Bengal Columnist: Granderson’s Good Nature Hurt His Game

Via Lynn Henning of the Detroit News

[Curtis] Granderson fell from grace.

That’s the only way to say it.

He hit .249 this past season. He batted .183 against left-handers and became so overmatched by them that manager Jim Leyland sometimes sat him, or more often dropped him deep into his batting order.

You could feel the tension building inside Comerica Park’s clubhouse. Granderson, even as he hit 30 home runs, came to embody the Tigers’ sputtering, sprint-and-slip offense. The supposed ignition switch often became a drag on a batting order that seemed to deflate or inflate based on what Granderson was doing.

If it were just a matter of having an off season, the Tigers might have lived with it. But it goes deeper than that. Granderson has been spread too thin in Detroit. In that respect, his charm is also his curse.

He’s involved in everything. He has a difficult time saying no. He loves community work. He’s here for this event, there for that gathering, and almost always available for a kid who needs him at a hospital.

Wonderful, and praiseworthy. And also of likely consequence to his fundamental assignment: playing baseball.

One must be careful about making criticisms here. But this feeling has been deep for a very long time, mostly because Granderson, for all his decency, on too many days appeared to be putting in more of a work shift than concentrating adequately on a game that must be played with consummate passion and attention.

I’ve had discussions with Granderson on this very subject and his testimony has been compelling. He acknowledged last summer that he probably was over-scheduled during past seasons. But not in 2009. In fact, he had trimmed his schedule — a lot, to hear him detail.

That’s no doubt true.

But being Granderson is different from being another baseball player. He’s literally an ambassador to Major League Baseball, complete with overseas tours of duty and the whole package.

See, that’s why the Yankees are smart to get all this stuff done in just one week. And, yes, I’m just kidding here…

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