48 ERA and 15.0 bWAR. One of Ottavino’s calling cards was his early adoption of the sweeper—a slider variant known for its significant horizontal movement. The pitch generated plenty of swings and misses for the New York native, contributing to a career whiff rate of 34.2%.

Vincent Carchietta-USA TODAY Sports

The veteran reliever rejoined the Yankees last April on a one-year major league deal. Ottavino made just three appearances for the club before he was designated for assignment on April 8, the second time he was designated within a matter of days. He acknowledges that his big league career is likely over, but has left the door open to pitch for Team Italy in the 2026 World Baseball Classic.

Even though Ottavino isn’t playing, he’s still keeping close tabs on the game. This summer, he debuted a live-stream YouTube show called “Baseball and Coffee,” where he goes around the league providing analysis and commentary.

I had the privilege of interviewing Ottavino over the phone, where we discussed his transition to the bullpen, the origins of his sweeper and his time with the Mets.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Ottavino: Growing up in New York, I was mostly a Yankees fan. My favorite player of all time is Bernie Williams. From the pitching side, I really liked David Cone, Jimmy Key, El Duque and Mariano Rivera.

There were definitely some Mets that I liked throughout the years, too. I was a big Rey Ordóñez fan, and I loved watching Al Leiter. I think everybody’s favorite player growing up was probably Ken Griffey Jr.

MMO: What was training and developing as a baseball player like growing up in Brooklyn?

Ottavino: As soon as it got warmer, I was outside every day all the way into the fall. We used to do a lot of practicing in dimly lit public school gyms. My dad would take me to the batting cage on Eastern Parkway. We would rent out the cage for half an hour in the dead of winter and just hit.

There was a lot of imaginative play inside the house when it was too cold out, or throwing snowballs outside. We spent as much time as we could working on baseball, even though it was cold.

MMO: At what point did you specifically focus on pitching?

Ottavino: They took hitting away from me going into my senior year of high school. I still hit in school-ball, but more in travel leagues. That’s when they started to pivot me mostly to pitching.

It became clear that pitching was my future; I was getting scouted only as a pitcher at that point. I was a good hitter, but at that time, there weren’t any Shohei Ohtanis rolling around. Pitching was an easy choice.

MMO: Where else did you play when you weren’t pitching?

Ottavino: Catching was my favorite position. I loved helping the pitchers out and throwing runners out. I played that a lot when I was little. Most guys would tell you that you end up at shortstop for a while, too, and I played there. As I grew more into the body that I have as an adult—a more powerful but slow-type body—I moved to the corners: third base and right field.

If I didn’t pitch, I think I would’ve tried to catch. But at a certain point, that flies in the face of pitching, so we abandoned that idea.

MMO: When did the transition occur from moving out of the rotation and into the pen? What were your initial reactions?

Ottavino: My first three games in the big leagues were starts. I was still a full-time starter at that point; I have 125 minor league starts along with the three big league starts. It wasn’t until I got put on waivers and claimed by the Rockies that I became a full-time reliever. That’s not to say it wasn’t thought about for a while before that.

I was stuck in Triple-A for parts of three years with the Cardinals. They had a really good rotation at the time; I was like the sixth or seventh depth starter. Those guys just didn’t get hurt and kept churning out good seasons.

I saw some of my weaknesses. If a team stacked a lineup with lefties, that would make it tougher on me. I saw the writing on the wall, but I also saw that my ability could play in the bullpen. I got claimed by the Rockies out of spring [in 2012], went to Triple-A, worked for the first time in a late-inning role and really took to it right away. I liked pitching more often and going right to my best pitches. It started to make sense, and I started to see myself more in that role. I always wanted to start, but I think it made sense that I ended up where I did.

MMO: It seems like it was a fairly seamless transition for you.

Ottavino: I think I took to it really easily. I loved pitching in big spots and pitching with the game on the line, and you get to do a lot of that in a relief role. I felt the hairier the spot was, the more I was able to access my ability and focus.

From a physical standpoint, it was an adjustment because it seemed easier to only throw one or two innings at a time. The regularity with which you’re pitching and learning how to manage the workload as a reliever is tricky, and it was harder for me. I think I dropped the ball on that one in the first few years. I threw too much, backed myself into a corner, and ended up getting my elbow hurt and having to get Tommy John surgery. That was something that I had to learn from on the physical side.

I made that adjustment, and I was good the rest of the way. That was probably the biggest and toughest part: understanding the difference in terms of workload between starting and relieving.

MMO: The term “sweeper” entered the mainstream lexicon just a few years ago, but it’s a pitch that’s been around for some time. I’ve heard you mention in previous interviews that you watched guys like David Cone and Jeff Nelson utilize similar pitches. Can you talk about your origins with the sweeper?

Ottavino: When I was still at Northeastern, our catcher, Luke Carlin, came to train with us in the offseason. I was throwing a bullpen to him, and he was teaching me a cutter. From that grip, I just started experimenting by seeing if I could send the ball even more to the left to see how extreme I could make it.

I kind of stumbled into the sweeper grip. I didn’t know it at the time, but it poked its head out a few years later. It was a pitch that I threw sparingly, and I would throw it sometimes in catch play to show off that I could make the ball move like that.

In the game, we were always taught to focus on the two-plane break, like left and down. That wasn’t the slider I was working with; I was working with more of a two-plane slider. When I got to Double-A, my curveball and my two-plane slider weren’t as effective as I wanted. Guys were seeing them out of my hand pretty well.

At the time, I lived with a lot of hitters, and I’d ask them for advice. They said they thought it would be nice if my pitch came out on plane out of my hand, and then to use that big break to my advantage. I started dipping my toe in the water by throwing that pitch a little more often, but I still hadn’t committed to it as my main slider until probably mid-way through 2014 or 2015. I was still throwing it a little bit, but I was throwing the two-plane one as well, so I was throwing two breaking balls.

The sample size grew, and I could see the results were much better on that horizontal breaking pitch, which we know as the sweeper. I leaned into it, started throwing it, and it felt like a cheat code because no one else was really doing it. Granted, there were pitchers in baseball history who threw it, but I don’t think we realized the effectiveness of it, at least I didn’t, until I started throwing it a lot.

At one point, I think I was throwing 75 percent sweepers in the big leagues! [Laughs.] And then everybody caught on, and it just became a thing. I realized I was just a little early to the trend.

MMO: Did you mess with many different grips?

Ottavino: No, I kind of stumbled into it. Over time, you would keep tinkering because that’s just human nature. Then I learned the science behind why it was moving the way it was, and then I was able to hone in on the proper grip and not lose it.

It’s funny, later in my career, I would run into other guys with big sweepers, like Chris Sale. I remember asking him how he gripped it, and it turned out to be kind of the same as me! It made me think that I really was onto something, and it all kind of happened by accident.

It’s kind of the reverse of the way things work now, where we know what to do, and then go execute. Before, there was a lot of trial and error. I was lucky that I stumbled into the right thing.

Sep 22, 2023; Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Boston Red Sox starting pitcher Chris Sale (41) pitches against the Chicago White Sox during the first inning at Fenway Park. Mandatory Credit: Eric Canha-USA TODAY Sports

MMO: One of the coolest stories I read was about that vacant facility in Harlem you rented from your father-in-law, which you turned into a pitching lab following the 2017 season. What went into the decision to utilize that space in such a fashion, and what were some of the benefits you got from training there?

Ottavino: That was a huge turning point in my career. I had a tough year in 2017. My firstborn was a year old that offseason, and at the time, I had been driving out to Long Island to train. My throwing partner, Steven Matz, had moved to Nashville to be with his now wife, so I lost my throwing partner. I wasn’t doing a ton of throwing. I had parts of four years of pitching really well, so I kind of let my guard down a bit and showed up to spring training completely out of whack mechanically. At the time, there weren’t many checks and balances during spring training. We got to the season, and I was like, Oh, my God, I’m in a horrible habit here, and had the worst season of my career.

Around August of that year, I realized that I needed to spend my offseasons doing more than just working out and working on my body. I needed to practice my skills and make sure my technique was right. It wasn’t going to work driving to Long Island anymore, so I needed to find a place to train. We started looking for a storefront or something to outfit with baseball equipment.

Right around that time, my father-in-law, who is involved with that building in Harlem, said that there was a space and it might be available for a few months. My wife went, checked it out, did some measuring, and thought it was perfect. I paid for it with a Nolan Arenado-signed bat.

All of a sudden, I was able to practice on my own time and as much as I wanted. I had some friends come with me to start a lot of the processes that I used later in my career; videoing my throwing and being able to connect with what I was feeling. I was able to hone in my technique, work on new pitches, and really work on the skills side of things. That led to my career year next year, where I came in like gangbusters and was more prepared. It was really cool to be able to keep that space for almost the rest of my career.

MMO: There was a great quote from the 2019 book, “The MVP Machine,” which had a chapter that detailed the discussion you had with Rockies manager Bud Black after you worked with Driveline in 2017 and started to incorporate an Edgertronic camera and weighted balls. Black asked you whether using the Edgertronic was “going to put more things in your head,” to which you replied, “I’m going to think either way, but this makes me know what to think about.” With so much information available, how did you go about ensuring that you were getting the necessary data while not overwhelming yourself to the point where it could be a detriment?

Ottavino: I’m really good at absorbing the information. Not everybody is; some people need to keep it a bit simpler. I think at the moment of truth and pitching, you do need to boil things down as much as you can, and I was able to do that.

There was a lot of pushback at the beginning when I first showed up with my Edgertronic at the Rockies’ spring training in 2018. The pitching coach at the time thought I was undermining him, and he wasn’t too happy about it. I quickly explained that we should both look at these videos so we can learn together. Two brains are better than one, and this is definitely the new wave of technology that’s coming. We all need to learn from this, and it can make us better. Eventually, a lot of that friction went away.

A key point I made talking to Buddy about this was, I’m going to be thinking about adjustments to make daily anyway. If I have real information that gives me an actual direction to point my arrow, then I’m going to get there a lot faster. Having the high-speed camera and the movement information was really helping me point my arrow in the right direction. Every day, I could have more of a quality practice, and I could practice more efficiently. That’s super important because, as a pitcher, you can’t just throw all day; you have to get the most out of your practice time. I felt like that information helped me achieve that.

MMO: You also trained at Driveline for some time. What were some of your takeaways?

Ottavino: I was only there about a week, but it opened my eyes to a couple of key concepts. One was the concept of self-organization. Instead of being so internally focused when working on mechanics, thinking, Where’s my arm? Where’s my hip? Where’s my leg? It’s like, let’s create a constraint drill where I can keep my focus external. By constraining myself within the drill, my body will find a way to do it. It’ll self-organize and find a way to get the job done.

That was such a big thing to learn because before going there, I would say 95 percent of my pitching instruction over the years was based on internal cueing and things that are just really hard to do. It’s hard to think about your big toe or something while you’re also trying to execute a pitch. That kind of allowed me to get out of the shackles of that and allowed me to work on things with constraint drills to keep my focus external and understand that if my sights are set downrange on the catcher, that’s a much better place for me to be. It allowed my command to improve as a result of that, and kind of as a happy accident of that.

The use of some of the weighted implements, the weighted balls, and things like that [was helpful]. I never chased velocity in the way that a lot of Driveline guys do because that’s what they need to do to get noticed, but it did help me come up with a routine to stay healthy and properly warm up. Especially using a little bit of the heavier weighted balls kind of kept my arm action more efficient and shorter.

MMO: What went into your decision-making for signing a one-year deal with the Mets in March 2022?

Ottavino: I pitched for the Red Sox in ’21 after being traded there. I had a weird year where I started really good; I think I pitched well up until mid-August, and then I ran into trouble down the stretch. I really wanted to stay with the Red Sox because I felt like we had a good thing developing. At the end of the day, it didn’t work out; they weren’t aggressive in trying to sign me that offseason.

I knew that I only wanted to sign a one-year deal that year anyway, and I thought the Mets were a perfect landing spot. I always had an affinity for Buck Showalter, and they already had a pretty good group of relief arms, and I thought I could add to that mix and live at home. It just seemed like a really good opportunity, and they ended up signing me pretty late. If you recall, that was the lockout year.

I had a couple of other similar offers, but it made too much sense to stay at home. I thought the Mets were on the upswing; I liked what the Cohens were starting to do over there. And I was proven right. I went over there and we had a lot of fun! We had a great year, and I was able to re-sign with them, and it all worked out.

Adam Ottavino. Robert Edwards-USA TODAY Sports

MMO: Comparing your ’21 season with Boston to your first year with the Mets, you lowered your walk rate from 12.7 percent to 6.2 percent, increased your strikeout rate by 5 percent, and increased your groundball rate by almost 12 percent. Can you speak on some of the changes/fixes you made in order to have such success with New York?

Ottavino: I actually think ’21 was a huge learning year for me when I was with Boston. I was around Jason Varitek a lot, and he had an unbelievable perspective. I picked his brain constantly. He was a switch-hitter, but also a catcher, and caught some of the greatest pitchers ever. His watching my game that year kind of helped me understand the matrix a little bit more of how things work.

I took all that information that I learned from talking with him and also Dave Bush, who was the pitching coach at the time, into that year with the Mets, and was able to execute what I had learned a lot better.

I thought my pitch decisions were a lot better, I was getting ahead in the count better, and therefore, I was giving myself more chances to strike guys out. For the first time, I was also pitching a little more in a pitcher’s park, so I was able to get in the zone a bit better. I finally understood the value of the first-pitch strike, and I wanted to take my chances in the zone a bit more. And it all worked out. It doesn’t always all work out, but that year things really went my way, and I was able to get on a roll.

MMO: Steve Gelbs had an in-game report during a broadcast where he discussed how you walk barefoot on the grass pre-game in a technique called grounding. When did you start to incorporate that routine, and what were some of the benefits?

Ottavino: I learned about the science of it in 2018-2019. It didn’t become a full part of my routine, I don’t think, until 2021. A big part of it was that it was a great way to start my day. I’d get to the field, and I would go right out there and walk around for a while and take it in. There’s science behind it, and I always felt like I’d come off the field and get back inside to start my catch play and everything. I was just in a much better mood and a much better place and felt a lot more present.

I’d like to go behind the pitcher’s mound and visualize that view to home plate in all of the stadiums. I felt like that helped me when I then jogged into the game to feel like I had been there before, and pre-planned my visuals. I really liked it. It was the way I liked to start my day, and I stuck with it for the rest of my career.

Other guys would ask me about it, and it would catch on, and a lot of people started dabbling in it. I think it’s a really good way to get yourself in the right mindset.

MMO: Were you a player who routinely incorporated visualization cues in your routine?

Ottavino: Yes, because I was a mess when I was younger. They took me out of the rotation when I was in Double-A because I was so wild, and I was so internally focused. Like we talked about earlier, I just couldn’t get out of my own way. The Cardinals took me out of circulation, and they sent a couple of different mental skills people to work with me, which I learned a ton from, honestly. From that point forward, not only from them, but also by talking to other players, I started to reshape my mental approach to pitching. I started focusing a lot more on that process-oriented mindset.

I remember a big turning point in my career was watching a basketball game where Kevin Durant was playing. I think he was 0-for-10 from the field at half. They interviewed him before he went to the locker room about his shooting. I remember him telling the reporter that he was going to make the next shot. He always assumed he was going to make the next shot. I had that moment of clarity where I realized that I wasn’t assuming that I was making my pitches; I was hoping that I was going to make my pitches. That was a key mindset shift.

The next day in catch play, I started throwing with the assumption that I was going to hit my spot, and I stuck with that mindset for a really long time. That alone really helped me clean up my command. I realized that the mental controls the physical. For the last 15 years, I honed in on perfecting that mental side of the game because I do believe that what you think makes all the difference.

MMO: You announced your new live-streaming baseball show on YouTube called “Baseball and Coffee” a few months ago. What was behind this idea, and what can viewers expect?

Ottavino: This is an idea I’ve had for a few years based on my own experience with the MLB dugout iPad. I think it’s cool to be able to jump into any type of action and type of pitch, get some data, and use a bunch of different camera angles. The tech was the biggest thing, and that was the biggest hurdle in getting them to let me use that. I thought it was a fun way for me to follow baseball.

I don’t really lock in on highlights too often, or read a million articles every day. Now that I’m not playing, I realized that it’s very hard to check out the game on a national level. You can pretty much follow your own team and then see the other teams when they play you. I like to jump around and see what pops, and this app gives me the ability to do that.

I’ve wanted to do it in a live stream fashion because I don’t think anyone’s tried to do that yet; to set up a gaming stream, which is where my inspiration came for the format. I do a screenshare and have engagement with the viewers on the chat, and I think that’s super key. I’m not rushing to market or monetize it. I genuinely like to have a cup of coffee and check out the cool stuff that happened in baseball the night before, and interact with people and see what they want to see.

In the future, I’d like to have other people on, have some great conversations, baseball trivia and giveaways. I’m just looking to have it grow organically and evolve and see what happens.

MMO: You’ve mentioned in previous interviews you’re interest in managing. Is that your next baseball goal?

Ottavino: Yeah, managing or running a team in a different capacity. I want to have an impact when I come back. I have no interest in being a pitching coach and things like that. I love the idea of managing because you can do little things that affect your team’s chances to win on a nightly basis. Being in the fight and in the grind is what I know. I love traveling the country and being in all the heat of all the ballparks. I love the competition factor and the players.

That’s certainly something that’s on my mind and on my bucket list that I need to check off. But I’m not going to go about it the traditional way. I’m going to do media and try and stay in the game that way, and see what opportunities come down the road.

MMO: When you look back on your career, what are you most proud of?

Ottavino: I’m proud of the longevity. I never cheated the game, and I felt like I took on every challenge. I never shied away from Coors Field or going to play for my hometown team. I never shied away from the Yankees, or when I was with the Red Sox, going up against them. I always wanted the ball, and I pride myself on my work ethic and the way I was able to stay healthy, especially the last seven to eight years. That was important to me, being available for my team and my teammates.

I was disappointed I never won the World Series or had that big signature moment in the game. I’m proud that I played 20 seasons in pro ball, and felt I gave it my all the whole way. I can’t look back with any regrets.

The post MMO Exclusive: Relief Pitcher, Adam Ottavino appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Of course, one cannot speak about the most impressive seasons on the mound by a Mets hurler without mentioning Robert Allen (R.A.) Dickey in 2012.

Dickey’s dominance that year was impressive for a host of reasons. For one, he led the National League in innings pitched with 233.2 in his age-37 season, while posting the fourth-lowest ERA among qualified starters at 2.73. He recorded back-to-back one-hitters on June 13 and June 18, a feat that had not been accomplished since Dave Stieb in 1988. And, of course, Dickey accomplished all of this while throwing a knuckleball over 85 percent of the time.

The veteran righty went 20-6 over 34 games (33 starts), recording 230 strikeouts (most in the N.L.) with a 1.053 WHIP. Along with his pair of one-hitters, Dickey tossed a franchise-record 32 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings, breaking the previous record held by Jerry Koosman.

Dickey’s durability was on full display in 2012. He tossed at least six innings in 31 of his 33 starts and went at least seven innings in 22 games. Dickey’s 27 quality starts led all starters, and his three shutouts were the most by a Mets pitcher since David Cone’s five in 1992. To further illustrate the dominance Dickey displayed, he’s one of two pitchers in Major League Baseball history (along with Randy Johnson in 2001, 2002 and 2004) who posted a season with 225 or more innings pitched, 225 or more strikeouts and a sub-2.75 ERA in his age-37 or older season.

With 27 of 32 first-place votes, Dickey took home the N.L. Cy Young Award, becoming the first knuckleball pitcher to win it. The hardware was a testament to Dickey’s resiliency, as he made a career-altering transition to a full-time knuckleball pitcher at the behest of the Texas Rangers—which included pitching coach Orel Hershiser and manager Buck Showalter—in 2005.

Dickey spent years tinkering with various mechanics both in the majors and minors, having to unlearn being a conventional pitcher. Working with the small fraternity of other knuckleball pitchers—past and present—Dickey endured to keep his professional baseball career alive. Following his tenure with the Rangers, Dickey bounced around organizations before signing a minor league pact with the Mets in December 2009.

No one could have imagined that a veteran pitching depth signing would become one of the best free-agent deals in the organization’s history.

Overall, Dickey appeared in 94 big league games with the Mets from 2010 to 2012, posting a 2.95 ERA and 10.2 fWAR. Among 33 pitchers who tossed at least 600 innings with the team, Dickey owns the third-lowest ERA, behind deGrom (2.52) and Seaver (2.57).

Dickey, 50, retired following the 2017 season with the Atlanta Braves. Just as his signature pitch moved unpredictably, so too did Dickey’s professional career. Yet, through it all, Dickey adapted and experienced a career resurgence when many others would have been waning.

I had the privilege of speaking with Dickey in February, where we discussed his transition to a knuckleballer, the knuckleball fraternity and his tenure in New York.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Dickey: It kind of depends on what stage of life I was at. Early on, Nolan Ryan was always somebody I admired. I grew up an Atlanta Braves and Chicago Cubs fan because I got TBS and WGN in the South. So I would constantly be watching their games.

Greg Maddux was a huge influence on me. Rick Sutcliffe was another favorite player. John Smoltz and that era of Braves pitchers were pretty special. That was fun to watch.

MMO: Is it true that your grandfather was the person who initially showed you a knuckleball grip?

Dickey: Yeah! When I started pitching, my grandfather whipped out an old scrapbook article where he struck out like 21 out of 22 batters in one game throwing a knuckleball. He said, “This is how I held it,” and he tried to teach it to me. At the time, I just wanted to throw as hard as I could.

I filed it away in the back of my mind and played with it as I got older. Obviously, it’s something I ended up going with full-time. But at the time, I was just having fun and being goofy with it. My grandfather introduced me to the grip and the idea of a ball not spinning and being able to pitch with it.

MMO: Was that the grip you used early on with the Rangers, which they called “The Thing?”

Dickey: You know, Joe Morgan on “Sunday Night Baseball” kind of gave it that moniker; I never called it that. It was just a really hard knuckleball for me. Some people thought it was a split-hybrid, others thought it was a forkball. It was really a knuckleball that I threw as hard as I could.

I would throw one or two a game just so people would think that I had a different pitch. As I started becoming worse as a conventional pitcher, I needed a weapon I could use consistently to get big-league hitters out. My knuckleball was what ended up being the ticket.

MMO: Can you talk about the moment when the Rangers—and specifically Orel Hershiser and Buck Showalter—talked to you about transitioning to a full-time knuckleball pitcher?

Dickey: I was kind of at the end of my rope as a conventional pitcher. Hershiser watched me play catch on the side for a couple of years throwing a knuckleball and thought I had a good one. We would throw it in a game every once in a while.

They watched Tim Wakefield come in and beat us up a few times and were hopeful they could develop one of those kinds of guys. They asked me if I would be willing to do it, and they bluntly and gracefully told me what I had as a conventional pitcher probably wasn’t going to cut it anymore. I could see the writing on the wall a little bit when it came to my conventional stuff.

I committed in 2005 to go down to Triple-A and try to figure out how to be a full-time knuckleballer where I threw it 70 to 80 percent of the time. That’s when I started my knuckleball journey.

It was actually three people: Hershiser, Mark Connor, who was our bullpen coach and a really good friend, and Buck. They all agreed that they thought I could do it and gave me the runway to make mistakes with it. The front office was great with it, and Jon Daniels and John Hart were great with it.

MMO: Were there specific drills or mechanical adjustments you needed to make to train and get comfortable with the pitch?

Dickey: I was always trying to simplify. A knuckleball is the art of repeating a mechanic of if you can produce a ball that does not spin. And that’s really hard to do. You’re having to unlearn a mechanic that you have known since you were little and relearn a mechanic that can produce a ball like that.

My best knuckleball would be a ball that rotated a quarter of a revolution from the time it left my hand until the time it got to the catcher’s mitt. That took a lot of simplification of mechanics and repeatability.

Honestly, the drill work I did was just trying to figure out—over and over again against a brick wall or a cinderblock wall in a gym—whatever I could do to try and get the grip right, my mechanic right and my release point right where I didn’t have to think about it. If you have to think about it, usually it’s not going to turn out well. I wanted it to be something that I did so much with my muscle memory that when I threw it, I didn’t have to worry about it not spinning, and knew it was not going to spin. That all took repetition.

MMO: How did fellow knuckleball pitchers like Charlie Hough, Phil Niekro and Tim Wakefield aid in your development?

Dickey: They were everything. Without those guys, I would have never achieved any of the heights that I did. Charlie Hough was the first guy I ever met with when it came to trying to figure out how to do it full-time. The very first thing he did was change my grip a little. He didn’t change it a ton, but he changed it enough that it was a really good adjustment that helped me be more consistent.

After that, I got to meet with Tim Wakefield. He was so selfless with his knowledge. I’ll never forget being in Seattle playing for the Mariners; I was trying to make my way back up as a knuckleball pitcher, and I was in the bullpen. He invited me to come watch his bullpen when the Red Sox came to play. He said, “Why don’t you come watch and ask questions?”

That was a competitor, but that’s the bond between knuckleballers because it’s a very difficult thing to do. We want to perpetuate the craft of being a knuckleballer. We share whatever we have to make sure that the pitch doesn’t dissolve. And that’s what their hope was.

I think with me, they saw someone who could maybe carry the torch of being a knuckleballer. Tim poured into me; Phil Niekro poured into me. Charlie, Phil and Tim were all my Jedi Council on the knuckleball. They were all on my speed dial. I would send them a video if I was struggling, and they would help me unpack it and make corrections.

A normal pitching coach doesn’t have a ton of experience with knuckleball guys, so you have to be your own best coach. I had to know what it was like to coach myself. The only way to do that was to ask good questions to people who had done it before me, and those guys had done it well.

MMO: At what point did you become aware that you threw a hard knuckleball? Did you feel you had better control with one over the other?

Dickey: That’s a good question. For me, I could always throw a hard knuckleball. When I started my journey with the Rangers, they wanted me to kind of be like Wakefield. I felt like I had to subtract speed all the time with it. I think that wasn’t my personality with the pitch. It was difficult for me to slow it down that much and throw a high-sixties knuckleball consistently because my arm speed was such that it just would roll up there and I couldn’t get it to not spin.

It was when I did a lot of work with Hough and Niekro that they both said the same thing. They said, “You should be throwing this as hard as you’re capable of throwing it and still subtract spin.” That was an epiphany for me because I had been trying to be someone else for so long with it. My first two years, I was trying to be Tim Wakefield; I was trying to be Charlie Hough. I didn’t really realize that I needed to embrace my own personality with the pitch. My personality with the pitch was that I could throw it hard.

I was working with Niekro, and something kind of clicked when we were working together. He said, “Man, that is an angry knuckleball.” He described it as an “angry pitch.” That really stuck with me. Every knuckleball I threw from then on, I was trying to make angry. The way I made it angry was by throwing it hard.

Once I did that, I realized that I could keep it in the strike zone a lot better, and the hitter had to respect it a lot more if I was in the strike zone or off it. That was a real turning point for me.

MMO: What made the New York Mets an attractive organization to sign your minor league deal with in December 2009?

Dickey: Life’s about relationships and networking. Omar Minaya was an advocate for me. He knew my journey and felt like I could maybe be a contributor there. He sold me on the opportunity that it could be a possibility if I showed that I was consistent with the pitch and they would embrace it. And they did; they stayed true to their word.

I didn’t get a lot of opportunities in big league camp, but when I went down, I tried to make the most of it. They saw that and called me up, and the rest was history. For those three years in New York, it was some of the most fun baseball that I’ve ever played. I had such an idea on how to be consistent with the pitch. That was really what separated me from other guys.

MMO: In 2011, you posted a 15.3 percent strikeout rate. That increased to 24.8 percent in your Cy Young Award-winning season in 2012. Is there anything you can attribute to that near 10 percent increase in strikeout rate?

Dickey: I became able for a couple of years—don’t ask me why I couldn’t do it more consistently before or after—in 2012 and 2013 when I struck out a ton of guys. It was because I could throw a knuckleball that I could elevate that would seem like it was rising. That was a ball that I could manipulate in a way that just didn’t behave like the other knuckleballs would. It presented like it was going to do what it normally does, and then I could keep it elevated.

The things that helped me strike out guys were changing speeds with it, learning how to do that in the strike zone and then being able to throw a hard, elevated knuckleball that stayed on one plane and didn’t break out. It still presented like every other knuckleball that I threw, and that was a big deal! Having the feel for two years is what produced all of those strikeouts, I think.

MMO: It was like you were able to tunnel all the different variations of your knuckleball.

Dickey: I could. I had a good year in 2010, and the reason I felt like I had a good year was because I was throwing strikes with it consistently. It was an anomaly in the league; guys couldn’t prepare for it, and it was hard and I just threw strikes with it.

I induced a lot of weak contact in ’10, but not a lot of strikeouts. The ’11 season was kind of similar, but when ’12 came, I just really had a good feel for it. It was just that time in my process that I’ve been working on it for so long that I could do different things with it and become a real artist with it. Before then, I was more of a workman. I was punching the clock, and I knew what I could do, but I didn’t have a lot of artistry in what I was doing.

In ’12 and ’13, I felt like I could move it around a good bit, and it would behave the way I wanted it to. That’s hard to do with a knuckleball, which I found out from ’14 to ’17. I didn’t necessarily have the same feel as I did for that two-year period.

MMO: Did you stay consistent with your knuckleball grip, or would you tinker with it at all?

Dickey: No, I’ve kept the same grip every single time I threw a knuckleball. I would change my arm path. That’s how I could manipulate the ball in a way that was different from other knuckleballers. I learned if I could be cognizant of my arm path through my release point, I could make it do different things. I had a good feel for that for about four to five years, and those were my best years.

MMO: When you look back on that 2012 season, are there certain starts that stand out?

Dickey: I threw three one-hitters. One of the one-hitters I threw was in 2010 against the Phillies where Cole Hamels was the only hit. That, to me, was a turning point in my confidence with the pitch. It gave me a real sense that I can do this consistently. I have a weapon now that I can trust.

In ’12, I was just in a zone for a long time. I think the back-to-back one-hitters against Tampa and Baltimore were really kind of special. That whole year in general was pretty neat for me.

MMO: What was your routine for taking care of your nails to maintain the grip you wanted on the ball?

Dickey: I had a nail hardener that I used from a company that was kind of a sponsor. I had to make sure they weren’t too long because they would bend. A bend in the nail would promote spin on the ball. I wanted to take as much spin off the ball as possible.

It was all about the angle at which I filed my nails; it was important because I wanted as much surface area as I could to impact the baseball. I would play around with that in the dugout in between starts. There was a lot of attention to that just because it’s such a vital part of my pitch.

I always felt funny because I was going to be embarrassed if I had to miss a start because of a broken nail; I thought that was so weenie. [Laughs.] There were times I would crack a nail, and I would have to battle through just like a guy with an arm injury. It was bizarre, but we figured it out.

MMO: For your career, no catcher caught more of your games than Josh Thole (164). What made Thole such a strong batterymate?

Dickey: He knew what I wanted before I stepped on the rubber. There were a lot of games when he didn’t even put down a sign. He knew that I wanted to throw a fastball in, and we didn’t even have to put down a sign. The communication was great.

He had a great knack for being able to receive a knuckleball in a way that you never saw him jab at it. Most guys are taught to kind of get underneath the pitch to frame it, or get on the side of it, or catch it as it’s coming into the strike zone. And you can’t do that with a knuckleball because it breaks so sharp and late. You’ve got to let it come to you and just react.

He had great hand-eye coordination and no ego at all. He would catch all of my pens and throw with me in the outfield. Thole would do everything he could to try to be the best at it because he knew that was something I needed and depended on. He made himself really good at it. That probably helped him stay in the major leagues for a couple of years.

MMO: What was your initial reaction when you heard you were traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in the winter of 2012?

Dickey: I think my initial reaction was sadness. I loved my experience with the Mets and didn’t want to go, but I certainly understood it as an older veteran and professional and I was getting close to 40. So I was not under the illusion that the world revolved around me.

I love Sandy Alderson and thought he was a great GM. We had a great relationship, and he was always honest with me. I knew that they were shopping it around, and I knew why. It made a lot of sense to me as a business decision, but it didn’t stop the emotional reaction. I was leaving a place where I had kind of resurrected a career and shared a lot of incredible moments with incredible people and fans. It was a special time for me.

Once I got over the sadness, I was excited. The team we were trying to put together in Toronto was pretty neat. We ended up going to the playoffs two of the four years I was there. So it was great.

MMO: What are some things you’ve been up to since retiring from playing?

Dickey: I’m just being a full-time father and husband; that’s why I left the game. I didn’t leave because I couldn’t do it anymore. In my last year, I threw almost 200 innings for the Braves (190 innings in 2017). I left because it was time for me to be a father full-time. I’ve missed so much of my kids’ lives. Now I probably overcompensate; they want me to go back and play. [Laughs.] I’ve loved being a dad and being a husband to a woman who did it all herself for so long.

We have a 40-acre farm in Franklin, Tenn. I get to be involved in my community, coach my son’s high school team and be with my kids. It’s been a real blessing.

MMO: Do you help advise or teach other pitchers the knuckleball?

Dickey: Yes! I’ve been able to go to a couple of different spring trainings and work with guys who have the potential to go down that path. I talk with them about some mechanical adjustments and try to help them be consistent or equip them with something that might help them break through. That’s been really fun. I talk on Zoom or calls with different clubs about guys in their organization.

My hope is to see a couple more knuckleballers within the next five years. I don’t know if we’re going to get that, but there’s a kid in San Diego whose knuckleball I love. There are enough good potential knuckleball pitchers out there who can maybe do it. I’m hoping one of them is going to break through.

The post MMO Exclusive: A Conversation with R.A. Dickey appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Jonah Tong. Photo by Ed Delany of Metsmerized

Tong’s baseball career started with playing in Canada, where he was born and raised in Markham, Ontario. After graduating high school, Tong traveled to Arizona with other Canadians for an amateur baseball Pro Tour in 2022, where he got to play against professional players while facing competition from top-level Arizona JUCO colleges. From there, Tong got the invite to play at the Georgia Premier Academy in April and May, and later the MLB Draft League.

With a commitment to North Dakota State University, Tong ultimately altered that plan, as he was selected by the New York Mets in the seventh round of the 2022 MLB Draft and signed for the full slot value at $226,000.

After being limited to 21 innings in 2023, Tong got off to a fast start in 2024. In his first five appearances, Tong struck out 43 batters while allowing just two unearned runs—none earned!—over 23.2 innings. Over three levels in ’24, Tong tossed 113 innings with a 3.03 ERA. Among 313 minor league pitchers with a minimum of 100 innings pitched, Tong posted the sixth-highest strikeout rate (34.2 percent) and second-lowest fielding independent pitching (2.33).

Following the ’24 season, Tong went home to Canada for a bit but arrived back in Port St. Lucie in mid-January for a preseason camp. Noting the limited places to throw in Canada, Tong has enjoyed the ability to get his work in without weather limitations.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Tong in February, where he discussed his arsenal, studying major league pitchers and the mental side of the game.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Tong: My favorite player used to be Brett Cecil. An odd one for a lot of people. I remember I went with my rookie travel ball team to this meet-and-greet with the Blue Jays. We got to take pictures with some of the players and went to the game. He was the first person I saw and was like, Wow! That’s a big-league pitcher right there.

Jacob deGrom was up there, and Tim Lincecum became a huge influence, as most people know.

Credit: USA TODAY

MMO: Who introduced you to the game?

Tong: I always tell this funny story about how I woke up one day, and I was trying to find some sports place. I was going through the newspaper, and I saw this local T-Ball organization. I asked my parents if I could join, and their faces lit up. They said absolutely because they both have softball backgrounds. So, technically me, I guess, but my parents heavily influenced my career.

MMO: At what point during your development did you start to concentrate on pitching?

Tong: Since I knew I couldn’t hit! [Laughs.] My dad and I would get into some mini-arguments about me hitting because my dad always wanted me to be a two-way player in college and conquer the international scene. I said, ‘Dad, that’s just not happening.’

My middle sister played soccer and did gymnastics back home at the highest level you could for the longest time, and I was like, Okay, she’s not going to the Olympics for both of those.

He always wanted me to hit and have as many options as possible. When I was 16, I went on this fall tournament. I got caught stealing three times, and I tagged up on a ball that didn’t leave the infield. My coach looked at me and said, “Maybe we should do pitching.” My dad wasn’t fully sold, but that’s the story. [Laughs.]

MMO: That ended up being a good decision in the long run though.

Tong: I think so. Funny enough, my grandpa—out of nowhere this past season—came up to me and said, “Jonah, I think you should start hitting.” I said, ‘I don’t think that’s how it works.’ He said, “I think you could. Look at [Shohei] Ohtani!” And I went, ‘Yeah, okay, I think I’m good.’ [Laughs.]

If you need a bunt, I can do that. That’s pretty much it.

MMO: I found your path into professional baseball so interesting. For those who don’t know, can you talk about your journey from Canada to the States to eventually getting drafted by the Mets in 2022?

Tong: In the ’21 offseason, I started to work through everything. I just got into college, and then in January, I got invited to Arizona for this travel ball team from Canada. I went down and played a bunch of the spring training teams; it’s kind of like our [major league] spring training. At that point, I looked at my parents and said, ‘I don’t think it makes sense for me to ramp up for this and then all of a sudden just stop.’ I looked around, and I followed Georgia Premier, and I think Pro 5 because my buddy went there.

Georgia Premier hit me up after that and asked if I would consider coming down to play. I told them I would think about it. Then the Arizona thing happened, and I said, ‘I think this is a good opportunity for me to go and branch off on my own and start learning about who I am as a person, and see if I can do it.’ So I did that, and I had an awesome time.

The Draft League was kind of the same deal when the season ended in May and I wanted to find somewhere else to play before the draft. My agent made a few calls, and I ended up getting an opportunity to go to the Draft League. I met a lot of people, and it was a lot of fun.

I think that’s the place I learned that baseball is not going to be easy. You’re facing guys who are three or four years older, but you do learn a lot.

MMO: Were the Mets on your radar as a potential landing spot in the 2022 Draft?

Tong: Yeah, I was close with the area scout, Marlin McPhail, but I didn’t know that [he was with the Mets] at the time. I just saw a guy with an iconic bucket hat he wore everywhere he went.

I remember talking to him after my first start, and from there we just started talking more and more. He would ask how I was doing and adjusting and would ask me different situations. It was honestly refreshing to talk to somebody after being away from everybody I’ve ever known. To get to know somebody and pick his brain was the coolest thing.

I really didn’t know that I was going to go anywhere [in the draft] until late the night before when I started to hear a little bit more.

MMO: You mentioned being away from home and how big of an adjustment it was. Can you expand on some of those adjustments and challenges you faced?

Tong: Every stop I made, I had to learn something new. When I was in Arizona, I was with a few buddies from back home. In my first inning there, I walked five straight guys. I had no idea where it was going. I asked if I could go one more inning, and it was three-up-three-down with three punchouts against a junior college from Nebraska. And I was like, Alright, I’m just trying to get my feet wet. I was still having a lot of fun because I was with people I knew.

When I went to Georgia, I got picked up by the pastor of the academy and his wife. I thought it was a little different, but I was excited about a new challenge. I was dropped off at the academy in the middle of Statesboro, Georgia, which if you know where Statesboro, Georgia, is, is nothing crazy.

The first time I called my mom; I was just bawling my eyes out. I said, ‘Mom, I’m homesick, I can’t do this anymore.’ She was trying to walk me off the cliff and asked if I wanted to be picked up. I told her no, and that if I was going to go to college, I couldn’t be doing this. Shoot, if I’m going to play baseball, I can’t be doing this because you’re going to be put in situations like that. The next day I woke up and made some friends; the rest is history.

With the Draft League, the experience from the academy helped, and that just continued to where I’m at now. It all taught me to be flexible and open-minded because you don’t know where you’re going to be day-to-day.

MMO: One intriguing trait in your arsenal is the carry your four-seam fastball generates. When did you start to realize that your four-seamer has such rise, and how do you utilize that on the mound?

@TJStats

Tong: When I went to the Draft League, there was a tweet that went out with a highlight of what I did. Honestly, I thought I pitched horribly in my last game. It was not pretty. But they highlighted something called IVB, which stands for induced vertical break. The number was around 20, and I thought, Okay, that’s interesting, but I don’t know what that means. 

When we got to draft camp, they told me that my fastball had a pretty good amount of ride, and I told them I had no idea what that was. They took the time to explain it to me, and once I figured out what it was, I looked up some pitchers for inspiration. Tyler Glasnow was a big comp for fastball shape, I guess because I have more cut ride. I started to watch him and figured out where he pitched. I noticed that if it had ride, it would make sense to pitch up, which is exactly what they told me.

It’s been a big part of my game, especially going into this year, and trying to learn how to use that and pair it with my offspeed [pitches]. I think that’s why my curveball plays; even though it’s not the fastest pitch and not the nastiest thing in the world, there’s enough difference in movement.

MMO: Along with your four-seamer, you also feature a changeup, curveball and slider. Can you talk about the rest of your arsenal? Is it true that you learned your changeup and curveball grips from watching videos online?

Tong: Yeah! My dad and I used to throw across the street—we still do occasionally—and he said I should try and learn a curveball. Originally, I threw a knuckle curve, or so I thought. Basically, I had my two fingers on top, and I pushed it with my fingers. I thought it was a knuckleball, but it was really like a knuckle curve.

Fast forward, they told me that pitch was probably not going to play, and I should consider throwing a regular curveball. I scoured the internet, played around with some stuff, and looked at other pitchers. Clayton Kershaw was a big one; that’s a Hall of Fame curveball. I looked at that and made adjustments and didn’t really think about it for a while.

With my changeup, an influencer and former player with the Cardinals, Robby Rowland, had a video when I was nine or ten of him throwing a Vulcan changeup. I was like, Woah, Vulcan? That sounds sick! Why would I ever throw a circle changeup when I can throw a Vulcan? I tried to learn that, and my dad didn’t want me throwing a splitter at that age. So I thought, How can I mess with something that he can’t tell me I can’t do? The next best thing was this changeup. That developed over the years, and lately, we’ve been tweaking it and trying to improve it. We’ve seen some really interesting things with improving the shape.

The slider was something new. I remember in 2023, I felt like I couldn’t throw a strike. I remember walking into our pitching office, and I went, ‘We need something new because I’m frustrated.’ I was at the point in my career where I was just like, This sucks, and pitching is brutal right now. You go from a place of having so much success in high school, and then you’re challenged for the first time. Looking back at it now, it was probably the most influential year I’ve had up until this point, and we stumbled on a few things.

Going back to Tyler Glasnow, he had this short bullet slider that was gross. I was going to try to copy something like that; I kind of mirrored his arsenal. In developing that—it’s here and there—it’s been pretty consistent lately, which I’m happy about. I’m trying to use it as a bridge pitch because of my big curveball and rising fastball.

We tried working on a two-seamer, and it’s been interesting. It’s basically like, if Glasnow throws it, I’m trying it. [Laughs.] I’m trying to work on that. We’re focusing more on my consistency with the slider and changeup, and maybe we’ll bring in the two-seamer.

MMO: I interviewed Christian Scott recently, and he sang the praises of two developmental figures in the organization Kyle Rogers and Eric Jagers. What has been your relationship with the player development staff?

Tong: It wouldn’t be fair of me not to include everyone on our staff. There are honestly too many names, but guys like Dan McKinney, Garrett Baker, A. J. Sager, Luis Alvarado, Miguel Bonilla, Jagers and Rogers. Everybody has built this massive unit, and being able to pick their brains and learn from them put me in a good spot.

Rogers is awesome when it comes to dealing with your body and trying to figure out what you can do mechanically and pitch-wise. All of the other pitching coaches together have helped me out a lot.

The biggest mentor that I’ve had so far has been Garrett Baker; he’s our integration pitching coach. He loves this Bruce Lee saying: Be like water. You know, be adaptable. I’ve kind of taken that as my mantra. I’ve become close with him.

The biggest thing he’s taught me with everything in general is, yeah, things may suck right now, but how are you going to learn to adapt to it? You’re pitching in 115-degree heat in July, and it’s not ideal conditions. You go play in Brooklyn in April, and it’s 25 degrees, and Binghamton and the big leagues are the same. But the difference is there are more people on you, there’s added pressure, and things aren’t always going to go your way. Some things are just out of your control. How are you not going to let it affect you? You have to ride the wave. Just take it, react to it, be able to adjust, and remain the pitcher that you are.

That’s been the thing that I’ve been constantly learning the most, and it’s had the biggest impact on my career thus far. I think that has helped me transition from the ’23 season to the ’24 season, and now moving into ’25. It’s about looking at everything with a different perspective. How am I going to ride this wave? How am I going to continue to develop and not think the world is crashing when things aren’t going well?

MMO: You really seem to be in touch with the mental aspect of the game.

Tong: One hundred percent. It goes back to the Bruce Lee mantra; it’s on the inside of my glove, which is the coolest thing. When I look at it, it’s just where I need to be. We have to recognize that we are in the presence of some of the best players in the world. Being able to go to the field and get to throw with Christian Scott one day, or throw with Calvin Ziegler. Francisco Lindor is playing on the field next to us, or Jett Williams is right there hitting. Everybody together builds this unit, and you kind of take advantage of that.

Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

I think being able to mentally understand that you don’t need to be someone bigger is the biggest challenge for me. I always felt like I needed to do something extra because some things weren’t going my way. Our mental performance team through the years has changed, but the people always have the same message: don’t be someone bigger than yourself. Be a good teammate, and things will work out in the way that they’re supposed to. I’m a firm believer in that. I have bad days and good days; it’s still a constant battle. Confidence can be a constant battle throughout my career.

I think for high school guys specifically, that’s the thing that we don’t recognize until it’s happening. To get out of something, and then once you’re out of it, you have a different perspective. It’s almost like you’re enlightened about it. If I could go back and talk to anybody, specifically myself, I’d say, ‘The faster you recognize that things aren’t going to go your way all the time and tackle the mental side of baseball, you can enjoy it so much more.’

MMO: One of the many investments Steve Cohen has made with this team is the pitching lab in Port St. Lucie. Have you had a chance to use it?

Tong: I’ve gotten to throw there a few times; it’s pretty cool. For a guy who knows nothing about what goes on, there are a lot of smart people around who make sure we have access to everything. I’m still learning what’s going on in there, because again, I’ll look in and be like, Oh, that’s new! What does that do? 

It really helps us as pitchers understand stuff that we can’t normally see from a biomechanical standpoint. I do find it interesting. It’ll be interesting to see how it translates over the next few years.

MMO: Is the lab available for pitchers to drop in at any point? Or, are there certain times that it’s available?

Tong: I’m honestly not sure. I know that we’ll throw in there a few times in the year, but everybody’s case is a little bit different. I’m sure if you’re working on something mechanically, that’s going to be your best place to get what you need.

MMO: You mentioned having control issues in 2023. Of course, it was a small sample size (21 innings). However, you went from a 22 percent walk rate to 10 percent over 113 innings in 2024. What adjustments were made?

Tong: Going back to Rogers, he kind of built our prior movement routine, and stuff like that. Baker kind of helped me realize that I have to be adaptable. Over the course of that entire season, we were trying to nail down my mechanics and make sure everything was repeatable. That’s the biggest word I was fed.

Going into the offseason, I took that and used some water bags or Orca bags, which are huge for me. Doing different plyo variations and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, which I think over time helped me be more resilient on the mound. As a result, the mechanics were cleaned up a bit.

I wouldn’t say there’s one specific fix; there were just a lot of things that slowly started to merge and click to kind of where we are right now. There’s still room to grow, but I like where we’re going from that.

Jonah Tong. Photo by @ITSDMPhotos via Binghamton Rumble Ponies

MMO: You talked about your repertoire in a video for MLB Pipeline last year. In it, you mentioned that the curveball is the first pitch you throw in your bullpens before a game. Is that still the case? And how do you adjust if you don’t have a feel for that pitch on a given day?

Tong: I like to either start with it or end with it. Lately, it’s been ending with it because it’s more of a feel thing. For instance, in live BP, it’s always the funniest thing when it’s the last pitch, and even though I just want to throw a fastball to challenge myself, I throw an offspeed. I thought everyone gave me weird looks when I did that because they were expecting a fastball. And I was like, You know what? Let’s just make this a thing. 

Going into the season, that was one of those things I wanted to make sure I had a feel for. That helped me by throwing it as the last pitch. It just made me feel like I had this confidence. The last fastball is generally my best fastball in my sides or bullpens; not always, but mostly. Being able to change that up with my curveball can give me a little more confidence with it.

It’s funny that you asked if it makes me feel like I can throw it in the game. Yes and no. I think when I go into the game trusting it, it’s pretty good, and it does what I need it to do. When I get away from that or feel like I need to do something a little bit extra, that’s when we have different issues.

The big thing for me moving forward is making sure that when I throw it, I trust it. I remember watching a thing about Clayton Kershaw in an on-field interview. He was talking about tucking his curveball, gripping it really hard, and not having many thoughts on it because when he does that, it takes away from everything. And I was like, That’s a great point! I’ve been trying to work on that.

MMO: Throughout our chat, you’ve mentioned several big leaguers you’ve studied and taken bits and pieces from for your own game. Have you always been a student of the game?

Tong: I love telling the story about my dad and I watching videos of Tim Lincecum and my mom yelling downstairs because it was late on a school night. My dad instilled that in me. He’d be like, “Hey, come here,” and I’d be like, ‘Dad, I’m in the middle of an assignment.’ He’d say, “Come here, check this out: Greg Maddux.” He does everything for me. We watch it, understand it, pick his brain, and pick my brain. I think it slowly became something where he started to learn something and I did, which is kind of cool and beautiful now thinking about it.

When I was a kid, I didn’t think of it like that; I thought it was a waste of my time. But I started growing up and realizing the importance of it. I’m not the biggest guy on the field; I never have been and never will be. So being able to educate myself has been one of the biggest things in my career. Coming from Canada, we don’t play enough baseball just because of our climate compared to the American travel scene, so you kind of have to [be educated in the game].

Playing MLB The Show is a great example. It kind of teaches you more about the game and how you would pitch to people. I’ve always been a pretty good academic student, and studying is something I know, and I’m still improving with it. It’s funny; as you go up levels and start seeing different coaches, people, and styles, everything seems like one step, and everybody has their specialties. Getting a chance to be with A.J. [Sager] at the end of the year [with Binghamton] was pretty cool and something I was looking forward to in just learning from him and being more of a student of the game from that aspect.

MMO: You mentioned a few things that you’ve been working on with your slider and adding a two-seamer. Is there anything else you’re focusing on heading into 2025?

Tong: Just being present. I think that’s the thing I’ve been trying to focus on the most. It’s like, I’m here, soak it all up, be thankful every day, and thank God for the opportunities. That’s what I’m trying to focus on the most: realizing what we’re doing and how cool it is, and that’s what makes baseball fun. When we start thinking about it too much and putting more pressure on ourselves, that’s when we run into issues, and I did that all the time in ’23.

I’m going to continue the trend and focus on situation-based things. If we have a live BP, for instance, and my focus is working on early count curveballs. Yeah, it’s February. Did I do it all the time? No. But I got one of the six I tried, and that’s success. That’s a win. Everything is brick-by-brick, day-by-day because we’re not trying to be perfect in February.

The post MMO Exclusive: Pitching Prospect Jonah Tong appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Scott posted a 2.57 ERA in 87.2 innings pitched over three levels and was named the organization’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year. Scott’s prospect status was elevated, particularly with his ability to induce swings and misses (16.8 SwStr%; tied for the sixth-highest mark) while limiting walks (3.6% walk rate; tied for third lowest).

Rafael Suanes-USA TODAY Sports

Heading into the 2024 season, Scott was listed as the club’s best pitching prospect by MLB Pipeline (and the fifth-best prospect in the system), after not making the Top-30 list a year prior. Scott, selected in the fifth round in the 2021 MLB Draft out of the University of Florida, was an arm many evaluators thought would get a chance to make his major league debut this year.

After five April starts with Triple-A Syracuse, in which Scott struck out 36 batters while allowing only six walks over 25.1 innings pitched, the Florida native was promoted to the majors and debuted against the Tampa Bay Rays on the road on May 4 in front of dozens of family and friends.

Following three straight hits in the first inning to Yandy Díaz, Richie Palacios and Isaac Paredes, Scott worked out of trouble by striking out Randy Arozarena and getting Harold Ramírez to ground into an inning-ending double play. He allowed just one run on five hits with six strikeouts over 6.2 innings pitched in the Mets’ 3-1 loss. Scott became the first Met to toss at least 6.2 innings while allowing no more than one run in his major league debut since Jacob deGrom on May 15, 2014. His 18 swings and misses were tied with David Peterson (Sept. 15) and Tylor Megill (Sept. 30) for the most by a Mets pitcher in a road game in 2024.

Scott made nine major league starts in 2024, posting a 4.56 ERA over 47.1 innings. Scott’s best work came against right-handed hitters, as he limited them to a .236 weighted on-base average while posting a 0.83 walks plus hits per inning pitched and a 22 percent strikeout rate.

May 11, 2024; New York City, New York, USA; New York Mets pitcher Christian Scott (45) pitches against the Atlanta Braves during the first inning at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: John Jones-USA TODAY Sports

Following his July 21 start against the Miami Marlins on the road, Scott was placed on the IL as he was diagnosed with a right UCL sprain. The Mets were hopeful Scott would make a late-season return, going with a rest-and-rehab approach.

Unfortunately, Scott had difficulty making some of his pitches during his rehab, specifically his offspeed stuff. The 25-year-old underwent a hybrid elbow surgery in late September, combining traditional Tommy John surgery with a stabilizing internal brace for extra support.

Post-surgery, Scott has been rehabbing at the Mets complex in Port St. Lucie, along with the BARWIS Performance Center.

I had the privilege of interviewing Scott in late November, where we discussed adding pitches to his arsenal, the Mets’ pitching lab and his 2024 season.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players when you were younger?

Scott: My mom’s from the Northeast, so I watched a lot of Red Sox games growing up. I’d say Dustin Pedroia and Jon Lester. I went to a couple of games in the 2004 and 2007 World Series. I got to see them win some games, which was a lot of fun.

MMO: At what point during your development did you start to primarily focus on pitching?

Scott: I started to really [focus on pitching] in high school, but I still hit a little bit. Going to college, I knew hitting wasn’t a possibility. Once they started throwing over 90 miles per hour, I was like, This whole hitting thing is not what they make it out to be. [Laughs.]

In college, I was a starting pitcher only. But in high school I started figuring out that I was trending in that direction.

MMO: Is it true that you played with Pedro Martínez’s son in high school? And if so, did you ever get any advice from him?

Scott: I actually played with Pedro Martínez’s son and Joe Girardi’s son, Dante. I got to talk to those guys a lot, which was really cool. I remember Pedro sitting in on one of my bullpens, and I asked him about his changeup grip. He has these really long fingers, and I tried his grip and threw the first one and sailed it. He was like, “Just stick with yours.”

Pedro is a really good guy. He would go to a lot of those games and sit down and talk with us. I’m really grateful for that as well.

MMO: What are your memories from the 2021 Major League Draft? Were the Mets on your radar?

Scott: Yeah, for sure. Before the Draft, you talk to some teams, and you get a game plan of where you could go. I knew the Mets were one of the teams that were interested. They reached out right around the fourth and fifth rounds, and took me. I talked to a lot of their staff beforehand, including the area scout (Jon Updike) about what they wanted to do.

I knew that when I got drafted, they were going to try me as a starter first. I’m grateful for that opportunity to be able to go out there and compete and be able to go long leverage innings.

MMO: You mentioned the Mets drafted you with the intention of having you start. What were those conversations early on? How was the transition going from the pen in college to the rotation professionally?

Scott: Our first conversation that we had, they told me they were going to try me as a starter. In college, I really only had two pitches: a two-seam fastball and a slider. Really early in my tenure with the Mets, they wanted to add pitches. In order to start, you need to be able to go through a lineup two, three, or four times; it’s not just one time through the lineup. Being able to have multiple weapons to put hitters away, I knew we needed to revamp my repertoire.

We banged my two-seam fastball for a four-seamer and then added a changeup that year. I added a sweeper this year as well. So just continuing to refine my repertoire and finding different ways to get both right- and left-handed hitters out. I’m very grateful for them being able to help me gain in my stuff, have confidence throwing the ball over the middle of the plate and not pitching around guys, especially not just wanting strikeouts but being able to be okay with contact.

MMO: What was the process like of adding those pitches to your arsenal?

Scott: We started with the four-seam fastball right away. The metrics were better on it, and it played better from my release angle and saw an approach angle to the plate. We knew that was the direction that I wanted to go. It was pretty easy because I threw one in high school. It was more about knowing where to locate it and throw it at the top of the zone and get above that. The location part was what we really worked on.

With the changeup, I struggled in college with a change. I never got a feel for one. I used multiple fingers on one and tried different grips with a circle change. We went to a split-change, just utilizing two fingers when I got here. I felt comfortable with that grip. It took a little bit to get used to, but it’s definitely been a huge piece for me to be able to keep hitters off balance. I’ve never really had that as a reliever, but being able to go through the lineup multiple times was important.

Last offseason, I added the sweeper. I was talking to Grayson Crawford, [Eric] Jagers, Kyle Rogers, guys like that who have been huge in my development. How to attack right-handed hitters and lefty hitters with a sweeper and build a movement profile that we want on it so that it’ll play as a fourth weapon.

MMO: Fans notice the player development hires, such as Kyle Rogers and Eric Jagers that you’ve mentioned. However, I believe many don’t grasp the extensive contributions they make across the organization. Could you share your experiences with both of them and how they’ve supported your growth?

Scott: Rogers, for example, has helped me so much with my delivery. I was looking at a side-by-side video the other day from college and pro ball, and just the night-and-day difference being able to repeat my delivery over and over again and being able to go long in games and hold velo. I’m super grateful, and he’s a really smart guy. He really helps a lot with pitch types, deliveries, sequencing and different things that we need.

Jagers has done an unbelievable job since taking over in so many facets of the game. Whether that’s going over an at-bat, reading the hitter, reading the swing, pitch types and deliveries. He’s a Swiss army knife. Having him in the organization is great.

These guys are great at what they do, and we’re grateful for them.

Eric Jagers, Vice-President of Pitching for the New York Mets Source: The Enquirer

MMO: Can you talk a bit about the Mets’ pitching lab at Clover Park? What were some of the benefits you found from going there?

Scott: Yeah, I’ve been there a couple of times. There are things you can see on video, and there are things you may not be able to see. You can take a side angle of your delivery and see what’s going on. You’re able to really slow it down and use the high-speed cameras and the stuff we have to be able to slow down the delivery and see where you’re applying force. Maybe your force isn’t as strong in your core, or you’re able to rotate faster. Maybe you’re a rotational athlete or a linear athlete. You’re able to really find your strengths and weaknesses in your delivery that way and be able to capitalize on your strengths and maybe raise the floor on some of your weaknesses.

Being able to slow it down and take it inch by inch rather than being one still frame in your delivery. Find bits and pieces to tinker with and see what you need help with, whether it’s going on the ball of your foot when you’re driving down the mound or sitting on the heel. Little things like that to really slow it down.

MMO: Before beginning your professional career, were you familiar with the data and technology in the game?

Scott: I wasn’t too familiar with it. We went over it a little bit in college, some of the Trackman numbers and things like that. But I was never too familiar with it. I just got the ball and went out there and ripped it, and hopefully I got some swings and misses.

I didn’t have a whole lot of numbers to put my stuff behind. It’s hard to get a hold of that and be able to understand just how to pitch; to be able to go up and down and east to west. I think that is what has really helped me and my confidence in going on to compete at a high level every time I get the ball.

MMO: Command is one of your calling cards, and you do a terrific job of limiting walks. Was that something you were adept at early on, or did that develop throughout your tenure professionally?

Scott: I feel like I’ve always had a feel for throwing strikes. In college, if you walked two guys, you’re getting taken out of the game right away. You’re immediately of the mindset to throw strikes and make them beat you.

Being a starter, when you go multiple times through an order, you want to have the hitters not see as many of your pitches as you have. Let’s say you face a right-handed hitter three times, and he sees six or seven sweepers from you, then he’s going to be on time for one of those sweepers and be able to hit that. Same thing with the fastball.

The quicker that you’re able to get outs and turn the lineup over, I feel like it gives us the most success as a team to get a win. I’d rather you get a hit off me than walk somebody because it’s deeper in counts and deeper in games, and it’s not being efficient. It’s just about having confidence in zone and trust my stuff.

MMO: What are your memories from your major league debut on May 4, 2024?

Christian Scott. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement Neitzel-USA TODAY Sports

Scott: It was really cool to have my family there and go out to do what I love to do and compete. It was really cool to have a bunch of family and friends there, and I got to have dinner with them after. But in the meantime, you’re focused on getting the win.

I felt like I was really on point with my stuff, especially towards the end of the game. I really fell in a groove, especially with the sweeper. Just being able to repeat that and continue to keep the fastball up in the zone and keep them off balance enough with the changeup. I had fun, and it was a blast, especially having my family and friends in attendance.

MMO: Speaking of your sweeper, I’m curious how pitchers go about getting a good feel on a new pitch. What did you incorporate regarding feedback and data for your sweeper?

Scott: You can look at the numbers on it and also just the way the hitters react to it or the way your catch partner reacts to it. You can kind of see if it’s staying on plane or if it’s diving like more of a slurve. You have the feedback of people you’re playing catch with and also able to see the numbers on Trackman. Just staying consistent with it.

If you have a release point or a cue that works for you for that time, try to repeat that and continue to stack good stones each time that you’re trying to develop a new pitch. Be able to take little achievements and eventually be able to locate that in the zone and then go away with it when you want. Just throwing it over time a bunch and also getting good feedback from it helped me out a lot.

MMO: You made nine starts with the Syracuse Mets in 2024. What were your thoughts on the automated ball-strike system for both the full ABS and the challenge system?

Scott: Honestly, I like the challenge system a little bit better. It adds another asset to the game, kind of like a strategic point to the game where you don’t want to use your challenges too early, but there are times when they’re necessary. If you have a 3-2 count and a couple of guys on, and a call doesn’t go your way, maybe you challenge that. It’s another facet for fans to enjoy where they show it on the scoreboard if it’s a strike or ball. You see how the game is played by inches, and less than an inch could be a ball or a strike. I think it gives a cool aspect to the game.

In terms of throwing to ABS, you don’t really notice it a whole lot. At least you know for sure if it was a strike or ball. You’re not getting any balls away and you’re not getting any balls in. You know you have to be in the strike zone. That was really the only adjustment; maybe you get half a ball off. When you’re throwing in ABS games, you’re going to pound the middle of the strike zone and try to get them to chase late. That’s the game plan most people have.

MMO: What were your impressions of Carlos Mendoza and Jeremy Hefner while you were up with the Mets?

Scott: I think they did an unbelievable job, just being able to stay even-keel the whole time. We had a lot of ups-and-downs during the season, but they are two rocks in our system. We’d go out and have fun but we’re also going to compete. We’re going to try and win every game we go out there and play.

I’ve got nothing but great things to say about Mendy and Hef. They’ve done an unbelievable job to help me and help me adjust. I’m super grateful to both of those guys.

MMO: You were shut down in July with a UCL sprain. Early on, there were hopes you could return later in the season. At what point did you and the team decide that having Tommy John surgery was the best course of action?

Scott: I don’t remember the exact date. I threw a couple of bullpens and was starting to raise the floors on some of the velocities. And I just didn’t feel right, especially with the offspeed pitches. I couldn’t get over that hump, and we tried a couple of different things, a couple of different changes. At the end of the day, it was probably the best option for me. I’m trying to stay positive about it.

MMO: You underwent a hybrid elbow surgery, combining Tommy John with a stabilizing internal brace. What are the benefits of adding that internal brace?

Scott: That’s correct. I went with Tommy John with the brace. There’s more support, especially early on in the process, and it just adds another layer of protection. I got a couple of recommendations from guys who’ve been there and had them and had a lot of success.

As a family, as a team and as an organization, we felt like it was the best decision, and I felt good about it. I had a lot of positive recommendations, and Dr. Keith [Meister] (who performed Scott’s surgery) is a great guy.

MMO: How has the rehab been going?

Scott: It’s going great. I’m going home in December for two weeks, but it’s been going great so far. A lot of the staff here is awesome. I know a lot of the guys down here, like Nathan Lavender. We’re hanging out and being positive about it and taking it day by day. We’re also challenging each other and pushing each other to be the best we possibly can be.

It’s been a good time going out there and trying to be positive every day. Continuing to put one foot in front of the other.

MMO: And you’re expecting to return for the 2026 season?

Scott: Yeah, I would assume so.

The post MMO Exclusive: Right Handed Pitcher, Christian Scott appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

In the ’90s, Major League Baseball was dominated by luminary power hitters, such as Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Albert Belle. Fans were enthralled with the enticing numbers being produced, with larger-than-life personalities regularly receiving the spotlight and fanfare.

For all of their rightful attention, players who produced in other ways, and perhaps in a quieter fashion, had gone more unnoticed.

John Olerud is a prime example.

Drafted in the third round of the 1989 MLB Draft by the Toronto Blue Jays after excelling as a two-way player at Washington State University, Olerud bypassed the minor leagues and immediately made his mark at the big league level.

In his rookie season in 1990, Olerud posted a 122 wRC+ over 421 plate appearances, finishing fourth in the American League Rookie of the Year voting.

Three years later, Olerud had his breakout season. He won the American League batting title with a .363 average while leading all of baseball in on-base percentage (.473) in his age-24 season. Olerud became the youngest player to record 80+ extra-base hits and 100+ walks in a season since Reggie Jackson in 1969.

The lefty-hitting first baseman spent his first eight seasons with Toronto before a trade sent him to the New York Mets in December 1996. Switching leagues and countries, Olerud made a seamless transition with the Mets. Olerud played in 154 games in 1997 and posted a 135 OPS+ (his highest mark since the ’93 season) with 22 home runs and 102 RBI.

While Olerud’s first year with the club was successful, he followed that up with one of the greatest seasons in franchise history in 1998.

Olerud played in 160 games and produced a .354 average, a .447 on-base percentage and 8.1 fWAR. He owns the club’s single-season record in average, on-base percentage and wRC+ (167). His 8.1 fWAR is the second-highest mark by a Mets position player, behind David Wright’s 2007 season (8.4).

His final season with the Mets in 1999 was another strong campaign. Olerud posted a .427 on-base percentage and 129 OPS+ in 162 regular season games. Olerud set yet another single-season club record in ’99 with 125 walks, and is the only Met to record triple-digit walks in a season.

In the ’99 postseason, Olerud hit .349 and posted a .975 OPS with three home runs and 12 RBI. Olerud owns the 8th-highest single-season postseason OPS in Mets history (min. 40 PA), and is tied with Curtis Granderson‘s 2015 postseason for the second-most RBI (12).

When viewing Olerud’s total contributions in the nineties, he owns the seventh-highest on-base percentage (.406) and tied with three other players (Rafael Palmeiro, Tim Salmon and Fred McGriff) for the 11th-highest wRC+ (136) among 102 players with at least 4,000 plate appearances.

Among that group, Olerud is one of five players who posted a .300 or better batting average and a .400 or better on-base percentage during that span, along with Edgar Martínez, Frank Thomas, Jeff Bagwell and Bonds.

The three-time Gold Glove winner, who famously wore a helmet in the field due to a near-fatal brain aneurysm in college, played in his final major league game as a member of the Boston Red Sox in 2005. For his career, Olerud collected 500 doubles and 255 home runs, with a career slash line of .295/.398/.465. Olerud’s career 57.3 fWAR is better than Hall of Famers Fred McGriff (56.9), Todd Helton (54.9) and Orlando Cepeda (50.3). Somehow, Olerud only lasted one year on the Hall of Fame ballot.

Since retiring from the game, Olerud, 56, has kept busy raising a family and taking care of his daughter, Jordan, who was born in 2000 with a syndrome called tri-some 2p, 5p-, which meant she had an extra second chromosome and was missing part of her fifth chromosome. Olerud and his wife, Kelly, started a foundation in their daughter’s name in 2003 to provide support to children with special needs and their families. ​ Sadly, Jordan Olerud passed away in 2020 at the young age of 19.

Olerud’s on-base prowess, defensive acumen and professionalism made him an easy fan favorite wherever he played.

I had the privilege of speaking with Olerud by phone, where we discussed his dad’s influence, his two-way play in college and time with the Mets.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Olerud: Being a left-handed kid who pitched and hit, I tended to like left-handed players. I was a George Brett fan. Charley Lau and The Art of Hitting .300 was a book that I read and really liked. He (Brett) was a third baseman, but I watched him.

Don Mattingly was the guy that I always looked up to. Just a great hitter and defensive player. Nolan Ryan was a guy who was always super impressive as a young kid watching him.

My dad also played some minor league baseball, so it was always fun watching the game with him. He was always able to make it fun.

I remember him telling me to watch Jim Rice and how he would use his hands and rock his hands back and get ready to hit. He was kind of playing manager. What do you do in this situation? Do you think they’re going to try and have the guy steal? Do you think they’re going to bunt him over or do a hit-and-run? What would you do?

MMO: Your dad seemed to be very influential in your early development.

Olerud: He was a catcher, so he would work with me on my pitching and also my hitting and swing. He was very influential.

I remember a time when I was in Little League, and I was pitching, and we were working on the changeup. When we got into a game, we got into a situation where I was up against a tough hitter, and my dad called for me to throw a changeup. I remember thinking, That’s the stupidest thing in the world. This guy is a really good hitter. Why on earth would I throw it slower to this guy? 

I’m shaking off my dad as a Little League player because I didn’t want to throw it. And he made me. So in my head, I’m thinking, All right, I’m going to show him what a dumb pitch this is. I’m going to throw it right down the middle of the plate, and this guy’s going to hit it a mile. And I’m going to be able to tell my dad he was wrong. The guy was way out in front of the pitch. He looked foolish swinging, and I couldn’t believe it. I almost started laughing on the mound that it worked. So then it was like, Let’s throw that again! That was awesome. And he went, “No, no, it doesn’t work that way.”

That was when I was like, Wow, he knows what he’s talking about.

MMO: You have to listen to Dad.

Olerud: Listen to Dad; he knows what he’s talking about. I was super fortunate that he was able to coach me. He always offered great advice and good instruction.

MMO: Your two-way play in college is the stuff of legend, so much so that the College Baseball Foundation created an annual award in your name. Can you talk about your time on the mound, and what pitches you threw?

Olerud: As I was growing up, my dad didn’t want me throwing a curveball because he wanted to protect my arm and didn’t want any twisting or possibility of hurting my arm by throwing it incorrectly. I was mainly a fastball/changeup pitcher growing up.

He taught me how to throw a knuckleball. It wasn’t very good, but it was something different. When I got to college and was able to start throwing a slider and a curveball, my best pitches were still a fastball and changeup. My slider was probably my third-best pitch, and my curveball I just couldn’t get a good feel for. I was mainly locating fastball and changeup, and being left-handed helped. I wasn’t overpowering.

I remember when I got signed by the Toronto Blue Jays, Al Widmar, the pitching coach, watched me throw a bullpen. He had me trying to hold the ball in different ways to see if I could get natural sink on my ball. I wasn’t throwing 90, and I didn’t have a lot of sink on my pitch.

For the Major Leagues, could I have pitched? Maybe. But I would’ve had to prove it in the minor leagues. I wasn’t somebody like [Shohei] Ohtani, who was just impressive that everybody’s excited about because he’s got such great stuff. I had success at the college level by being able to locate and change speeds.

MMO: Do you think pitching in college aided in your offensive prowess and pitch recognition at the plate?

Olerud: I think it gives you a good perspective. I think it definitely helps to know what you’re thinking of, how a pitcher is looking to attack a hitter, how they want to set them up and where you’re trying to avoid. I think it helps both ways. When you’re pitching as well, and if you’re struggling hitting, just because you make a mistake does not mean that the guy is going to hit the ball.

I’ve swung and missed at balls right down the middle of the plate when you’re struggling, or you roll over it and hit a weak ground ball on a good pitch to hit. That sort of stuff helps take the pressure off as a pitcher that I don’t have to be perfect. As a hitter, it gives you some insight into how a pitcher would like to get you out or what they would be trying to do in different situations. I think it definitely helped.

MMO: The Mets drafted you in the 27th round in the 1986 MLB Draft. Was there ever a chance you would have signed with the club? Or was college always the route you were going?

Olerud: I think college was always the plan for me. I felt if I didn’t have success at the college level, then I’d have no chance of success at the big-league level. I always felt that made the most sense. Education was always something that was super important to my dad, so yeah, I never really considered it. I was a decent student, so that was always the game plan going forward.

It was very flattering to have major league scouts come up and want to get your information. But I felt like I needed to prove myself at the college level before even thinking about playing professional ball.

MMO: The 1993 season was your breakout year. You won the American League batting title, recorded 80 extra-base hits and led baseball in on-base percentage with a .473 mark. Did you make any physical or mechanical adjustments at the plate going into that season?

Olerud: Everything clicked for me that year. I would say the big thing that I remember about that year was just mechanically keeping my hands inside the ball really well. My mechanics were awfully good; I felt like I didn’t have to get to the inside pitch as far out in front of me in order to get the barrel to the ball. I was just really efficient in getting the barrel to the ball to that inside pitch. That allowed me to stay back more on the ball out over the plate. With offspeed pitches, that allowed me to stay back because I didn’t have to cheat to get to that inside pitch. My mechanics were really good.

That year was my best year. I always felt like I was making good contact and getting the barrel of the bat to the ball. That’s kind of the year that I ranked all other years against. The 1998 season with the Mets was my best season with the Mets, and I hit for a great average. But I would say that my ’93 year was still better just as far as consistency and making solid contact. That was just a magical year for me.

MMO: Plate discipline was one of your calling cards throughout your career. Was that something you always felt you had a gift at?

Olerud: I think it was always something where I wanted to get a good pitch to hit. I just hated making outs, and I didn’t want to swing at a bad pitch or a pitcher’s pitch. I wanted to get a good pitch to hit so that I could take a good swing at it. I think it was something that drove a lot of people crazy—a lot of hitting coaches.

I would take a good strike to hit first pitch; I didn’t swing at a lot of first pitches. Looking back, that was probably a mistake not being more aggressive in some counts and situations early in the count. When I struggled, that was the problem: nothing looked good enough to take a swing at. [Laughs.] You then get to where you’re looking for too perfect a pitch, and you get behind in the count.

It was a good thing to be selective, but taken too far, it can be a negative. Where I would err is being too selective. When I got into slumps or was struggling, I would have to get myself to be more aggressive, and swinging at more pitches was a way for me to get out of that.

MMO: What were your initial reactions when you heard you were traded to the Mets in December 1996?

Olerud: My first reaction was I didn’t want to go to New York. [Laughs.] I was super intimidated by New York City. As a player coming from Toronto, we’d come and stay in the city and stay at the Grand Central Hyatt, and the city was super intimidating to me. I was nervous about coming to New York for sure. But it was the best thing that could have happened to me. I had such a great experience living in the city with the best teammates that I had, and I really got along with the coaches. It was a great place for me, and I’m very thankful I got traded to the Mets.

MMO: I’ve read in past interviews that while you were in New York, you and your wife frequented many Broadway shows. Do you have any favorites?

Olerud: Jay [Horwitz] gives me a hard time because he came up with a funny note at one point (for the team’s game notes) saying that I broke a record for going to the most shows. Thankfully, my wife was not as intimidated by New York as I was, and she was a good influence. She’d say, “We’ve got a great opportunity to be here. Let’s take advantage of some of these cultural things that you can’t do any place else.”

We would try to go to the theater, and I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did! We went and saw Les Misérables, and that was probably one of my favorites. We also did that in Toronto; they had theater there as well. So we did that a little bit before New York.

MMO: Your 1998 season is one of the best offensive years in Mets history. What memories do you have from that year?

Oleurd: I would say just how much fun we had as a team. The clubhouse was great, and everybody on the team was pulling for each other. The camaraderie and chemistry in the clubhouse were great. It was a lot of fun, and it was a great year. Unfortunately, we struggled the last week of the season and didn’t make the playoffs. But it was just a great year.

MMO: The 1999 Sports Illustrated cover featuring the team’s infield is a fan favorite. What are your memories of that season defensively? And is that the best infield you ever played with?

Oleurd: I would say so. We had some great infields when I was with Toronto, but that one was a lot of fun to be a part of. You had Robin [Ventura] and Rey [Ordóñez] on the left side of the infield, and they just made great plays all of the time. And Edgardo Alfonzo quietly put together an amazing year. All of the attention was on the left side of the infield, but Edgardo had an amazing year as well.

For me, I’m super thankful for being on the Mets. I feel like playing for the Mets definitely turned my career around defensively as a first baseman because I got the best advice. Cookie Rojas helped me more than anybody in digging the ball out of the dirt. He helped me with that and really became a much better fielder at first base, receiving throws and bailing people out from bad throws. It was always super fun.

I don’t remember who we were playing, but you had a guy with a lot of speed, and he laid down a perfect bunt down the third base line. I remember I was getting ready to come off the base to tell Robin to not waste a throw. He comes flying and throws it to first, and we got the guy by a good step or two. I was shocked. I was like, Okay, note to self: do not try to help him out on what he can make and what he can’t make. 

With Rey, I’d be going to first base, and I’d hear the whole stadium go, “Wow!” I thought it was just a routine ground ball. I come up, he throws the ball to me, and I’d go into the dugout and ask, ‘What happened?’ They would tell me it took a horrible hop, and he just snatched at it and came up with it.

Rey was fun to watch. Just the type of plays that he made, I hadn’t seen anyone else play shortstop like that. It was impressive watching him put tags on people, fielding throws that were bad, but yet still catching it on the way to making a tag. It was fun to watch those guys.

MMO: You’ve debunked the famous Rickey Henderson story that took on a life of its own. Do you know how that story even originated?

Olerud: Oh, yeah. Scotty Lawrenson, who was the assistant trainer for the Mets, was great and had a great sense of humor. He was the one who came up with the story. If he saw a picture in the paper or in a magazine or advertisement of a guy who reminded him or looked like a guy on the team, he’d cut out the picture, make up a little story underneath it and put it up in the training room. You’d come in, and on the bulletin board there might be something like, So-and-so was seen on an off day, and whatever the story would be. But he had such a great sense of humor.

He’d come up with what he thought guys would be if they weren’t playing Major League Baseball. I remember going in and seeing what he had me as if I wasn’t playing. He had me as a Walmart greeter because he thought that was funny trying to picture me—a super quiet guy—greeting people as they came in.

Rickey was known for not being great with guys’ names, and so that’s kind of how that idea originated—that he came up to me and asked me about the helmet, and said, “Man, I played with a guy in New York like that.”

MMO: Did you and Rickey ever discuss the fabricated story?

Olerud: I don’t remember talking about it much with him. I remember running in the outfield—I forgot which team I was with at the time—before the game started. I made a comment to him, ‘Hey Rickey, would you tell these guys to stop talking about the story?’ And he went, “Oh, I know!”

We never really talked about it a whole lot. It’s just a funny story, and I get asked about it all the time. It’s just an awfully good story.

MMO: You and your wife, Kelly, started a foundation in your daughter’s name in 2003 called the Jordan Fund. Can you talk about why you started it and what the mission is?

Olerud: In 2000, my daughter Jordan was born, and she had some severe disabilities. She had an unbalanced translocation of her second and fifth chromosomes. So here we have a special needs child that we’re trying to figure out the health care, taking care of her, and just the different issues that come up for how to best care for her. We felt like we were in a great position to care for a child like Jordan. She had two parents; I was home and we had friends and family around us and great hospitals in the Seattle area. And, man, it was super hard trying to figure it out and navigate.

We started the fund to help out other non-profits that were a real blessing to our family and places that had helped us out. We were thankful they were there when we needed them. We also wanted to help out families with communication devices; we’ve done a bathroom remodel for a family before; we try and help out with respite care; the summer camps these kids are able to go to. We had a horse therapy place in Washington, a little bit of therapeutic riding. That was great for my daughter and really helped her get stronger with her core and able to sit up.

We just wanted to help out the non-profits in our area that helped out the special needs community and wanted to try and help out other families. Like I said, we felt like we were in a good position as a family and a good location with friends and family around us. And boy, it’s still hard. We wanted to help out those families that, you know, maybe there’s a single mom or someone who doesn’t have a lot of support around them.

That’s how we got started with it, and we’ve just continued on, and the fund has grown. We haven’t done much fundraising at all, but we’re just trying to help out the special needs community.

MMO: Would you ever consider getting back into the game as a coach or special assistant? Have you ever been asked?

Olerud: No, not really. When I got done playing, my focus was on helping out with my daughter, her health care and the family. I did coach my son’s Little League team and didn’t have a lot of success with those guys. [Laughs.] That kind of discouraged me on the coaching thing.

My youngest is a sophomore at Clemson University, so I haven’t considered it. Nobody’s been knocking on my door saying, “Hey, we’d like to have you.” It really hasn’t been something that I’ve had to think about much.

MMO: When you look back on your career, what are you most proud of?

Olerud: Boy, that’s a tough one. I would say probably my 1993 season; that was the best year that I had where everything came together. It was a magical year.

I was awfully blessed with the different teams I got to play for. When you look back on your career, a lot of the things that stick out the most are the guys who you got an opportunity to play with. Your teammates and that camaraderie, and just the time you got to spend with them. It’s pretty hard to replicate that clubhouse setting and being a part of a team and working towards the goal. I would say those are the big things. But as far as my best years, the ’93 and ’98 years are pretty special for me.

The post MMO Exclusive: John Olerud, The Quiet Star appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, and attending St. John’s University in Queens, John Franco embodied a New Yorker. It was only apt that Franco would ultimately pitch for his beloved childhood team, the New York Mets.

Franco, 64, was a four-time All-Star and a reliable arm in the backend of the bullpen. During his 21-year Major League career, Franco made at least 50 appearances 14 times, recorded 30+ saves eight times, and rose to the occasion in the postseason, posting a 1.88 ERA with a 0.977 WHIP over 15 career games.

The left-hander was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers in the fifth round of the 1981 Draft. It was with the Dodgers organization that Franco started to develop his bread-and-butter pitch: the changeup.

Two years later, Franco was on the move to Cincinnati, where the Reds fully transitioned Franco from the starting rotation to the bullpen.

Over his first six big league seasons (all with the Reds), Franco appeared in 393 games and posted a 2.49 ERA with 148 saves. Only two pitchers recorded more appearances during that span (Craig Lefferts, 416; Kent Tekulve, 403). Since the earned run became an official stat in both leagues in 1913, only four pitchers have appeared in 350+ games while posting a sub-2.50 ERA in their first six seasons: Tim Burke, Brad Ziegler, Craig Kimbrel and Franco.

During the 1989 Winter Meetings, the Reds matched up with the New York Mets in a trade that sent Kip Gross and Randy Myers to the Reds, with minor league outfielder Don Brown and Franco heading to the Mets.

Franco was coming home.

In his fourteen seasons with the Mets, Franco appeared in 695 regular season games and saved 276 games (both franchise records). In 2001, Franco became the third captain in team history, joining Keith Hernandez and Gary Carter.

Franco provided the Mets with many memorable moments, from striking out Barry Bonds with a 3-2 changeup in Game 2 of the 2000 National League Division Series to being the winning pitcher in the first game back after the September 11 terrorist attacks to a memorable commercial appearance for the defunct retailer The Wiz.

Among all-time pitchers, Franco ranks third in games pitched (1,119), seventh in saves (424) and in a three-way tie for 22nd in ERA+ (138). Franco and Billy Wagner are the only left-handed pitchers with more than 400 saves.

I had the privilege of speaking to Franco, where he discussed developing his signature changeup, striking out Barry Bonds in Game 2 of the 2000 National League Division Series, and the role Franco’s father played in his development.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Franco: My favorite players were Tom Seaver, Tug McGraw, Tommie Agee and that whole ’69 Mets team.

I loved Ron Guidry because he was a little left-handed pitcher like me.

MMO: At what point during your development did you start focusing on pitching?

Franco: I played shortstop up until 13, and then played center field and first base. Mostly around 13-14 [is when] I started pitching a lot.

MMO: What do you remember from your summer playing in the Cape Cod League?

Franco: That Ron Darling was my roommate and Dan Marino was our shortstop, but he left right before I got there. I think he made a good choice to go play football.

Playing in the Cape was a great experience. Not every college player gets the opportunity, and back then it was the highest level of college baseball.

MMO: What are your memories from the 1981 MLB Draft? Were the Los Angeles Dodgers on your radar?

Franco: I can tell you that the Dodgers were always a team that invited me to their tryouts. They always had their local tryouts at Poly Prep High School; that’s where my two older children went to school. The Dodgers were always there and they would invite me, along with the Baltimore Orioles’ scout named Al Goldis. The Dodgers’ scouts were Steve Lembo and Gil Bassetti. Those were the guys who gave me an opportunity and invited me to the tryouts.

I didn’t know I was going to get drafted by them, but I was happy that I did.

MMO: At what point did you start tinkering with your changeup? And is it true that Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax played a role?

Franco: Absolutely. When I was in the Instructional League with the Dodgers, Sandy Koufax, Dave Wallace – who’s my favorite pitching coach of all time – and Larry Sherry, our minor league coordinator, helped me develop that changeup.

When I got traded to Cincinnati, there was a left-handed relief pitcher named Freddy Norman, who had a circle change. I picked his brain a little bit. And then I picked the brain of Mario Soto, who had probably the best changeup in baseball back in the eighties.

One of the guys I sat and learned so much about pitching and how to act was Tom Hume. He was one of my favorite teammates in Cincinnati. He was one of the veterans who took me under his wing. I still keep in contact with him to this day.

MMO: You mentioned Dave Wallace. In previous interviews, you’ve heaped a ton of praise on him for your development. What specifically did Wallace do to help you?

Franco: I can tell you when I was pitching with the Dodgers in a couple of minor league games, and in one particular game, I was getting ahead in the count but wasn’t striking guys out. Dave called time, came to the mound, and had a lot of choice words for me which I can’t say. [Laughs.] That kind of put a lightbulb on, and I thought, you know, this isn’t college anymore. He kind of straightened me out and made me realize to stop acting like a fool and just concentrate on pitching.

I owe him a lot of credit for my maturity and development. Fast forward, and he became the pitching coach with the Mets, so it was great coming full circle.

MMO: At what point did they ask you to transition to the pen?

Franco: I was a starter in the minor leagues with the Dodgers. In ’81, I got drafted, and then in ’82 I went from A-ball to Triple-A because one of their pitchers got hurt. I later went down to Double-A and then the following year I went to Triple-A Albuquerque, and they moved me to the bullpen there.

I got traded to Cincinnati and I went back to starting. They had a number one draft pick named Ron Robinson, who eventually became one of my best friends and roommate with Cincinnati. He was a starter and and they moved me to the bullpen.

My initial thoughts were it sucked because I always thought I’d make it as a starter, but [relieving] was the quickest way to get to the big leagues. I had the type of arm that could throw almost every day. As a starter, I wasn’t a big guy, but I was a full-energy guy, and by the sixth I used to get tired. Career-wise, I think it was probably the best move. Whoever thought of that in the Reds organization, I owe them a lot of credit!

MMO: What were your initial reactions when you heard you were being traded to the Mets in December 1989?

Franco: I was kind of shocked. That winter, the Cincinnati general manager called me because they wanted to give me a three year extension, and asked what I’d be looking for. I said, ‘I haven’t talked to my agent.’ I saw some stuff in the papers back home saying the Yankees were really interested in me.

A week later, the GM for the Reds called me again and said Lou Piniella, who became the new manager, wanted to meet and have lunch. That was about a week before the winter meetings.

The winter meetings came, and I got a phone call saying I was traded to New York. I just assumed it was the Yankees. About ten minutes later, I got a call from Joe McIlvaine, who was the GM of the Mets, so I knew it was them.

I was very, very happy. I mean, I would’ve been happy for the Yankees, too, because it would still mean pitching back home. But the Mets were the team I grew up rooting for.

MMO: I’m sure you received a ton of ticket requests once you came back home to pitch.

Franco: I had a lot of cousins that I didn’t know I had! [Laughs.]

I had two phone lines at my house: one for family and one for friends. My wife, Rose, did a great job in handling the ticket situation. I always told everyone we’re home for 81 games, everybody can’t come to the same games, but pick and choose the ones you want to go to.

MMO: Can you share the reason why you wore the orange undershirt underneath your jersey?

Franco: I wore the shirt in honor of my father, who was a sanitation worker. My dad was my buddy, my best friend.

My dad didn’t like to fly. When I was attending St. John’s, we went to the World Series in Omaha. My brother, Jerry, and my dad were driving and the car broke down in Pennsylvania, so they had to turn back and miss it. But all through the minor leagues, he drove to Florida, Texas, etc.

When I had bad games, I’d call him up, and he would just make me feel good. He would tell me to put things in perspective, that I still have an opportunity, and turn the page on this one and focus on the next game. He never got mad, never yelled. Even when I was playing in high school and college, he was always away from the other parents. He stayed down the line and kept to himself. People would ask him, “Don’t you talk about your son?” He’d say, “No, I let my son do the talking between the lines.” That’s how he was.

He always demanded respect for the game; don’t disrespect baseball. He didn’t believe in booing players. My brother and I would go to games with him and even if the team was playing badly, you didn’t boo the guys. He loved baseball and he was a very important part of my life and development.

MMO: I assume your father was the person who introduced you to baseball.

Franco: He was. I also had an older brother; he passed away about a year and a half ago, and he was five years older than me. I owe him a lot of credit because we used to play games against each other and he’d beat my butt! But it made me more of a competitor, and as I got bigger and stronger, I started beating him. I owe him a lot of credit for my competitiveness, that’s for sure.

MMO: As a reliever, you need to have a short memory and be able to bounce-back after a tough game. How would you specifically handle those situations? Were you someone who utilized any visualization techniques?

Franco: There were a couple of visualization techniques that I used. Mentally, you had to be tough; you had to have a short-term memory. I used to compare a closer to a field goal kicker; if you save 15 in a row, everyone knows you. But the one you blow is the one they remember. A field goal kicker can make ten in a row, and when he misses, that’s the one they’ll remember.

It used to bother me more because I blew the saves of guys like Al Leiter, Tom Glavine, Mike Hampton or Bobby Jones, and they pitched their tails off and I come in for one inning and blow it for them. Those guys worked their tails off for seven-eight innings. That’s what bothered me most about blowing a save.

It would stick with me for a night. I used to watch the replays on ESPN and look to see where the pitch location was. I would try to visualize and do better next time. The good thing about being a relief pitcher was you could get in there the next day and save a game instead of blowing it.

MMO: You pitched both out of the windup and from the stretch at various points throughout your career. Was that more of a feel-thing for you, or were the specific reasons behind those choices?

Franco: When I first came up, it was mostly out of the windup because I was a middle relief/setup man with Cincinnati until I took over [the closer role]. And then my first year or two with the Mets, I was out of the windup. I realized coming into the game there’s less margin of error, and it’s more compact for me being in the stretch rather than the windup.

MMO: One of the lasting memories Mets fans have of you is when you struck out Barry Bonds looking on a 3-2 changeup in the bottom of the tenth in Game 2 of the 2000 N.L.D.S. For your career, you held Bonds to a .229 batting average and a .568 OPS over 39 regular-season plate appearances (and 0-for-2 with two strikeouts in the postseason). Did you have a specific game plan and pitch selection when facing Bonds?

Franco: Barry and I had the same agent, so I knew Barry for a while. I used to tell him, ‘You’re the greatest hitter, I don’t know how I get you out.’ He would always tell me that if he hit a home run against me he’d run around the bases backwards. [Laughs.]

We had some friendly competition, and he came close one time; he hit one off the wall. I really liked the challenge, and Barry was very challenging. You’d throw him fastballs and sliders; I never threw him a changeup until that playoff game.

I talked to John Olerud, who was our first baseman and a great left-handed hitter, and I asked him what the toughest pitch to hit off a lefty was. He said a changeup, so I put that in the back of my mind.

In that particular game against the Giants, I threw a 3-1 fastball that Barry fouled straight back. If he would’ve hit it, that would’ve landed in Oakland. [Mike] Piazza kept putting the fastball sign down, and I kept shaking him off. I had a base open and I decided if I walk him, fine; if not, I’ll take a chance with it. Just so happens, I threw a 3-2 changeup for a strike and got him out.

I think the next time I faced him in that series, he was looking for it (changeup), but I got him with a high fastball. We had some good battles.

MMO: Who are some hitters who gave you the most trouble during your career?

Franco: At the top of the list, and I think he gave everyone trouble, was Tony Gwynn. Then there were hitters like Mariano Duncan and Bob Dernier, who were more contact hitters.

I really didn’t have too much of an issue with the big home run hitters, it was the contact guys. Gwynn was just amazing, no matter what you threw him he hit it. I got to the point where I’d just throw it down the middle and hope he hit a line drive at somebody.

MMO: What did it mean to be named the third captain in Mets history? Were there any additional responsibilities you took on?

Franco: Not really. It was a great honor to be shown the respect from my teammates and the organization.

As a captain, if guys had a bad day, you’d go up to them and talk. Some might’ve had off-the-field problems that you might be able to help them with. When the team was going bad, you’d call team meetings. If we needed guys to relax and there was too much media in the locker room, I’d say, ‘We’re having a meeting,’ and Jay [Horwitz] would clear them out.

Jay would ask me, “What time’s the meeting?” I’d say, ‘There’s no meeting. I just want guys to relax.’ I tried to be a leader and lead by example on and off the field.

MMO: You’re third all-time in regular season pitching appearances with 1,119 games. Do you take pride in your place on that leaderboard?

Franco: It means a lot. I love the game and I love to play. Being a reliever is almost like being an everyday player. I had a great opportunity to do what I did for a long time.

MMO: Playing 21 years in the majors, and racking up the number of games that you did surely took a toll on your body. What would you do stay in shape?

Franco: The difference, I think, between players now and when I played is once the season’s over, guys today seem to take a week off and then they go right into throwing. I think that puts strain on their arms. I did a lot of weight training, and when I got closer to spring training, I cut my training in half in terms of weight and always did cardio and core. I ate well and my wife is in great shape too, and she made sure I ate well. I think there are too many gadgets now and gurus with these instructions and workouts. I think that adds a lot to these injuries.

I used to play basketball and throw the football around, and that was part of my workout. I’ll tell you a funny story: When I played for Cincinnati, I used to play in a touch football league in the offseason. I was a quarterback with the YMCA league. I used to have to sneak out because my dad would say I was crazy for playing, but that kept my arm in shape all winter. Once I got traded to the Mets, that was it. My career in touch football was over.

MMO: What have you been up to post playing career?

Franco: I’ve been retired since 2005 and still work with the organization periodically. I’ll go to spring training when I’m invited down. I’ve been one of the ambassadors and I do alumni work with Jay and the organization. I represent the team in various functions if they need me to do certain things.

I would love to get back into the game in some capacity. We’ll see what happens but I’m enjoying life. I took up golf a bit more seriously; I’m still not good at it, but I enjoy it. Hopefully one day, with the Era Committee, I get elected to the Hall of Fame.

MMO: Your candidacy is certainly an interesting one. Relievers haven’t been given the same attention as other positions for the Hall. If Billy Wagner makes it in his last year of eligibility, perhaps that will help your case.

Franco: My numbers are just as good as most of the guys in there, except for probably Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman. If Billy gets in, that might open the door for me. I still think I belong in there, but things don’t always work out that way. Maybe the Era Committee and the former players and executives who are around the game will realize that.

MMO: When you look back on your career, John, what are you most proud of?

Franco: I’m most proud of being able to take the ball every day, being a good leader and respected on and off the field.

The post MMO Exclusive: Franchise Saves Leader, John Franco appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Regularly the smallest player on every organized team he played on, Collins realized that he could stand out by routinely playing harder than the rest.

Collins, 74, has spent over five decades in professional baseball. Drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 19th round of the 1971 Major League Baseball Draft, he never appeared in the big leagues as a player. Collins soon understood that if he wanted to taste the life of a major leaguer, he would need to do so in a different way.

The baseball lifer worked his way up from managing in the minor leagues to earning a coaching spot with Jim Leyland’s Pittsburgh Pirates team before getting his first shot as a major league skipper with the Houston Astros in 1994. The Astros would go on to finish second in the N.L. Central in each of the three seasons Collins was at the helm. Houston fired him following the 1996 season, however, after the team went 8-17 in September and saw their division lead disappear.

Collins wasn’t out of work long though, as the Anaheim Angels named him the 15th manager in franchise history in November of 1996. The Angels won 84 and 85 games, respectively, in 1997 and 1998, but went a disappointing 51-82 in their first 133 games of the 1999 season. Despite receiving a contract extension midway through that campaign, Collins resigned as manager following a nine-game losing streak at the end of August. Stories of player unrest and a fractious clubhouse marred Collins’ tenure as Angels manager.

Following stints as an advance scout with the Chicago Cubs, bullpen and third base coach with the Tampa Bay Rays, field coordinator and director of player development with the Los Angeles Dodgers and manager for the Orix Buffaloes of Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan, Collins was hired by the New York Mets as their minor league field coordinator for the 2010 season.

Almost a year after the Mets brought Collins on, he was tasked with a new, yet familiar, responsibility: managing a ball club.

Collins returned to the dugout, becoming the 20th skipper in Mets history. He made a promise to himself to enjoy this time more and not make the same mistakes he did with the Astros and Angels.

In total, he was at the helm for seven seasons (2011-2017), becoming the second manager in franchise history to lead the club to back-to-back postseasons in 2015 and 2016 (joining Bobby Valentine). Collins is the longest-tenured manager in Mets history, managing 1,134 regular season games.

Recently, Collins joined X (formerly Twitter) and began a podcast with John Arezzi aptly called “The Terry Collins Show.” The weekly show features Collins bringing listeners behind the scenes of a major league clubhouse, along with hosting a variety of guests, including David Wright, R.A. Dickey and Daniel Murphy.

I had the pleasure of speaking with Collins over the phone, where we discussed his playing career, transitioning to managing and some of his memories from his time with the Mets.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Collins: I grew up in Michigan, and Al Kaline was a big star with the Tigers. There was another player named Rocky Colavito who became a great player with the Tigers.

The Yankees won a lot back then, so I was a big Mickey Mantle fan.

One of the stations we listened to in Michigan had Milwaukee Braves baseball. I used to listen to the great Braves players like [Hank] Aaron and [Eddie] Mathews. The catcher’s name was Del Crandall, who I played for in the minor leagues. So that was cool.

MMO: You played all over the field throughout your minor league career. Were you always a versatile player?

Collins: I grew up playing just second base. I was always the smallest guy on every team I ever played. Second base was my position, and I only played a couple of games at shortstop in American Legion.

When I got to college, I made the team as a freshman. The first game we had was a doubleheader, and the second baseman on varsity got hurt. They brought me up for those two games, and I got six hits in the doubleheader.

The next day the coach asked me, “Can you play shortstop?” I told him yes. He said, “Well, meet me at the field,” and the following day I played shortstop against the University of Michigan. I ended up playing shortstop the rest of my career at Eastern Michigan.

MMO: You’ve always been known as an intense and fiery competitor. Do you remember when you first started displaying those traits?

Collins: Well, again, I’m a little guy. When I had to compete, if I was going to compete, I had to play hard. I played harder than anybody.

When I was a little boy, my mother got a phone call from one of my friend’s mothers. She said, “I don’t want Bobby playing with Terry anymore. He plays too hard.”

When my dad got home from work that night, my mom said to him, “You need to talk to Terry.” My dad asked, “Why?” She said, “One of the mothers called and said Terry plays too hard, and we need to talk to him.” My dad said, “I’ll talk to him.” She asked, “What are you going to tell him?” He said, “I’m going to tell him not to play with Bobby anymore.” [Laughs.]

MMO: When and how did the chance to manage in the minor leagues come about? 

Collins: It’s pretty funny. My first spring training, I saw Triple-A guys who were 29-30 years-old still playing. I wrote a letter to my mother that spring telling her there are guys who are 29 and 30 years old still playing in the minors. I told her I’m giving it three years, and if I’m not in the big leagues in three years, I’m going to go back and use my education. Fifty years later, I’m still doing it!

I kind of fell in love with the game. The one thing I always wanted to do was be a coach. When I went to the Dodgers organization from the Pirates, in spring training you would go into a backroom, and they had this little area where guys could get a beer. It was part of the complex. You would sit there and listen to [Sandy] Koufax, [Don] Drysdale, [Johnny] Podres, Maury Wills, Wes Parker, Walter Alston and [Tommy] Lasorda. They were always at spring training. You just sat there and absorbed as much information as you could.

When I was hoping I would get a chance to manage, as I said, I played for Del Crandall. I picked his brain because he was an outstanding minor league manager, great teacher, and great teacher of catching. Back then, you didn’t have any coaches in the minor leagues; it was just you. I had to learn how to teach catching, how to teach outfield play and how to work with the pitchers.

I picked the brains of those guys as much as I possibly could. I knew at some time I was going to have to use all of that information. It was the greatest education you could have.

MMO: It’s crazy to think there was a time where the only coach on a minor league time was the manager.

Collins: My first year managing, I’m in Lodi, California, and in the minors you have halves. So, the first half, our team wasn’t very good. Fernando Valenzuela burst onto the scene in Los Angeles, and he was throwing a screwball. There was an older pitcher the Dodgers had at one time named Jim Brewer, and Jim threw a screwball. The Dodgers hired him to go through the minor leagues and try to teach some guys that were average pitchers the screwball.

The first place he came was Lodi. He saw our pitching staff and said, “Terry, first of all, I’m going to teach them how to throw their fastballs for strikes. I’m not worried about the screwball. If they can’t throw their fastballs for strikes, the screwball is not going to help them.”

He turned our entire pitching staff around in three weeks. We ended up winning the second half and won the championship because Brewer came and taught my pitchers to throw strikes with their fastballs. That’s the kind of stuff you got the opportunity with. Again, this was my first year coaching by myself.

When I got to Triple-A, we had coaches; we had a pitching coach and third base coach. My pitching coach was Dave Wallace, who was one of the best pitching coaches for a long time and one of my best friends. He had to go home, and I’m the only guy who’s ever had Sandy Koufax as a pitching coach. Sandy used to roll through the minor leagues, and he came to Albuquerque when Dave was going to be gone. Sandy was my pitching coach for a day.

MMO: You can’t do much better than having Koufax offering his tutelage.

Collins: We were sitting on the bench and the game was going on, and I brought a pitcher in for the ninth. He walked the first guy, and I went, “God damn it!” And Sandy, sitting next to me, said, “Did you ever pitch?” I said, “No.” Then he said, “Well, it ain’t that easy.” I never, ever said that again! I learned a lesson in one little sentence. [Laughs.]

MMO: Can you talk a bit about the role Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland played in your development as a skipper?

Collins: Jim had a similar background as me. He only got to Double-A as a player; I spent six years in Triple-A. Neither of us got to the big leagues. Jim started managing at a young age and was stuck in the Tigers organization where Sparky [Anderson] was the manager, so Jim was going nowhere.

He was stuck in Triple-A and had a chance to go with Tony La Russa, but he wanted to be a Tiger; that’s all he wanted to do. Sparky wouldn’t hire him, so Jim ended up leaving. It was a very similar thing [for me]. Tommy [Lasorda] was the manager of the Dodgers, and he was never going to go until he decided he was going to. There was no place for me.

I had been managing in Albuquerque for six years as the Triple-A manager, and I had a chance to go to the Pittsburgh Pirates and manage their Triple-A team. I went to Pittsburgh and asked, ‘How do I get to the big leagues?’ I met Jim, and he liked me, and he brought me to the big leagues three years later. We had this relationship because of our backgrounds. He’s such an entertaining guy and funnier than heck.

In September, they started bringing the Triple-A manager up to the big leagues at the end of the season as part of the call-ups; they bring five, six, seven guys up in September. They started bringing the managers up so that you could help the coaches and the [minor league] manager knows about the [minor league] players. The other teams brought their minor league guys up who I saw [play]. So you could help.

When I got to the big leagues, Jim said to me, “Here’s your job: I want you to sit next to me on the bench during the games. I want you to throw batting practice to [Barry] Bonds, [Bobby] Bonilla and [Andy] Van Slyke. If I ever see you throwing batting practice to Tom Prince, I’m going to send you back to Triple-A. When the game’s over, I want you to come in, sit right over there in the corner, and listen to what kind of questions the sportswriters ask me and how I answer them. You don’t have to say the same things I say, but you need to hear the kind of questions you’re going to face.”

For the next number of years, that’s what I did. We’d sit on a plane together, and I’d ask questions about situations that happened in the game that night. He’s very upfront and blunt about it and would talk about it.

I asked him one time, ‘Jim, when you got the job in ’86 in Pittsburgh, what changes have you made to be the manager you are today?’ He looked off for a second and said, “Well, I’ll tell you, Terry. The biggest change I made was I write Barry Bonds’ name in a lineup now and not Jason Thompson’s.” [Laughs.]

MMO: There’s no better way to get acclimated to a future as a major league manager then getting to essentially shadow one as you did with Leyland.

Collins: Absolutely. They had a lockout one time, and Jim was in minor league spring training, so there were no big-league players at camp. The Triple-A manager ran spring training with the Pittsburgh organization at the time, so I ran spring training.

When it was over, Jim came over to me and said, “They opened up the camp for the big-league players. I don’t make promises but the next spot on my staff, you’re it.” That’s how I got my chance. I was really lucky, and we’ve just been very, very good friends. We stay in constant contact.

MMO: Are you planning on being in Cooperstown for his induction into the Hall of Fame this summer?

Collins: Yeah, absolutely.

MMO: I interviewed Ned Colleti several years ago, and he sang your praises during your time with the Dodgers as director of player development. He said when you left for Japan, he often missed your approach, intellect and honesty. What are your memories from your time with the Dodgers organization?

Collins: I was talking with Andy Green when he got the job with the Mets, and I told him that he’s the perfect guy. I told him he can make a huge impact on people. What helped me, Mathew, to be honest, I had already managed in the big leagues for six years. I had some situations with young players that got to the big leagues that failed miserably, and they were good players! It took them a while to get through it. That was one of the theories when I became the minor league director of Los Angeles was, look, I’m going to challenge my good players, and if they’re good enough they’ll get it and move faster.

I challenged Matt Kemp when he was 19; I put him in Double-A. He might have had a little problem in the beginning, but at the end of the year, he’s the best player in the league bar none.

My time with the Dodgers, Paul DePodesta was the GM, and when Jim Tracy was let go and I was going to get that job, Paul got fired two days before they were going to name me the manager. Ned got hired, and he came down to Florida to talk to me, and he said, “Look, you’re not going to get the job. I’m going to go with somebody else.” I said, “Okay.” And he said, “I don’t know what you want to do.” I told him, ‘I’m going to do what I always do: I’m just going to do my job.’

But I didn’t mope; shit happens! I stayed on and tried to help Ned as best I could and was always there and calling about different things. I had a great relationship with him, but I had a chance to go to Japan [to manage] for a lot of money, and I couldn’t turn that down. That’s why I left.

MMO: How would you compare baseball in Japan vs. the States?

Collins: The whole game’s different. Number one, they are fundamentally off the charts; tremendous cut-offs and relays. They can lay down the best bunts you’ll ever see, they can run the bases – they don’t steal a lot – but they run the bases great. They play to score one run and they play to protect one run. It might be the top of the first inning, and a guy’s on third base with one out and they’re bringing that infield in. They’re not giving up runs. You’re going to have to get a hit to earn a run; that’s how they play.

They have a tremendous work ethic. I mean, the pitchers with 200-pitch bullpens between starts, and hitters will take 500 swings before a game. They trained themselves and want to make the game easier so they get themselves into tremendous shape. They run and run and run and run!

You go to spring training, and they don’t have the number of fields we have over here, but spring training starts at nine in the morning and you’re off the field at six. You have dinner, and then the players get their bats and go out in the parking lot and swing. The rookies went to a room at the hotel and had night batting where they used wiffle balls. It’s pretty intense. It’s always go, go, go!

They have a day off or two every week, they play 144 games, but there’s a number of off days. They take the bullet trains, or they’ll take an easy flight, which are only an hour and ten minutes.

They’re very sound players. All of their pitchers throw the ball over the plate. Here, we like strike one and then expand the zone. They do almost the opposite. They nibble the outside corner and see if you’ll swing at it. If you don’t, they’ll throw it over. They don’t like to strikeout, so those guys will put the ball in play. They’ll hit that borderline pitch. They may not hit it good, but if you really work the count, you’re going to get a good ball to hit.

When I got over there, Bobby Valentine told me, “Terry, you’re not going to like the cut-offs or relays, but leave them alone because they do it.” Mathew, in all my years in the United States, I have never seen a guy tag up at third base on a fly ball to the outfield and try to score where the ball is cut off and relayed to home never be thrown out. I saw it three times in Japan! They are so good at it. Every cut off is perfectly thrown.

MMO: Did you take anything you learned in Japan and bring it back to the States when you were managing the Mets?

Collins: Not really. I saw a thing the other day that Carlos [Mendoza] was saying we took infield. Well, you know, in all my years in New York, we took infield. You know how they used to take it after batting practice? We took it before. When we were at home, our guys threw to the bases twice during a homestand. The outfielders loved it. You had [Yoenis] Céspedes and [Juan] Lagares, who both had tremendous arms. It was like a challenge of who was going to make the better throw.

Tommy Goodwin was my outfield coach, and those guys loved him. We took infield/outfield most every day. Those fundamentals in Japan, I remember I took an American coach over and a scout asked him one day before the game, “You guys going to take infield?” And John said, “Let me think, this is our hundredth game, and we’ve taken infield one-hundred times. Yeah, we’ll take it again.” [Laughs.]

I liked it. You make it easy because they want to take ground balls anyway. We came out 15 minutes early before we started hitting, and guys got all of their defensive work in. Now, if you want to take some balls off the bat during batting practice, that was fine. It eliminated guys getting hit because they were catching a ground ball while someone was taking BP. It really helped out, and I thought it was a big difference, so I brought that over.

Their batting practices at home [in Japan], have two cages going; they have a right-handed pitcher and a left-handed pitcher. You just go from cage to cage. It’s tremendous! They have routines, man. I saw [Yu] Darvish when he was 19. I saw [Masahiro] Tanaka when he was 17. They were electric, and both threw between starts. They would throw 150 pitches in the bullpen because that would make their game easier when they got to 120. That was their theory. But you couldn’t bring that here. You’d never get an American guy to do that.

MMO: The July 29, 2015, game is one fans will likely never forget with the sight of Wilmer Flores crying on the field believing he had been traded. What memories stick out for you from that night, and how did you go about managing a game that clearly had so much off-the-field speculation going on?

Collins: It was during the trade deadline, and Wilmer’s name was never mentioned; Sandy did that stuff himself. I’m just standing in the dugout and the game’s going on, and Wilmer was on deck, and some fans were yelling good luck and we love you. I’m going, “What the heck is that?”

David [Wright] came up to me and said, “Terry, it’s all over TV. He’s been traded.” I said, ‘David, he has not been traded.’ He said, “I’m telling you they’re broadcasting right now on TV; he’s been traded.” I said, “David, this guy has not been traded. You see that phone right there?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, ‘That phone goes to Sandy. If there’s a deal done, that phone would be ringing, and I’d be taking him out of the game.”

Now people are telling Wilmer he’s been traded, and he’s upset. I walked down the dugout to him, and I said, “Hey, let’s go. You’re on this team. You have not been traded. You’ve got to go out and play.” He goes out, and sure enough, he starts crying on the field. As he comes in off the field, I went over to him, and at the time, I think he was the only shortstop I had who was healthy. I said, “Look, you’ve got to finish this game, man. You’re fine, you’re still a Met. You’re not going anywhere.”

He went back, and he’s still crying on the field. The next thing you know, the phone rings, and it’s Sandy. And he said, “You’ve got to take Wilmer out.” I asked, ‘Is he traded?’ He said, “No, but he’s crying on the field!” So, he came back in, and I got him out, and sure enough, he wasn’t traded. I didn’t know what else to do. I told him, ‘Wilmer, if you were traded, I would’ve been told, and I would’ve taken you out of the game. You are a Met. Everything’s going to be okay.’

Sure enough, it ended up being okay. And that’s why, Mathew, two days later he hit that home run against the Nationals that couldn’t have been written. You can’t read a Hollywood script better than that.

MMO: Your “To who? For What” postgame comment will forever be etched in my brain. I always loved watching your pre and postgame press conferences because you were very transparent.

Collins: Absolutely, Mathew, and I’m going to go back to Jim Leyland. Right when I got my interview with the Houston Astros, I called Jim and said, ‘I’m going to go to Houston tomorrow and interview for the manager job.’ He said, “I’ll meet you at the stadium.” I was living in Pittsburgh, and we went to the stadium and I spent six hours with him. He just talked about all these different questions that I was going to face and different things.

One of the things he said was, “Listen, I’m going to tell you right now, you treat every reporter as if they’re the sports editor of The New York Times. There are no dumb questions, but if you’re hit with one, treat it like any other question. Don’t belittle the guy, just answer the question.”

When I got to the Mets, Jay Horwitz was the guy who told me, “Terry, one of the best things you can do is learn everybody’s name.” When I did these press conferences and if Mike Puma asked me a question, I would say, “Well, you know Mike…” Now his name is tied to that question.

There were some questions asked by some young guys or people from a different team or something that didn’t make much sense and all the writers would laugh. I didn’t laugh; I just answered the question. I thought that really helped, not to belittle any reporter. They have a job to do, and I respect it.

The only thing I ever asked of these guys was not to lie. Don’t make something up. It’s your opinion and strictly your opinion; that’s fine. There were a couple of times where there was an unnamed source that says this. I would go to them and say, “I know you won’t tell me who it was that said it, but how do I know you just didn’t make that up? Maybe you just said this is what I think, and I’m going to put it down and say somebody else said it.” I always did that one-on-one, I never did it in front of any of the other writers.

After your press conference, you’ve got to budget two minutes for almost every one of those guys; they all want their own two minutes. They’d ask a question or two for their own stories that they don’t want out there. That’s why I try and tell anybody that’s ever managed in New York that you’ve got to understand to budget your time for these guys and answer their questions. Don’t blow them off because they’ve got the pen, and they can make it miserable for you. Just treat them with respect, and that’s about it. I thought it helped me out a lot.

MMO: How beneficial was the Matrix during the 2015 season?

Collins: It was just coming into play then. I think it was a great coaching tool, I think it’s really good for coaches to use. The players can get overwhelmed with information, and their job is to go play. As a coach or manager, you take that information and try to use it to your benefit to put those guys in the best position to succeed. We didn’t flood them with a bunch of information; I just didn’t like it. Number one, most of them have played a long time, I had a pretty veteran club. The last thing I want to do is put stuff in their head.

I remember one time when I was in Anaheim, Tim Salmon, who’s a great, great player, somebody on the team said, “Hey, I’ve got the signs. Do you guys want them? If I’m on base I can tell you what’s coming.” And Tim said, “I do not want to know. I’m fine.” I asked him after the game was over why that was, and he said, “Terry, if he’s wrong, it’ll screw me up mentally. Let me just figure it out.” I thought that made sense.

They used it (analytics) a lot in Japan. In interleague play in Japan, you can have your advance scout on the bench with you. The other team brought in a pitcher, so this advance scout got up and talked to my rookie shortstop, who was a pretty nice player, and said, “There’s a thirty percent chance you’re going to get this, another thirty percent chance you’re going to get this pitch, a twenty-five percent chance you’re going to get this pitch.” You’ve got to be shitting me! [Laughs.] Go up there, and if you get a fastball, hit it!

You’ve got to filter it. I thought our coaches did a great job of using that information for their benefit to help the players and not try to overwhelm them.

MMO: One of the moments I’ll always remember is when SNY caught the shot of you going over and putting your arm around Jacob deGrom in the dugout after he gave up eight earned runs against the Texas Rangers in 2017. Do you remember some of the things you relayed to deGrom in that moment?

Collins: First of all, everybody saw how talented Jake was. Great talent. He was the best pitcher we had. There were times Matt [Harvey] was the best, or [Noah] Syndergaard might have been the best, but Jake was our guy.

I remember years ago, Walter Alston told me when I first started managing, “Terry, there are two kinds of players. There are the ones who have been humbled, and ones who will be humbled in this game.” And that was what I pretty much told Jake. Everybody’s going to have a bad day. [Sandy] Koufax had a bad day; Bob Feller had a bad day. He had a bad day. You’ve got to be able to forget about it, because in four days you’re going back out there, big boy. Blow it off, tip your cap and say I’ll see you in four days.

That was just a moment where you could look back and say, guess way? Welcome to the game. It’s not easy out there. That’s why guys who compete like he did, it can cause that humbleness that a player needs once in a while to realize the game is not easy. I thought that was a coaching chance for me to tell Jake that he’s still the guy. You’re going to be just fine, you had a bad night and move on.

MMO: Does a day go by where someone doesn’t mention the ass in the jackpot game?

Collins: You know what? It’s become part of me, it really has!

I live in St. Lucie, and I belong to a golf course where three quarters of the members are New Yorkers. During this time of year, people come down and they’ll come out and somebody will introduce me. And that’s the first thing they’ll bring up!

I have a friend who’s a golf pro at the pro shop, and every time I walk in the first thing I hear is, “Give us a shot! Gotta give us a shot!” So there’s not a day.

MMO: It still baffles me that Adam Hamari had such a quick trigger when it came to Syndergaard’s pitch behind Chase Utley.

Collins: That was my argument. Do you remember John McSherry? Great, big umpire. He actually died on the field in Cincinnati. He was a long-time umpire, and we had a fight in Houston. When the fight finally stopped, I went over to him, and he’s writing down names of guys he’s going to kick out. He never looked up; he was just writing names down. He said to me, “You get one shot. You get the first guy in the batter’s box and then I’m going to put an end to this.”

Four years later, I’m managing the Angels, and we get in a big fight in Kansas City. Don Denkinger said exactly the same thing to me when all the stuff stopped finally. He said, “You get the first guy and it’s over with.” This was the first time we saw Utley, and I was shocked. That’s why when Tom [Hailon] said, “You had a shot,” no we didn’t! This was it! That was my whole argument. I wasn’t mad at Tom; we didn’t get the chance to get Utley and that’s what I was upset about.

MMO: What advice would Terry Collins in his final year as manager in 2017 give to first-year manager Terry Collins in 1994?

Collins: Enjoy the game more. I took it real serious, that’s why I rubbed people the wrong way. I’m a pretty intense guy, you know, when I played, I was intense. I had an old manager tell me one time, “Players will take on the personality of the manager.” I really respected the game. I wasn’t a good enough player, but there wasn’t a time that I didn’t play as hard as I could. Not one day.

One year I broke my jaw, and seven days later with my jaw wired shut, I was in the lineup. I was playing with a pair of pliers in my pocket in case I got sick so I could snip the wires off. You just played; you played as hard as you could. I always thought you had to respect the game. If it wasn’t for baseball, what would we all be doing? Give it back, give it back effort. And for some people that rubbed them the wrong way. And I understood it. Shoot, I apologized to a lot of players.

Garret Anderson was a really good player, but he was one of those guys who didn’t run every ball out. One time I went up to him and asked, “Do you have a problem with me?” He said, “Absolutely not. You’re wound a little too tight for me, but I know you want to win, and I have no problem with that.” I told him okay, and that I just wanted to make sure because he’s going to be playing, he’s going to be in the lineup every day.

There are times where you’ve got to take a stance on something. It might rub a player the wrong way, but I just think that’s the way the game should be played and managed.

When I went to New York, I told myself that I’ve got to start enjoying the game more. I’ve got to enjoy my time because these jobs are hard to get. I’ve got good players, and there’s nothing more fun than going out with the best players in the world and competing. So, I told myself I’ve got to enjoy it, and that’s how I went about it in New York.

MMO: Tell me about joining X and starting a podcast. What can fans expect from “The Terry Collins Show”?

Collins: John Arezzi called me about it, and I had absolutely no idea I was going to do it. I’m not a big social media guy, and I’m too old to get on that stuff. But I just want to have some fun with it.

As you said earlier in the conversation, I’m an honest guy. I think there are things the fans might want to know about with the actions during a game or what goes on behind the scenes. The more they know the more they’ll enjoy the game. I want to have some fun and have guests on and talk about their careers.

I’ve got a buddy who’s a bookie, and one of the shows is going to be about gambling in sports, especially baseball. It’s just something to have some fun with and to relate to the fans. I’ve never been big enough in the game to think that I don’t have a relationship with the fans. I respect that. I try and say hi to everyone and take pictures. It takes ten seconds to sign an autograph, and that ten seconds means a lot to people.

MMO: When you look back over your fifty years in the sport, what are you most proud of?

Collins: That’s a tough one. I guess I’m most proud that I lasted for fifty years. After I signed, three years later I was released. I loved the sport and endured enough through all of the years, rode a lot of buses and didn’t make much money for a long, long time. I still respected and loved the game enough that it was fun, and it was all I wanted to do. So, I stayed with it.

I stayed with what I wanted to do and made a life. I took the ups and downs and tried to be the same guy every day. I think baseball teaches that.

Follow Terry Collins on Twitter, @TerryCollins_10.

Check out Terry’s podcast here.

The post MMO Exclusive: Former Mets Manager, Terry Collins appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

After all, the club hadn’t made the postseason since they lost to the Oakland Athletics in seven games in the 1973 Fall Classic. In addition, the Mets hadn’t posted a regular season winning percentage above .500 since they went 86-76 in 1976.

The lean, six-foot-six prodigy out of Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles had lofty expectations to be the next great superstar in Major League Baseball. Poised with a beautiful left-handed swing, a ton of power and exceptional speed, Strawberry showcased his abilities right away.

In 1983, Strawberry became the first position player in franchise history to win the National League Rookie of the Year, slugging 26 home runs, swiping 19 bases and posting a 134 OPS+. Strawberry hit seven more home runs than the Mets’ previous rookie record holder in Ron Swoboda (19, 1965). Strawberry’s single-season mark lasted until 2019, when Pete Alonso shattered it with 53 homers.

From 1984 through the 1991 season, Strawberry made eight consecutive All-Star teams (seven with the Mets), was co-winner of the 1986 Home Run Derby with Wally Joyner, won a World Series championship in 1986, recorded a 30-30 season in 1987 and led the National League in home runs in 1988 (39).

Strawberry was a dominant force at the plate all throughout the eighties. Among 182 players with a minimum of 3,000 plate appearances in that decade, Strawberry ranked sixth in wRC+ (143) and second in isolated power (.259). His combination of power and speed made him a threat not only at the plate but on the bases. No player posted more seasons of 25+ home runs and 25+ stolen bases in the eighties than Strawberry with five.

Over his first nine seasons, Strawberry hit 280 home runs and stole 201 bases. He’s one of three players in Major League Baseball history to record 250+ homers and 200+ stolen bases in his first nine seasons, along with Barry Bonds and Mike Trout. Strawberry is also one of five players to record 250+ homers, 200+ doubles and 200+ stolen bases before turning 30, joining the aforementioned Bonds and Trout, along with Hall of Famer Willie Mays and Alex Rodriguez.

While Strawberry was an important fixture in Mets history, fans have always pondered what type of numbers he would’ve posted had the temptations and vices not been so prevalent throughout his career. The struggles and issues Strawberry encountered are well-documented; though, for the now 61-year-old, he’s found a new lease on life.

Strawberry and his wife, Tracy, founded Strawberry Ministries, in which Darryl travels around the country more than 250 times a year to deliver sermons and use his own experiences to aid others in times of need.

While his ministry work takes up the majority of Strawberry’s time, he will return to his baseball roots next year when the Mets retire his uniform number. No. 18 will join Willie Mays’ 24, Keith Hernandez’s 17 and Mike Piazza’s 31 as the only position players to have their jerseys retired by the Mets.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Strawberry over the phone, where he discussed almost quitting baseball in his second year of pro ball, instructors who were influential to his early development and what it means to have his number retired by the Mets.

MMO: Who were some of your favorite players growing up?

Strawberry: I looked up to Pete Rose. That was one of my favorite players, along with Dave Parker.

MMO: What are your memories from the 1980 MLB Draft, and all the fanfare that came with your high school career?

Strawberry: I remember my junior year we went to the city championship, and we went to Dodger Stadium. We had a great team. We had, I think, four players that got drafted off that team. We played in Dodger Stadium, and we lost to Granada Hills. I remember the third baseman came in to close out the game, and the third baseman for Granada Hills was John Elway.

It was a big deal because we were an all-Black team, and they were from the valley and all white. Our coach was White, so it was a really big deal going into that city championship.

We had a great run in the playoffs. We crushed everybody, and we were favored to beat Granada Hills. I remember Elway was a draft pick by the Royals in 1979, but he was also headed to Stanford to play football.

MMO: Heading into your senior year of high school, did you feel a lot of pressure knowing that you had the chance to be a top draft pick?

Strawberry: I think it was more excitement than anything. When I went into my senior year, I came out of basketball season, and I had one day of baseball practice before the season started. My first day out on the baseball field, I had to practice, and the next day we had a game.

In my first game, I remember about 50 scouts being there. My baseball coach used to follow me when I played basketball. I used to dunk on people, and he didn’t want me to get hurt because he thought I might hurt my ankle or something. He knew there was a lot of attention focused on me, but he didn’t tell me during the course of my basketball season.

Once I got going into baseball season, he said, “I didn’t want to put that kind of pressure on you. I knew there was going to be a lot of attention focused on you. A lot of scouts are always calling in asking about you, and asking me what kind of player I think you can be.”

A lot of scouts thought I would be the next Willie McCovey, or compared me to Ted Williams. He (Strawberry’s high school coach) was being extremely careful about not trying to compare me to all of that. He just wanted me to go out and play.

The first game of the season, I think I struck out three times. I just came from basketball and only had one day of practice, and all of these scouts were coming.

Obviously, I got going. And when I got going, it was real. They saw me and saw me play well. They saw me hit the ball a long way during my senior year. Once I got going, they realized that I was probably going to be the number one pick, and the Mets had the number one pick [in 1980].

MMO: Going from amateur baseball to professional ball, were there one or two specific challenges you faced?

Strawberry: Yeah, it was a culture shock! I went from Los Angeles to Kingsport, Tennessee, a long way from home. I kept calling my mom and said, ‘Mom, I don’t know if I even want to do this.’ She said, “No, you wanted to do this. This is what you wanted to do for your life. You made the decision, so you’re going to have to stick with it.”

I went to Kingsport, and I was only there for about a month of my first year. Chuck Hiller was my manager. He was a great guy, loose and easy for me.

The next year, I went to Lynchburg, Virginia, and that’s where I almost came close to quitting. I was deep somewhere in the backwoods playing baseball, and there were a lot of racial things being said about me. I was called all kinds of names.

I remember my manager, Gene Dusan, always being good to me. I love Gene Dusan. He was a good manager for me because he kept me together, and he told me not to look at the stands when people were yelling at me. He said, “Don’t look up there. Keep your focus on the field.” He would always get in my face about that because I think he thought that I would take a bat and run up there and start eliminating people.

They were saying some crazy stuff in Lynchburg, Virginia. It was just something I had to learn. If I was going to play, I had to learn to get used to this. I was 19-years-old and thinking, Okay, this is what it’s going to be like.

I came close to quitting; I didn’t show up to the ballpark one day. I had a roommate that I was staying with, and I stayed home with him. They thought I went AWOL and was just smoking weed. I was like, ‘I’m quitting baseball.’ My roommate said, “Yeah, you don’t have to deal with all of this craziness.”

The organization was so worried about me, and they came down. Lloyd McLendon was sent down. He was supposed to be on that team, but he broke his wrist in spring training, so he had to stay in extended spring. We were supposed to be roommates, and he was like a big brother, and I was close to him.

He came to the park and saw me and said, “What’s going on?” He sat me down and we had a real talk. He told me I needed to get it together and to focus, and that I’d make it to the show one day. He told me I had to deal with it, even though it was tough. I was a young kid, and Lloyd was a little bit older; he went to college and everything.

I came close to quitting, and they said to just give it another year. I gave it another year and went to Jackson, Mississippi, and I hit 34 home runs and stole 45 bases [in 1982]. Gene Dusant was my manager again. I realized there, from that season, that I became a ballplayer.

MMO: I’ve read that following the ’82 minor league season, you played winter ball in Venezuela. From the article, it seemed like playing in Venezuela was instrumental in your overall development.

Strawberry: Venezuela was great because the competition was different and very strong. It really took me to another level because if I was going to play, I was going to have to play against this kind of competition, and I knew that.

The Venezuelan competition was a mix of guys who had been to the big leagues and in Triple-A. And here I am, 20-years-old, and I’m playing down there. Once I got going, I hit the brakes off of the ball.

A lot of the other guys I was playing with had already been to the big leagues, and they were telling me that I was going to the big leagues the way I played. They told me to just keep plugging away, work hard and keep playing. And I did.

I developed that year going to winter ball. I came back the next year and went to Triple-A to start the season. I got off to a good start. I came to the ballpark one day, and I wasn’t in the lineup. I’m like, ‘Davey [Johnson], what’s up? I’m not in the lineup.’ He told me to come into his office, and he said, “I’m not playing you today because you’re going to the big leagues tomorrow.”

MMO: It must’ve been surreal to hear those words as a 21-year-old.

Strawberry: It really was. Getting there and feeling the expectation, and I got off to a really rough start. I was young, and I just remember that I was supposed to be at the park at one o’clock to meet with Jim Frey (hitting coach), and I didn’t show up until between two and three. Frey came up to me and got in my face. He just looked at me and said, “I’m never going to wait for you again. If you want to be great at playing this game, you have all the tools, kid; you need to be at this ballpark early every day.”

From that day forward, I was there every day. He taught me a valuable lesson: it doesn’t matter what kind of talent you have, it’s the kind of work that you put in that will eventually take you to the next level to be great. He told me you can have the talent, but if you don’t work on things that you’re weak at, you’re never going to improve yourself. And I did. I improved and I climbed the ladder.

He pushed me that year, and I climbed the ladder. I just came into my own. I went on to win Rookie of the Year. I always say I won Rookie of the Year because Jim Frey got in my face and made me understand the importance of being here. Not just showing up to the ballpark to say, okay, I want to play, but being there and doing things that’s going to get you to the next level.

MMO: When did you start to utilize the leg kick in your swing?

Strawberry: I didn’t really have that coming out of high school or the minor leagues. I think I started really developing that once I got to the big leagues. I changed that, and I think a lot of people thought, well, I don’t think he’s going to be able to hit like that to be successful at the major league level. I just crafted that inside of me, and I realized that this is what I want to be.

You have to figure out what kind of player you want to be. Do you just want to be all or nothing? I got a chance to watch players and play with guys like Dave Kingman and watch him hit and see how he was; it was all or nothing. Do you want to be that type of player, or do you want to be a player that can use your ability to use the whole field and run the bases? I wanted to run the bases, I wanted to steal, I wanted to play the field. I wanted to be a complete player.

I just didn’t want to be a player where it was all or nothing, because it could’ve easily turned that way. I worked so hard not to do that. Once I got to the point with a high leg kick and got comfortable with it, I knew who I was then. I knew how to do it well.

MMO: And how did utilizing the leg kick aid in your performance at the plate?

Strawberry: I called it a lift up and separate. Just lift up and keep my balance. Once I wanted to explode on the pitch, then I would separate. I would put it forward and then put it down. I wouldn’t go so far out because it would keep me in a place where I had great balance, and I wouldn’t fall off the ball a lot.

MMO: Throughout your career, did you incorporate any specific hitting drills into your routine? When I interviewed Gregg Jefferies for Metsmerized, he spoke about a plethora of drills his dad taught him at a young age.

Strawberry: No, no. I don’t think I wanted to clog my brain with all kinds of craziness. When you get to the big leagues, you have to find out what kind of player you are. Eventually, what’s going to happen is, it’s going to catch up with you. Pitchers are going to catch up with you, and they’re going to know how to pitch you. They’re going to find your weaknesses. You have to be able to make those types of adjustments for yourself.

I realized, more than anything, that it was important to stay with who I was. When I would struggle, I would never go to the ballpark and go into BP trying to hit the ball out of the park. It’s only five o’clock, they don’t count. [Laughs.] I would work from the left field line to over the shortstop, and then I would go back into maybe hitting the ball to right-center and right field line. You kind of worked all the way around. I got a feel for what the game is going to be like because somebody is going to pitch me out there, and when I see that pitch, I can identify that pitch because I’ve worked on it.

I used to go down to the cage with Bill Robinson, and he used to work me. My favorite thing with Bill Robinson was soft toss. He didn’t get me in a place where he wanted me, and to swing just to be swinging. He wanted me to stay on the baseball, and he wanted to soft-toss it and wanted me to hit it just into that left field screen. He’d tell me, “Remember, stay on the baseball and hit it to left-center. When you do that, it’s going to allow you to stay on the baseball, and when the pitcher comes in, it’ll be an automatic turn.”

Those are the things that I learned as time went by, and I became better at what I was doing.

MMO: When you debuted with the Mets in 1983, were there certain players that took you under their wing?

Strawberry: Not really. It was more of a veteran-type of team. I think it was a team where a lot of players were on their way out instead of in. The guys that really helped me a lot at that time were Mookie Wilson and Hubie Brooks.

All of the other guys were good to me. A lot of them were very nice and knew that I was on the scene for real. I think when they saw me in spring training and saw me play in some of the A games and hit a couple of bombs off some good major league pitchers, they knew. They were like, “Man, this doesn’t even faze the kid.” I got close to Ed Lynch, but Hubie and Mookie were really the guys who encouraged me.

And then when Keith [Hernandez] came over, he had a great impact on my career. He had a great impact on me going forward because I learned a lot from him.

MMO: At what point did you start to notice that the organization was changing, and for the better?

Strawberry: I realized that when we acquired Keith. I didn’t know if he was going to stay, but once I realized what kind of player he was going to be able to bring to the table, it was going to help all of us.

I knew the players we had in our farm system. I knew there was a bunch of them behind me that were very talented, like Doc [Gooden] and Lenny [Dykstra]. The Mets organization was stacked with players. We had tons of players who could play.

I think they realized that we had some pretty good players, and then we had some pretty good pitching. We traded for Ronnie [Darling] and we got Sid [Fernandez]. You saw them and knew the organization was starting to make a move. Frank Cashen was a wizard at what he was doing.

MMO: Would you characterize leaving the Mets to sign with Los Angeles Dodgers following the 1990 season, as your biggest regret of your baseball career?

Strawberry: Most likely. It had nothing to do with L.A.; it had to do with me being accustomed to playing at Shea Stadium in New York City, and being used to the atmosphere and what the fans were like. The fans push you in New York, and they boo you when you suck. I loved that.

It was a challenge for me because they were like, “You suck,” and I’m just like, ‘Yeah, you’re right. I’m a good ballplayer, and I shouldn’t be playing this bad.’ I was never someone who took that personally. I was always taking that as you can play better than this.

They were right about that, and that’s what I loved about the push. Either you’re going to deal with it or they’re going to run you out of town. They have the right to let you know that you suck. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’re getting paid a lot, and they come to the ballpark every night to see you play, and they want to see you perform. That’s the thing I loved about them. They don’t want to hear excuses about having a sore this or that.

MMO: I recently watched the Netflix documentary about Mike Veeck called ‘The Saint of Second Chances.’ Part of the documentary details your time with the Saint Paul Saints in 1996. In it, you say that your time with the Saints reignited your love for the game. Can you talk about that?

Strawberry: It brought a lot of joy. I think the way the people in Saint Paul were in general, they just came out to the ballpark and had fun and cheered for you. I got on the baseball field, and I didn’t even know if I wanted to play again. But once I got on that field and started playing, it became fun again.

I started to see the game for what it really was from when I first started, and I had joy in it. It just brought a lot of joy to me to be able to be down there playing like that. I didn’t know if I would ever make it back [to the majors]. I just knew if I was going to stay, I was just going to make it my last run to prove to myself how good I was at this game and how good the game had been for me.

MMO: In your prime, you had a combination of power and speed that was pretty special. Only two players in Major League Baseball history have hit 275+ home runs and swiped 200+ bags in their first nine seasons: yourself and Mike Trout. What memories do you have about those two tools?

Strawberry: It was just something I took a lot of pride in. It was something that I worked at because becoming a base stealer means you have to work at that. That just doesn’t happen overnight.

You have to learn how to get real good jumps, run on certain pitches and be able to pick your spots. That takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of wear and tear on your body because, eventually, your body starts to break down and you start to have injuries as you get older, at 28-29, because you ran so much earlier. That’s what it was for me, and I’m quite sure that’s what it is for Trout. He probably ran a lot, and that’s probably why he’s having so many different injuries.

The wear and tear on your body is hard. If you’re just a base stealer, that’s one thing. But if you’re that and a home run hitter, that’s a different thing because that’s very hard to do. It’s not easy to keep that pace up. It’s a very challenging pace to keep up.

MMO: You mentioned putting a lot of work into becoming a great base stealer. Can you expand on that?

Strawberry: I just picked my spots and realized what kind of pitchers were on the mound. Does he have a good move? Who’s behind the plate? Is he quick enough? Getting jumps were important, and you had to learn how to do that.

MMO: The 2016 ESPN “30 for 30” about yourself and Doc Gooden was extraordinary to watch. Was it enjoyable getting to see Doc in person, and relive all the good and bad of that time?

Strawberry: It was. It was great for me to be able to walk down that line again and look back and realize we were pretty good. I really wasn’t thinking about baseball a lot, and I don’t that much today. When I get a chance to revisit that and look back on it, I’m like, Wow, we were actually pretty good! 

You don’t ever think about it when you’re playing. And every year you go out there and you’re determined to be successful and win. When I got a chance to reflect back on that, I could see the good of us, and then I could see the fall of us. The lifestyle comes with it too, the expectations and playing in New York and all the temptations. That’s real life, and it’s there; you can’t deny it.

We were very young. I was very young! When we won in 1986, I was 24, and we never won again. We came close in ’88 and blew that and lost to the Dodgers. The window of time for winning is not forever. I think players sometimes think that we can keep doing this and we’re going to win. That’s just not the case. That’s not how it happens, because it’s so hard. When I look back on that “30 for 30,” it was really touching to me to see where I was when I started, what happened and where I ended up at.

MMO: Can you talk about when you found out that the Mets were retiring your No. 18 in a ceremony next season? What were your initial reactions to that news?

Strawberry: I was overjoyed when I got the call from Steve [Cohen] that this was happening for me. After all these years playing so hard and spending eight seasons there, and becoming the player I was, and the things I accomplished in that short period of time, I’m grateful for that. It’s such a big honor.

I was in tears – tears of joy – for being recognized. Not that I needed recognition for what I did in New York, but being recognized for that part of my career. When I look back on that, I was the first piece of what the organization was able to do. I came up in ’83, Keith came over, Doc, [Gary] Carter, and then we came on. More and more pieces came together, and we were all a big part of that.

You can’t take that away. Seven straight All-Star Games, Rookie of the Year, 30-30 and leading the league in homers in ’88. I just think, Man, I did some pretty good things over in Queens. Sometimes you never realize that because you don’t look back on that a lot. I didn’t. When I had the chance to look back on that, I thought to myself, This was well done. I’m really grateful for the fact that I’ll be able to be celebrated in front of all the wonderful Mets fans that had the chance to see me over the years.

MMO: What are your thoughts on Steve Cohen as an owner?

Jun 28, 2023; New York City, New York, USA; New York Mets owner Steve Cohen speaks to the media during a press conference before a game against the Milwaukee Brewers at Citi Field. Mandatory Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Strawberry: I think Steve Cohen is a phenomenal person. I think he cares, and he wants to win. I think it’s about getting the right chemistry and getting the right baseball people for him for development and the minor league system.

I spoke to him a few times and said, ‘You’ve got to get younger. You’ve got to get athletes. Get some guys that can do it all together: run, steal bases, go first to third.’

You need those kinds of players on your team. You need the Lenny Dykstra’s and Wally Backman’s on your team. Those are the players that will help you get to the next level because that’s what helped us go to the next level. We had the big boys, but if you didn’t have the little guys, it doesn’t do us any good. They were always on base and giving us an opportunity to drive them in.

MMO: I know you’ve been quite busy over the last decade-plus with your ministry and other ventures. Can you talk about what you’ve been up to over that time?

Strawberry: I’ve been involved in ministry for a while now, it’s turned out to be my life. I use my life experiences and am able to go back and help others. I go to maximum-security prisons and speak to the inmates there who will probably never see the streets again. Something’s happened in their life, just like stuff happens in all our lives, they need to know that people like me and all the people who are in ministry really care about them.

You never forget about people. I didn’t want anyone to forget about me, and they didn’t. I had people who helped me. I learned that lesson when I got well, and completely well, not straddling the fence and just saying I’m well.

Putting on a uniform made me a baseball player. I didn’t become a man until I stepped out and found my faith, and started living according to biblical principles. And my life changed forever. Now I know the importance of what it is to help somebody else. That’s probably more satisfying to me than anything I’ve ever accomplished.

MMO: Do you travel all across the country?

Strawberry: Yeah, I travel around 260 to 270 times a year to all kinds of churches and events.

I speak for addiction, I’m actually speaking at an event tonight in Orlando. It’s an organization called Teen Challenge, it’s for people who have addiction problems. It’s a faith-based program to help them understand that they need a spiritual awakening in their life to become a different person. To be able to see clear and understand that you can go on with life even though you have fallen short and had some cracks. You can get up and get yourself together.

I became an evangelist after many years of struggle in my life. Playing Major League Baseball and having success and struggles, through drug addiction, prison and cancer twice. Now, I’m a traveling evangelist standing in pulpits preaching over 260 times a year and bringing hope.

The post MMO Exclusive: Darryl Strawberry, the Mets’ Home Run King appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

In fact, stickball brought refuge to a young Kranepool. As his stickball reputation grew, local gangs treated Kranepool well and insisted he not hang around with them after dark as they didn’t want him to get into trouble and not be able to play on their teams.

Growing up in a single-parent household, Kranepool was drawn to athletics, mainly basketball and baseball. With the guidance and support of his next-door neighbor, Jimmy Schiafo, who acted as a father figure, the left-handed hitter was developing and drawing interest from Major League teams.

The team that showed the most interest in Kranepool’s services was that of the recently-formed New York Mets.

Sixty-one years after a then-17-year-old Kranepool signed a contract with the Mets, the Bronx-native has recently penned an autobiography on his life and playing career called “The Last Miracle: My 18-Year Journey with Amazin’ New York Mets.”

The memoir, published by Triumph Books, focuses on Kranepool’s development as a player, memories of the club’s first World Series championship in 1969, organizational miscues and his life-saving kidney transplant.

Triumph Books

Kranepool, 78, offers frank and transparent views on a myriad of topics, including his displeasure of Yogi Berra’s managerial decisions, resentment toward Gene Mauch for not playing him in his only All-Star Game appearance in 1965 and frustration with many of the Mets’ front office moves in the mid-to-late 1970s.

Over his eighteen-year career, Kranepool played for just one organization, a rarity in today’s game. Kranepool is the franchise leader in games played (1,853), and owns the third-most hits (1,418) and fifth-most RBIs (614). ‘The Krane’ also owns the eighth-most home runs by a player under the age of 20 in Major League Baseball history with 12.

In the latter part of Kranepool’s career, he developed into a dependable bat off the bench. In 1974, Kranepool went 17-for-35 (.486) in pinch-hitting opportunities, setting a single-season record for highest batting average by a pinch hitter.

I had the privilege of speaking with Kranepool over the phone, where he discussed his early development in the Bronx, spending nearly two decades with the Mets and his kidney transplant.

MMO: What prompted you to write the memoir?

Kranepool: I just figured I had a lot of stories to tell. Ralph Kiner is not around, so why not let the fans enjoy them? I participated in all of them since 1962, and there’s nobody here to talk about that stuff.

MMO: A prominent figure throughout your youth was your neighbor, Jimmy Schiafo. You write in the book that he acted as a father figure. How important was his presence in your life and early development as an athlete?

Kranepool: I was brought up without a dad; I lost my father in the war. I needed a replacement and he was my next-door neighbor and took a liking to me.

He had two boys and they were involved in baseball, and one was on my team. He worked us all out, kept us in shape and taught us the fundamentals of baseball. That’s really where I got my start.

MMO: You write that your reputation for baseball started by playing stickball in the Bronx. What memories do you have from playing stickball?

Kranepool: Stickball was the game to play in the Bronx because you had a lot of playgrounds with concrete fields; you didn’t have a lot of playing fields that were being taken care of. We played every day.

Being a guy from the Bronx, we didn’t have a lot of money in our pockets, so we were going out to camps and stuff like that in the summer. We all got together at the playgrounds and worked out every day. We ran there after breakfast and stayed there until lunch. We then ran home to grab a sandwich and came back and played basketball or baseball or whatever you could do on the playground.

It was cheap, inexpensive and a lot of fun for all of us.

MMO: Your first significant injury was when you fractured your elbow on your throwing arm in your second year of Little League. You write that your elbow never healed and you never had surgery to repair it. Did that injury ever bother you later in your career? And do you think you would’ve kept pitching?

Kranepool: I think I could have pitched. I was an outstanding pitcher in Little League and set all kinds of records. I was never the same afterwards, and nobody really knew about it. That’s something you don’t brag about with any type of deficiency you might have. So I played with it.

Did it affect me? It probably did; it probably affected my swing. I was a better player, I think, before that [injury]. But you still play and overcome and enjoy the game of baseball. I played every day and was able to perform, and we enjoyed ourselves.

To this day, it’s not right and never will be.

MMO: Is it true that you taught yourself to throw right handed after that injury?

Kranepool: I did! I caught for a year and a half and I can throw right handed. I’m not as good right handed as I am left handed because I never continued it. But I could throw because I wanted to hit. Certain things you can’t do so you just overcome them and keep trying.

MMO: That reminds me of Billy Wagner learning to throw left handed after breaking his right arm when he was a kid.

Kranepool: Well, that’s what it is. You use the other one and compensate for that. If you keep throwing with the opposite arm you’re going to overcome everything.

I did it for a year and a half, and I had fun doing it. I liked catching because you’re in the action.

MMO: Can you talk about the interest that the New York Mets showed in you throughout your high school career, and the relationship you developed with scout Bubber Jonnard?

Kranepool: Bubber was the scout in the tri-state area, and he followed all the players as they were growing up. When I was in sandlot baseball, I attracted a lot of attention because I was a pretty good hitter, and pitched a little bit but could never throw the same [after injury].

I really attracted the Mets because of my hitting. They followed me during high school and went to all my games.

When I signed, I graduated high school, and two days later the Mets came to my door, sat on my doorsteps, and wanted to talk a contract because you can’t sign until your graduating class is out. They were the first ones in my house, and they sat there all night, and we finally signed a contract.

MMO: I still can’t wrap my head around the fact that you graduated high school, signed a major league contract and then took a plane to the West Coast to meet the Mets just a few days later. Do you remember what was going through your mind at the time as a 17-year-old?

Kranepool: It was excitement for myself signing a contract. It was my goal as a Little Leaguer to start and play in the major leagues and perform. I didn’t expect to go out to the National League and to Los Angeles straight away, but I did.

They packed me up and put me on a plane; the first time I ever flew. Little did I know that opening night out there was Sandy Koufax. He pitched a no-hitter and struck out 13. I told Casey [Stengel], ‘I’m ready for college.’ [Laughs.]

MMO: You sat next to Casey Stengel during games to observe what was happening and get a feel for the major leagues when you arrived. What were some of your early takeaways from sitting next to Stengel?

Kranepool: He was having a good time with himself. He was 71, enjoying baseball, loving life and always discussing the game. He was the first one at the ballpark and the last one to leave.

He put a lot of time in on the team, but we just didn’t have the talent. We had a lot of older guys who were past their prime. Back in those days, 35 was more than your prime, and he knew that he really didn’t have the talent to really perform against the other teams.

Stengel took a lot of pressure off of guys because he kept the press busy writing stories about the Mets, talking about the old Yankees, all kinds of things. It made it easier for the players to perform because losing 100 games was not easy for any team. It’s tough to lose 100 games, and we did it for several years.

MMO: Obviously, the first seven years of the club’s existence were disappointing and underwhelming. And then came 1969. When did you start to notice that things were changing for the better in the organization?

Kranepool: We made a lot of changes in the front office, and of course, we acquired Gil Hodges in 1968. He was a young manager coming over from Washington, and he taught us how to play the game and how to win.

We were better in ’68. I think it was the second time we hadn’t lost 100 games and we thought it was a big improvement. In spring training, he discussed it with us and told us to set some goals for ourselves and taught us how to win, how to play the game and how you should play. A win here or there makes a big difference at the end of a season. So we did perform better.

By the summer of ’69, we started to get to .500. When we got to .500, it was at the stage of the season where we had never been that high in the season.

We started to play really good baseball, and in the second half of the season, we won 60-to-70 percent of our games. We beat every club that we had to and went on to win the pennant. We beat the Cubs by eight or nine games, and they were up eight or nine games most of the year.

MMO: Something you write about in the book is that you wish the club gave you more time to develop, especially when it came to the mental preparation of the game. Looking back, how would you have handled a young Ed Kranepool?

Kranepool: You can’t handle that any differently; they’re in control of your outcome. I would have been better off playing in the minor leagues for a year or two, developing with guys my own age; this way you can perform up to what your ability is.

Every time I went to the minors, I hit over .300 and was one of the outstanding players in the league. I just never developed.

You don’t improve facing Koufax, [Bob] Gibson, [Don] Drysdale, [Juan] Marichal and all of these Hall of Famers. There were so many of them in the National League in the sixties, and if you look at the records, most of those guys made the Hall of Fame. Guys don’t really perform and improve against those types of pitchers.

MMO: Did you feel pressure to succeed right away given all the hype and publicity surrounding your signing?

Kranepool: I did because everyone expected a whole lot more from you. They wanted you to do more because they wanted you to lead them to the pennant. And that’s why they were frustrated: they wanted to win. I don’t blame them, I wanted to win!

Until they surrounded me in the lineup, they could always pitch against you. I was an aggressive hitter, and I wanted to swing. I wasn’t going to walk my way to the major leagues. I would swing at pitches that were out of my strike zone, out of my hitting zone, and I didn’t perform with it.

As I matured and got older and caught up with the league, I started to produce some numbers that the Mets were expecting. But I’d been around so long that the organization said, “Maybe he’s over the hill.”

I was in the league for 17 years and performing. I could have done a lot better late in my career; I hit .300, .320, .290, .280. Those are competitive numbers for the better players in the league. But people still remember that you struggled when you were 17-18 [years old] in the league.

MMO: You were a terrific pinch hitter, as you posted a career .277 batting average in those situations. Can you talk about some of the challenges of pinch-hitting, and the preparation it takes in order to come up late in a game?

Kranepool: Mentally, I wanted to prove the manager wrong. When I wasn’t playing, I should have been playing. They should have had me in the lineup so I would get four at-bats instead of one.

Once I had that job, I prepared myself, and in the middle innings took some extra swings down below in the dugout and got myself ready and had my bat prepared. I knew when I was going to pinch hit; I didn’t pinch hit when the game was not on the line. It was always in a crucial situation where the game was on the line and I knew who was going to pitch, so I was physically ready to pinch hit.

As I got older, I did it so well that I was efficient in it. A team like the Mets, when they’re not playing well, you don’t have that many opportunities for game situations. You’re not going to pinch hit when you’re down 6-0 and you have a couple other options to choose. They’re going to use them, and I never got a chance to play in a lot of games.

It was a situation where I was doing it to show up the manager and work my way back into the lineup. But I did it pretty well.

MMO: From reading your book, you can tell how much respect and appreciation you had for Gil Hodges. From everything I’ve read about Hodges, he really seemed like a manager who was ahead of his time with his methods and how he managed a ball club. In your view, what did Hodges do well as a manager?

Kranepool: Gil learned how to use everybody and had one set of rules. He was a very tough disciplinarian. I had trouble with Gil in the early years, I had some disagreements with him, and we didn’t get along for two or three years. But I fought through it, and he did also.

He worked with me and sent me out to show me that he was in charge, and I went down to the minor leagues and hit over .300 and worked my way back to the majors. M. Donald Grant gave his word that he would get me back to the majors and wouldn’t just strand me in the minors. When I performed, he lived up to his promise and I got along very well with Mr. Grant.

MMO: I loved the anecdote you shared about winning a Kobe bull while barnstorming with the Mets in Japan in 1974. Can you talk about that event, and how you ended up with a bull as a prize?

Kranepool: I won a bull in Japan because I was the best hitter on the ball club. I led the team in home runs and average and played well over there and got an award.

It was quite funny how I ended it in the last game of the year. It was either myself or the first baseman the Giants had, Sadaharu Oh. We had a couple of home runs apiece, and then I hit a home run in the first inning. They moved the bull to one side of the field, and it looked like I was going to get it. Then Oh hit a home run, and they moved the bull back to the third base-side. Towards the seventh or eighth inning, I hit another home run, so I won the bull. I hit about eight home runs in 18 games.

They gave me the award, and it was fun. I didn’t bring it home because it was too expensive; you had to leave it in quarantine for a while. I traded him for a couple of first-class tickets to New York and left the ballclub with a week to go. We had a full week left, but I didn’t choose to stay in Japan.

MMO: You’re very honest and transparent throughout the book, especially with certain individuals like Gene Mauch, Yogi Berra, Joe McDonald and Joe Torre. Can you talk about your openness with some of the displeasure you had for certain individuals?

Kranepool: Whoever’s in charge, if they don’t treat you right, you’re going to treat them the same way they treated you. They didn’t make considerations and didn’t keep their promises, so there’s no way you’re going to like them.

Gene Mauch was a tough manager to play against. He always wanted to win and do anything to win for his ball club, had nothing to do with me, but he was tough on us. You wanted to beat him, and every time we played, you performed a little bit better.

Some of our people were incompetent in our organization. They made deals and trades and got rid of players who should’ve been playing, and other guys they kept. I wanted to win as a young player coming up; I was tired of losing. When they kept making bad moves, I critiqued them and let them know that I didn’t like it.

The only thing I wanted to do was win and win a World Series, and win a couple of them. We should’ve won two, we only won one. We lost the second one, and that was incompetence on the manager’s part. We should’ve been a better ball club then we were. If Gil was alive, we win more pennants, and become better for it.

MMO: One of the many things I learned while reading your book was that you were offered the opportunity to work with Robert Redford for “The Natural.” Can you talk about that?

Kranepool: We did. A lot of guys got opportunities when they were performing there. You had to play and do it in Buffalo. I didn’t choose to go up there because I didn’t know how long I was going to be at minimal pay.

Robert Redford was the star, and we had to teach him how to play baseball, and we worked a little bit with him in New York. But we weren’t going up to Buffalo. I wasn’t going to spend time up there without my family.

MMO: You write about your desire to work in the front office for the Mets after your playing career was through. Was that something you had given a lot of thought to?

Kranepool: I always did. I never wanted to manage, I didn’t want to confront the players on a daily basis; let them perform and do it on the field. I can work from above and around them, and that’s what I wanted to do.

I probably would have done it if Mrs. Payson stayed alive and didn’t give the club to her daughter and pick Joe McDonald to be the general manager. He killed off some minor league teams, traded those players, and then he traded from the major league club, and the Mets went from first to last.

MMO: You write about the process it took for you to find a kidney donor, and the help that Jay Horwitz provided to spread the word. Several years removed from surgery, how are you feeling?

Kranepool: I’m doing great! It’s four years since the surgery and it’s acting well. It did take me a couple of years to do it, and then we finally got one (kidney donor).

We were very lucky to be able to put together a structure, a deal that helped two guys; myself and another gentleman who was a firefighter. He actually got my donor and I got his wife as a donor; she was a perfect match. It worked out well for both.

MMO: When you look back on your career, Ed, what are you most proud of? 

Kranepool: I’m proud of staying long enough in the organization to finally see us win a World Series. That’s the one goal when you start, and I finished with a World Series. Like I said, the biggest disappointment of my career was losing the ’73 World Series in seven games.

The post MMO Exclusive: 1969 World Champion Ed Kranepool appeared first on Metsmerized Online.

Granderson, 42, was an easy player to root for, no matter what team he was on. As congenial as they come, the left-handed hitter posted a 47.2 fWAR for his sixteen-year major league career and was a true ambassador for the sport on and off the field.

Selected in the third round of the 2002 MLB Draft by the Detroit Tigers out of the University of Illinois at Chicago, Granderson didn’t expect to make the majors. In fact, he believed that he would spend two or three years in the minors before getting released to pursue other interests, be it in sports marketing or teaching, like both of his parents.

Fast forward to 2007, in which Granderson became the first player since Willie Mays in 1957 to tally at least 20 doubles, 20 triples, 20 home runs and 20 stolen bases in a season. In his second full season in the majors, Granderson posted the fourth-highest fWAR among position players in ’07 with a 7.9 mark and finished tenth in the M.V.P vote in the American League.

The affable Granderson made his way to the New York Mets following the 2013 season. After spending the previous four seasons across town with the New York Yankees, in which Granderson recorded back-to-back 40+ home run seasons in 2011-12, he inked a four-year, $60 million deal with the Mets in December 2013.

The ‘Grandy Man’ was incredibly durable with the Mets, playing in at least 150 games in each of his first three seasons with the club. Granderson’s best season came in 2015, in which he led the Mets in fWAR (5.3), games played (157) and hits (150), while second in home runs (26).

En route to the Mets’ first division title since 2006, Granderson posted an OPS of .898 in the second half of the ’15 season, with a 151 wRC+ (tied for 16th-highest among 123 hitters with a min. 250 plate appearances).

In 14 postseason games in ’15, Granderson produced an .866 OPS. His three home runs in the World Series tied Donn Clendenon (1969) for the most homers in a single Fall Classic in franchise history.

Following the 2019 season, Granderson announced his retirement. A Roberto Clemente Award recipient, a four-time Marvin Miller Man of the Year, a three-time All-Star and Silver Slugger winner, Granderson left an indelible mark on the game of baseball.

Beyond the recognition on the field, Granderson remains an incredible representative off it.

From his Grand Kids Foundation, founded in 2007 to provide educational and athletic opportunities to kids, to his broadcasting assignment for TBS’s Tuesday Night Baseball, to being the board chair of the Players Alliance, a nonprofit comprised of active and former players focused on building equitable systems in order to change the trajectory of diversity throughout baseball, Granderson has continued to keep busy and focus his time on important issues.

I had the privilege of interviewing Granderson over the phone, where he discussed juggling academics and athletics, his time with the Mets, friendship with Lucas Duda and his work outside of the game.

MMO: Both of your parents were educators. How did your parents have you balance academics and athletics growing up?

Granderson: They laid the groundwork that I had to get my schoolwork done first in order to participate in different activities. That was the priority.

A lot of people ask if I had to get straight A’s or if I had to be on the honor roll. They didn’t need that, per se. As long as they spoke to a teacher and I put forth the effort required and there wasn’t, he didn’t turn this in, or I know he can do more, then they were fine.

I got a D one time in Spanish II, and I was like, ‘Mom, Dad, you know it’s not me. This class is really bad. It’s the one class that doesn’t have air conditioning. It’s the summer, and every other class in the foreign language hall is doing these cool cultural experiences.’

Our whole class had Cs and Ds. That was the only time I got a really bad grade, and they were okay with it. It was getting your work done first, and then you could enjoy all the different activities.

MMO: Is it true you grew up an Atlanta Braves fan — even though you lived in Chicago — due to the timing of “Saved by the Bell” on television?

Granderson: It is! At that time, “Saved by the Bell” was on WGN, except for when the Cubs would play; they played a majority of day games. I’d be excited to come home, and nope, the Cubs would be on. It was like, Man, I missed my show!

The timing of the Braves being so good led me to TBS, and I could watch baseball at night. A combination of “Saved by the Bell” not being on, the Braves being on at a time that made more sense for me, and the Braves being good was a perfect recipe for me to become a Braves fan.

MMO: I have to test how big a fan you are. Did you also watch “Saved by the Bell: The College Years”?

Granderson: I did! The one thing I missed live was Zack and Kelly’s wedding. I forgot why I missed that, but I ended up seeing it.

Even before that, I watched the beginning when it was “Good Morning, Miss Bliss,” before it became “Saved by the Bell.” I loved every bit of it!

MMO: Can you tell me what the phrase ‘Don’t Think, Have Fun’ means to you?

Granderson: It was coined in combination with my head coach, Mike Dee, from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He was in his second year as head coach of baseball, which was my first year there.

One of the things he said to me early on in my college career was, “You’re very analytical. You can think with the best of them, but I don’t want you to overthink it. Just trust your ability. Go out there and have fun.”

That stuck with me because I would have a day where I would do something successful and still try to find something. I would nitpick a bit. He said, “No, trust what you’ve been doing and go out there and do it.”

From that moment, I started writing it underneath my hat as a constant reminder because you’re constantly taking your hat off throughout the game, so you can look at it. That was a good spot for me to have it.

I used it all the way through my career because the game is hard and challenging enough. Why add more? It’s supposed to be the same game that you were playing when you first started and fell in love with it. As long as you can do that, you’ll have fun doing it. That’s when you tend to be at your best.

I always try to relay that message to younger players: As long as you can put forth the work, then you can trust it. When you put forth the work, you get the results. When you get the results, you have fun. And when you’re having fun, you want to perform.

It all goes in cycle, right? That’s when you end up just enjoying it. It was a good reminder for me.

MMO: You mentioned being analytical. Were you someone who embraced the metrics throughout your playing career?

Granderson: I feel like it came out of the storm, but then there was no one there to explain it to you. Either up on the scoreboard or you have a meeting where they would say that you need to improve in a certain stat. But there wasn’t any follow up in terms of this is why it’s important. If you do these things, this will increase these numbers and, therefore, hopefully results in this.

I feel like that part has been, and still kind of is, missing a bit. I’ll see stats pop up, and I have no idea what it means. Even when I look at it and go, Okay, I know a bigger number is better, but how do I get a bigger number? What does that mean once I do get a bigger number? Am I actually doing something better than something else?

WAR was a very popular one right away towards the middle part of my career. I would always ask people how WAR is defined defensively. No one would give me an answer, and I still don’t know how to define it defensively. There are also two or three different WARs, so which one is the most accurate? Then there’s the wRC+ and OPS+, and you start adding these plus symbols on different things.

It’s very unique because if you look at some of the analytic numbers that have come out, they’ve been able to backtrack it to players that played way before this time and throw it on them. And that’s an interesting question. Just thinking defensively, do we know for players that played when there was no TV and all that stuff the range they had? All we know is putouts, attempts and errors. So how do we accurately quantify it?

This isn’t me saying I’m against it; I definitely think there’s a place for it. I just think there needs to be a better job of explaining it, especially to the younger players.

For the longest it was, if I got more hits, my average goes up. Okay, I know that. If I walk, my on-base goes up; if I don’t make an error, my fielding percentage stays higher. I knew those different things. Ultimately, those things would lead me to being a better player, helping our team get a chance to win, or once you start playing professionally, start to make more money.

MMO: You hit the free agent market for the first time after the 2013 season. What was going through that process like, and what made you ultimately sign with the Mets?

Granderson: It was unique because I was finally getting the chance to get close to that point. I had just come off of a solid 2011-2012. I was like, If everything continues to stay in place in 2013, the offseason could be very exciting.

I got hurt twice; I get hit in the hands in the first at-bat of spring training, and then I came back, and I got hit eight days later in the hand and missed more time. I only played a fraction of a season (61 games).

That changed a couple of things for me in terms of the outfielders who were going to be free agents. I think it was Jacoby Ellsbury, Shin-Soo Choo, myself; I think we were the top three. My stock fell because I was hurt.

We’re going through it, and the Mets reached out, and I started talking about a couple of different things. What’s interesting in the baseball landscape, the American League and the National League, up until this year, even with interleague play, you don’t really know what’s going on with the other side because you don’t play them nearly as much. Yes, you have your natural rivals, so we had the Subway Series. Whether it was a four-game or six-game series, in the grand scheme of 162, you didn’t really focus on them too much and vice versa.

I didn’t know a ton about the Mets. I played the Mets in interleague in ’07 with the Tigers and in the Subway Series during my time with the Yankees. Over the course of 2004, when I debuted, to 2013, I only played against them four times and maybe in spring training.

I played against David Wright in the minor leagues, so I knew he was there. After that, it was like, I really don’t know much about them. I met with Sandy Alderson, and we got a chance to chat and talk about things. The conversation started moving forward, and I was like, You know what? I’ve been in New York for four years. I’m very familiar with it when we play in the Subway Series; I would just drive to Citi Field. I’m used to getting to and from, and it’s not too complicated. I think this could be a good fit.

Everything kind of aligned that way, and the Mets became my first free agent home.

MMO: Something I’ll always remember during your time with the Mets is your friendship with Lucas Duda. The wefollowlucasduda Instagram account was amazing. Can you talk about your relationship with Duda, and how that account came about?

Granderson: We were locker mates. With him being a left-handed hitter, we would talk a lot in the cage or during the game. One of the things I always try to communicate to younger players is look at the other players in the lineup that are similar to you, whether you’re a right-handed batter, switch hitter or a left-handed batter. There’s a good chance they’re (the pitchers) probably doing very similar things to that batter that they are to you. That could help you throughout the course of a game.

Sure enough, with Duda and I, we would watch each other and talk about things. What do you see? What do you feel? What’s going on? That’s how our relationship started.

Duda’s very quiet; he stays to himself and doesn’t say too much. At this time, I think Instagram, in terms of being viral, just started to become a big thing. The number of players who would enter a team that already had social media or the number of players that were starting to jump on was skyrocketing. But there were still a lot of them who swore they would never get it.

Daniel Muno, John Mayberry and myself were like, let’s make an account for Duda. That’s how it started. It wasn’t even the plan to grow followers; it was to make one for him because he didn’t have it and didn’t want one. We became this invasive paparazzi crew that would follow him and antagonize him.

I think it was helpful because it kept him loose and relaxed because he can overthink with the best of them, just like me. We got to keep the game fun and do all these different things. It’s amazing how quickly the followers jumped. We got to 100,000 followers in a matter of a couple of months! And then people wanted more.

I think it’s (the account) still out there, but I don’t think anything has been posted recently. It’s funny how that came to be. But it helped not only him but the clubhouse stay loose because other players started trying to sneak pictures of him and give them to me and give me a chance to post.

I did one that was really good and he begged me not to post it. And I never did it. I caught him one time in the bathroom, and he was in the stall. I went into the stall next to him. I stood on top of the toilet and went over the top and took a picture of him. [Laughs.] I was ready to post it, but he was like, “No, please don’t post it!” That’s one that was deleted, and no one got a chance to see it.

MMO: I love how this became a team effort.

Granderson: It was amazing. Everyone was like, “Oh, I got this!” And then I’d say, ‘The quality isn’t good.’

I became a photo editor and social media person where I’d say, ‘That’s not good enough. I need five seconds of video. I need this, I need that.’ My team was out there going to work.

MMO: Only two Mets in franchise history have hit three homers in a single World Series: Donn Clendenon in 1969, and you in 2015. What memories stand out from that Fall Classic?

Granderson: It was fun to see Citi Field rocking. It was exciting that it happened my second year there. Although I had signed there, I knew there wasn’t a lot of anticipation for us to be as good as we were that fast.

Here we are on the biggest stage, the final two teams standing, and we have a chance to do something that hadn’t been done in a very long time. The energy was through the roof! It was exciting and loud. If we just would’ve won Game One… there are a number of factors that played into that. Alex Gordon extending and putting the game into extra innings and then ultimately winning the game, but we forget how that game started: they had the inside-the-park home run (Alcides Escobar), and then we came back and took the lead.

If we win that one, I’d definitely give the Royals Game Two because they just outplayed us. Now we come back to Citi Field being tied one-one versus being down zero to two. It’s a different mindset.

It’s the same thing with my hat: don’t think, have fun. I had been in the postseason and the World Series in ’06, and I put way too much pressure on myself. I made it a point to say, ‘I don’t care what happens; I’m going to have as much fun out there as possible.’

I feel like that let me go out there and do some of the things you quoted statistically. When we were down three games to one before our last game at Citi Field, Kevin Long, our hitting coach, called a hitter’s meeting. We went in the cage, and he wanted to see where everyone was at and what we were thinking. I sat there and said, ‘Isn’t this fun? We have a chance to do something that’s only been done a couple of times. Let’s go out there and have a ton of fun and just see what happens.’

In that game, I led off with another home run. Unfortunately, we ended up not getting the win to extend the Series. It was still fun! Of course, we wanted to win it, which would’ve been even more fun. I enjoyed every moment of it. You don’t get a chance to be there often, so you have to take advantage of it. I made sure I did.

MMO: In the 2016 Wild Card Game, you made one of the best catches I’ve ever seen in center in the top of the sixth. You covered a ton of ground running back and somehow kept the trajectory of the ball in your view. What are your memories from that play?

Granderson: Hitting the wall and just being able to get up. It’s funny; prior to that, I talked about how loud the place can be, but there are times where I don’t hear anything. I’m going back for a ball and don’t hear anything; hit a home run, don’t hear anything; run for a triple, don’t hear anything. I just go deaf.

Very similar to that situation, I just remember thinking, He got this one over my head. One of the things I’ve always enjoyed as a center fielder was going back on the ball. I feel like that was my strength versus coming in. When given the opportunity, I tried to play as shallow as I could because that was my strength.

Sure enough, here’s a ball over my head, and now it’s time for me to go back. I could sense the wall was coming on, and I was like, This is going to hurt. But it’s zero-zero, and if I don’t try this, it’s going to bounce off the wall and going to be at least a double, maybe a triple. That could be the game-winning run, so let me go.

When I hit, I was like, Okay, my shoulder feels fine, wrist feels fine, I can breathe. I finally started to hear the crowd at that point as we start to come off the field. But prior to that, I was like, Let me get us to the playoffs. If I get hurt on it, this is the one chance to do it to keep us in the ballgame.

But it wasn’t enough. We didn’t have enough star power. Even if we win that game, I don’t know if we had enough at that point of the year in 2016 to keep going further. A lot of our pitching was hurt, and we were scraping by and doing enough. At that point, I think we would have been exposed if we were to move forward.

MMO: Along with your playing career, you were also a big leader with the Players Association, and won four Marvin Miller Man of the Year Awards. Can you talk about how important it was to be involved with the MLBPA?

Granderson: I kind of got pushed into that in 2006, my first full year with the Tigers. It was an election year for the team, and every two years I think it is, the team votes for their main team rep and alternate rep.

So it’s my first full year in the big leagues, and someone recommended me, and then they seconded me. I’m looking around thinking, What does that mean? All of a sudden, I’m in this position. I thought, If I’m in this position, let me figure out what I can do.

At the end of the season, I went to my first union meeting in the winter. At the time, the head of the players’ union was Michael Weiner, and I had no idea what was being talked about. It was the first time I heard words like collusion, arbitration, all these different things. I was just thinking, Let me ask some questions and not look too odd.

I started going year after year after year and started understanding a bit more. I started understanding the importance of asking more questions while also being able to take that information and give it back to my teammates. Or, if someone called and had a question, I can try to break it down for them. If I didn’t know the answer, I can point them in the right direction to get the feedback.

I pride myself on that because you have fun in this game, you enjoy it, get into it, and then there’s a lot of the business of the game where again, you just don’t know. We talked about the statistical side and that stuff’s not really explained to you, well, same thing with your playing career.

I had this conversation with one of the staff members at Turner. I’m talking to Jimmy Rollins, and I said, ‘The Padres just DFA’d Nelson Cruz.’ One of the staff members went, “What does that mean?” And again, not saying that the staff member is supposed to know that, but I think most people don’t know what that means. And what that means for you and your career, or what arbitration means, or what exactly free agency means or what options mean.

You see a player and get mad about why he got sent down. Why did my favorite player get sent down? We have these emotional responses, but we don’t understand the reasoning behind it. That’s where understanding what the union is for and what has been collectively bargained is important.

I have some former teammates that are now in real estate, and they’re in Chicago. We have two teams here, so a lot of players have either signed here, were traded here, or started a new career here, and they’re looking for a place. I’ll try to connect them, and this is someone who played pro ball and is constantly asking me, “What happens if a player gets sent down? What happens if a player gets traded but they’re in a lease?”

That language is in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. It’s amazing how few people know what that stuff means. I took pride in gathering the information and passing that along.

To be acknowledged with the Marvin Miller Man of the Year Award is just a sign of what the players and the game thought of me from that standpoint. I appreciate them because they’re the ones voting for it. I always tried to do my best to improve the scenarios for the players that were there and provide as much information as I could.

MMO: Talk to me about your foundation. When did you initially start it, and what is the mission?

Granderson: In 2007, I’m in Detroit, and I got approached about starting a foundation. I heard about foundations, but again, it’s one of those things that I didn’t know what all went into it. They told me to find something I like and go for it. I said, ‘Education, that’s important.’ I remember people asking, why education? And I said, ‘That’s important to me.’

This is when the Wounded Warrior Project was going on, a lot of the military-focused initiatives were front and center. I didn’t have a passion for that like I do education. So I went for it.

The name Grand Kids plays off my last name and kids being in school. The education side of it was started, and obviously, using baseball as a vehicle because that’s what I was involved in that I could hopefully use as a character. Like, here’s a baseball player telling me that school is fun and important. Let me listen to that player tell me that stuff.

At the time in Detroit, the high school graduation rate was at fifty percent. That stood out to me, and I wanted to do something around that. We started with education and baseball, trying to get kids active. I was able to join Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign to help fight childhood obesity. We got kids moving around and started all these different initiatives.

Fast forward to where we are now; we have food and insecure issues that we tackle here in my hometown of Chicago. I’ve done that in a bunch of different places with the food bank from New York and for one of the hurricanes in Houston. We were able to help with No Kid Hungry, which has national reach.

The good thing about playing for seven different teams is I got a chance to be in all of these different areas, including Canada. I realized that even though I might not be there full-time, I could still do something and not physically have to be there. That’s kind of how Grand Kids has evolved.

It’s amazing to say that it’s been going on for 15+ years. Who knows what the future is going to look like? As long as we continue to help out in some form or fashion and give kids an opportunity, that’s what I’m all about.

MMO: The Players Alliance was formed in the wake of the horrific killing of George Floyd in 2020, and is aimed to help build Black participation in baseball. Can you talk about your role in the Players Alliance, and some of the work the nonprofit does to help spur participation?

Granderson: I became the board chair and timing and I guess my position in the game aligned pretty well from that. I just retired, so I was still very much connected to the active players. C.C. Sabathia just retired, he’s our vice president. And then Edwin Jackson is our founding board chair. We had a good connection to the current players and the up-and-coming players. We were also connected to some of the older veteran players, players that had taken us under their wing, like Dmitri Young, Ken Griffey Jr., Ellis Burks, to name a few.

It was a good bridge because it was a conversation that had already started 18 years ago, 30 years ago, but now we were able to bring it together because there was nothing going on at that time. Baseball wasn’t happening. Covid was happening, and the George Floyd situation happened. Most people were just at home and able to be connected to this new and exciting thing that not many people knew about via Zoom.

For example, in 2008, I think it was, there were about 40 of us that all met in New York at the time. Frank Robinson was there, Tony Clark, C.C., Dontrelle Willis, Dmitri Young, a bunch of players. We had talked about very similar things to what the Players Alliance had become. I know players and generations before with Dave Winfield and all those players back then talked about it too, but life was happening. Let’s get together next year. Let’s get together this time next year. I can’t. I’m busy. I thought I had this. I’m injured. I’m free.

The timing of 2020, there was nowhere to go. We wanted to do more than just, if you remember at that time, everything was about, let’s take a stance on social media and post an orange square, a black square. I was like, This isn’t enough. We’ve got to do a little more than that. We’ve been talking about this, let’s see what we can do.

We’ve been trying to identify what have been some of the causes of why Black participation has gone down so much at the pro level, the college level and in the front office. We’re starting to realize that poverty has been one of the biggest barriers, or the lack of ability to afford certain things in this space. It’s not just the Black issue. It started and was founded by Black players, but this has affected so many different players.

When you look at the number of kids that play baseball up until the age of 12, the numbers are high here in the U.S. The most recent stat I saw was anywhere between two and three million kids play. But as soon as you jump into 13 and 14, you lose about one-to-two million kids. As of 2021, this was by “Sports and Fitness Industry Associations,” the baseball participation was at 3.67 million players ages six to twelve. Between the ages of 13 and 17, that number drops to 1.9 million.

You start looking and ask, why is there such a big drop? First, people look at the field finally gets bigger, and the failure rate starts to go up a bit. Okay, that’s part of it. But at the same time, this is where travel ball becomes such a big thing. I’ve seen travel ball as young as eight years old, which doesn’t make any sense to me. At the same time, when it can start to make sense is when you get to 13U, or 14U, or 15U or 16U, I think there is space for it there. But the risk of cost associated with it, now you’ve alienated a lot of kids, especially kids that just want to play.

There is a family that I’ve grown up with where they communicate with me about their sons playing. They said, “We’re at a point now where we’re thinking about getting a motor home because all these hotels we constantly have to go to. It might be more affordable for us to go ahead and have this motor home. At least we don’t have to pay for all these different hotel rooms.’

Times have changed where you don’t just send your kids out, it’s a whole family gathering. So this is multiple rooms and multiple weekends. We’re trying to address those barriers with the Players Alliance by making accessibility affordable, especially if kids are being carded, scouted or recruited. And the only thing that’s keeping them from going is cost. Let’s try to find some workaround to do that. Once you start to get more of these players into that wheelhouse of playing more, now there’s more exposure, more recruitment. There’s more possibility to go on to the next level, whatever that happens to be.

The same thing moving into the education space, looking at opportunities to define whether it’s internships, entry-level jobs. It’s different spaces like that to provide opportunities, not handouts, just more opportunities because there is more demand.

I think that gets mixed up when people say there’s no interest. I think there’s definitely interest, but at the same time, you have to make a decision: can I afford this? If the answer is no, then I have to shift what it is I want to do, not because I’m not interested. I just can’t afford it.

MMO: When you look back on your career, what are you most proud of?

Granderson: The thing I’m most proud of is that I had fun out there, and it’s amazing that I got a chance to play as long as I did.

I never imagined that when I got drafted in 2002, I honestly thought and told people this: that I would play for two-to-three years in the minor leagues and get released. Then I would put my college degree to work in a number of different things, whether it be sports marketing because I was a marketing and management major, or follow what my parents and sister did and teach. I wanted to teach at the college level; I didn’t want to teach at the high school or grade school level.

What’s crazy is I played in 2002, played well, make the All-Star team. I played well in 2003, made the All-Star team. This is my second year of pro ball and I’m just hating life. I didn’t like where I was at in Lakeland, Florida, and the Florida State League.

I always tell people that the Major Leagues are the hardest, but the Florida State League is the second hardest. It’s hot, the stadiums are so big, there are no fans because who wants to sit out in a game where it’s 95 degrees plus humidity. There are a couple of teams that draw, but Lakeland didn’t at that time. I think we were averaging two-to-three hundred fans a game at a stadium that holds 7,000!

All of my friends are in Chicago and going and doing all these things that sounded exciting. I was ready to be done. I got to the end of that season, I came back, and I was able to finish and graduate with my college class, and then the next year I got called to the big leagues. It’s just crazy to think about in two or three years I’d be done, and I almost quit at the two-year mark, and then by the three-year mark I had made my Major League debut. I thought, Since I’m here, let’s see what happens.

It’s really cool to be a part of this baseball fraternity. To have done it and get a chance to talk to different people about it and try to help anywhere I can on the field or off it is great.

Follow Curtis Granderson on Twitter, @cgrand3

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