- When he broke the sign in Dodger Stadium during batting practice,
I went in. This is a playoff game, mind you.
- Mm-hmm.
- I went in, I said, "Hey, I need some Dodger letterhead."
I had it typed up, "Hey, on behalf of the Los Angeles Dodgers,
we are fining you $10,000 for breaking the sign."
Signed so and so.
And I put it on his chair, and he looked at it, he goes,
"What should I do?" Now, this is 30 minutes before the first pitch.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- "You gotta pay it."
- [Laughing]
♪♪♪
- [Master Tesfatsion] So who we got in the pool hall today?
- [Curtis Granderson] What's going on man?
- Curtis Granderson, what's good with you baby?
- Man, I'm all good. Appreciate you having me here.
- Hey man, it’s good chopping up with you. Let’s see how you break though.
- All right, let's see. - Let’s see how nice you are.
- Let's see.
All right.
- So where did you start off? High A or like-
- I started off in Short-Season A in Oneonta, New York.
Small town. I remember my scout that drafted me, Jerome Cochran said,
"Man you gonna love it. It's beautiful up there. It's a ton of trees and everything."
It was a lot of trees but it wasn’t nothing else up there. Oh, man.
- I mean we see it a lot in terms of the Minor Leagues.
You've got people who are coming from the Dominican. Venezuela.
And they're also coming through the same ranks as you talk about.
How did you assimilate with all these different people from all these different cultures
that you probably never been open or experienced to?
- You know, growing up in Chicago, even though I had Sammy Sosa playing for the Cubs
or Ozzie Guillén playing for the White Sox,
this is a little- hey, don't get mad at me Sammy. Don't get mad at me Ozzie.
I thought they were Black, right?
They look like me, they were playing baseball.
I thought Sammy Sosa was Black. I had never seen no one with the last name Sosa before.
I just thought it was a different last name.
When I joined my team the first time, I remember getting on the bus
and I said man, this is the most Black players I ever played with.
Now remember again, I'm coming from thinking Ozzie is Black, thinking Sammy is Black.
So I see everyone that looked like me and I go, “What's going on?
How you doing? You know. Hello, hello. How's everybody doing? What's going on?”
And no one's saying anything.
So now I get in the back of the bus, the bus starts going, the music starts playing.
Now I start hearing the Latin music. I go, “Oh. Latin, Dominican, Venezuelan.”
And I realize that although we look very similar, we're still slightly different.
And then that started that process of understanding
OK, there's a whole different world out there besides Chicago where I grew up
and I wanted to learn it. I wanted to take it in.
And I was excited to get a chance to be on that team to start my career.
[Balls hitting, ball dropping into pocket]
- There we go.
- So I've been in clubhouses before. I've covered baseball teams.
And it's always been interesting to me being in a clubhouse,
knowing that there's probably going to be two leaders in a clubhouse.
One of them, who's a leader for the Latin players.
- Mm-hmm.
- And the other one who's like the English speaking leader.
- Yup.
- And most of the time, let's be honest, it's probably a white dude.
- Mm-hmm.
- As a Black man, how did you fit in this dynamic
when you're trying to figure out where you fit in?
- As a Black man in a baseball team, we were the minority.
So I think that helped us kind of be right in the middle of both sides.
And I think both of them knew, "OK, cool."
We're here for you if you need us. We’re here for you if you need us.
You need us to translate and, and bring it over here to make you feel a little more comfortable?
We can do that.
"How come they playing the music so loud?" "We like it loud too.
OK, you want me to tell them turn it down? I'll tell them to turn it down a little bit."
"OK, why they always listening to country and cowboy boots?"
- Man, they love some country music, bro.
- "Man, that's what they like too," you know?
And then here we go, I got Yoenis Céspedes. Man.
He probably the country-est Latin Cuban dude.
- [Laughing]
He rode to the stadium on a horse.
On a horse! Not a car. Not a bike. On a horse.
This dude rode a horse. And so, man buckles so big. And man.
- But still got them neon yellow sleeves on, like…
- So imagine that. Neon yellow sleeve,
hit home runs, and ride a horse at the same- man.
So, if this dude wasn't fitting in with everybody, who else could?
- [Laughing]
- My shot here? Let’s see. Where we at? Where we at?
- I think you got it.
- Oh man, it’s gonna be a tight one.
- There you go. There you go. That’s going in.
- Get legs.
- Oh!
- There we go. There we go.
- You talked a lot about clubhouse camaraderie and clubhouse chemistry.
How was that one, the 2015 Mets team?
- So that team, I think had no standout player.
Céspedes was probably the biggest one,
but he still was getting his wings underneath him, right?
David Wright was coming off of injury. Michael Cuddyer had just come to us,
but he was for the Twins and a lot of people didn't watch the Twins that much.
We start rolling.
Daniel Murphy has probably the best playoffs I've ever seen.
That's not the guy you were trying to not let beat you, right?
- Was anyone accounting for that, or no?
- I don't think anyone saw that coming.
I mean, we go into Wrigley Field and he's hitting the balls left and right, all over the place,
and then in Dodger Stadium, that first round,
Duda's breaking signs in batting practice.
- [Laughing]
And the thing about Duda is he's just so quiet and so calm and reserved.
But again, we're locker mates. And we both bat left-handed.
So we had so many things in common, so I always messed with him.
And here comes the "We Follow Lucas Duda" Instagram page.
- Tell me about that, yeah. How'd that come together?
- He was starting to get hot that year. I think he hit 30 home runs.
And I was like, "Duda, you got to be on social media."
"Nah, nah, nah. I don't like social media. I don't want any of that."
And we took a picture of him and created the page.
That was it. We didn't expect anything else.
And that page got to 100,000 followers like this.
So now it became our whole team was all trying to stalk him
and just catch him in different moments.
When he broke the sign in Dodger Stadium during batting practice,
I went in. This is a playoff game, mind you.
This is just where my mind is. I want to keep everybody loose.
I went in, I said, "Hey, I need some Dodger letterhead on a piece of paper."
So I got Dodger letterhead, I had it typed up,
"Hey, on behalf of the Los Angeles Dodgers,
we are fining you $10,000 for breaking the sign."
Signed so and so. And I put it on his chair,
and he looked at it, he goes, "What should I do?"
Now, this is 30 minutes before the first pitch.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- "What do you think I should do with this?"
“You've got to pay it.”
- [Laughing] - You've got to pay- Nah.
And he went out there and had a great series. Duda did a great series.
We beat the Dodgers in Dodger Stadium.
So little things like that just to keep everybody loose.
The We Follow Lucas Duda Instagram account, all that stuff, I think, just helped play into it all.
- And we kept going. And then once we got to the World Series,
we just came up a little bit short there.
That first game, in Kansas City, we were up.
Alex Gordon hits a home run to put it into extras. I was like, "Oh."
Not losing that game, but going to New York down 0-2,
versus going to New York 1 to 1- because I think we were going to lose the second game.
They, they, they played really well.
That puts us in a different situation.
Because everyone says Game 3 is the turning point and we won Game 3.
Then it was just playing catch-up at that point in time and we ran out of juice.
- Yeah.
- You know? The Citi Field, the blue and orange, the Seven Line,
the homers out of the ballpark. We just came up a little short.
But I wouldn't trade anything from that season.
It was great because no one expected it, and that's what you want to be.
Expect the unexpected.
- For sure. I think it’s your shot, right?
- We got insurance on the place, right?
We good? - Oh, I- I think so.
- OK, all right, good. Then we might- I may try it.
You know what then, let me try it then.
- Go ahead, yeah. Let’s see what you can do. - Let's see.
- Oh! - There we go. Yeah, you know?
- Aye. - Something slight.
♪♪♪
- Now Curtis, your real childhood passion was basketball?
- Man, I wanted to hoop for as long as I could but you can see the height just didn’t-
- [Laughing]
- It slowed down for a little bit.
- Well let’s see how nice you are on the Pop-A-Shot. Is that cool?
- Let’s do it.
- You got 60 seconds. Go and hit the button.
[Digital beeps from game sounding] - Come on, bring them balls out.
- I’m gonna ask you questions the whole time. It’s gonna be fast. All right, you ready?
- All right. Let’s go.
- Who are you listening to before a game?
- Outkast.
- Mets or Yankees?
- Mets.
- Hardest pitcher to hit off of?
- Brad Hand.
- Funniest opponent you’ve played?
- Uh, Sean Casey.
- A-Rod or Jeter?
- Jeter.
- Favorite wrestler?
- Junkyard Dog.
- Best slugger in baseball?
- Miguel Cabrera.
- Queens or the Bronx?
- Uh, Bronx. I get my hair cut there.
- Boogie Down. You got to. They’re gonna cut your hair up.
[Laughing] - Right?
- Dirtiest opponent you’ve faced?
- The Nationals.
- Best MLB mascot?
- Mr. Met.
- One player, former or current, you wish you could’ve played with?
- Jackie Robinson.
- Funniest teammate you’ve had?
- Bartolo Colón.
- Chewing gum or sunflower seeds?
- Gum.
- Worst fans in baseball?
- Uh...
I don’t know. - 3, 2, 1.
Come on you gotta say something. You gotta say something!
- Uh.
- I know you got somebody you can’t stand.
- Uh, no no. Uh. Philly, man.
I think the fans- they booed Santa Claus from what I heard back in the day.
- Philly fans are terrible. That’s a great one to pick.
- [Laughing]
But they didn’t throw no batteries at me though.
- [Laughing]
Curtis, appreciate you for coming to the pool hall, man.
- Thank you for having me.
- Appreciate y’all for watching.