Talking Points | Catching up with Doug Glanville

by David Gurian-Peck | Tuesday, March 24, 2009 at 1:00 am

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Doug Glanville put together one of the most successful baseball careers of any Ivy League athlete. After co-captaining Penn's 1991 league championship squad, he went on to hit .277 in nine seasons (1996-2004) patrolling center field for the Cubs, Phillies and Rangers. He racked up 1100 big league hits, 11th among Ivy grads, made no errors over his final three-plus seasons and swiped 168 bases during his career.

Now, Glanville - who's on the Engineering schools' Board of Overseers - has an online column for The New York Times. Recently, The Daily Pennsylvanian caught up with the former first-round pick to talk about Scott Boras, cyberball, his forthcoming book and plenty more.

Daily Pennsylvanian: What was your favorite stadium to play in?

Doug Glanville: Wrigley, definitely - I love Wrigley. Another great one was Bank One . that was like the modern version, and Wrigley was like the classic.

DP: You had some video game contest with Curt Schilling. What's that about?

DG: Oh yeah, Schilling, that was fun.

I sent the link [to Everquest] or told Schilling about it, he kind of ignored me. Then two months later, we're in L.A., he tells me, "Man, this is the best game ever."

So he sucked me in to play. And literally we lost a year of our lives. We played for the entire 1999 season.

Long story short, he's like, "Hey let's go into this mountain, fight this aviac" . I was like, "There's no way." But Schilling was like, "Oh go ahead man, you can do it, I'm going to heal you, don't worry about it." So, OK. I start fighting this bird..all of a sudden, I'm fighting, and I see in the textbox that he just typed, "Run!." So I'm like, "Run?!? You're supposed to be healing me." So of course I get killed. and Schilling's character, he started feeling dangerous, so he was at the guards.

A couple of years later, he gets traded to the Diamondbacks, and they have this big hype because Schilling was pitching against the Phillies, his old team. I was the leadoff hitter, so I'm playing against Schilling. First at-bat, hit a home run. Second at-bat, hit a home run.

They interviewed me after the game, and they thought I was out of my mind. They said, "How do you explain that? One of the best pitchers in the game and you hit two home runs against him, and only three other players in history have done that?" And I said, "Well, I was avenging the death of my dear character Bingbong."

DP: What was your reaction when the Phillies won the World Series last year?

DG: It was a moment of pride, of great pride. Because for one, love the organization. Certainly was a big fan growing up. Played for them. Front office is just a class-act.

Then, the other aspect of pride was just guys that I sort of mentored. I watched Jimmy Rollins grow up. I watched Chase Utley. I watched Ryan Howard. I feel like part of those guys,

You need a sponsor, need a mentor. And nothing is greater than watching your mentee - or as they corrected me in the New York Times, your protégée - become such an impact player and be a champion

DP: What got you involved with the New York Times?

DG: The inspiration was the Mitchell Report . I didn't see a lot of commentary about repairing the game or just understanding how these type of problems come about in sports, particularly baseball.

I wrote this long editorial for ESPN.com and it gained a lot of traction. . And when the Congressional hearings went down shortly after the Mitchell Report, I wrote another piece, and the Times picked it up and gave it kind of top billing. And a few weeks later, I went down there and pitched them on the idea of doing something more regularly, and to my surprise, they said, "Hey, online, you can have a whole column. Just write." That was it. As soon as I got that opportunity, one article turned into like 40.

Really, my goal of the column was just to humanize the experience. I thought it was important to have a forum for players just talking, just telling stories about what we go through, and try to strip down the sensationalism and try to strip down the guard

DP: Do you have a favorite Times Op-Ed columnists?

DG: Well, I think Friedman's up there, I really enjoy him. I like Maureen Dowd. She's on another level, and her vocabulary, and she's very creative with it. I guess those are the two that stand out at the Times. I hope one day that I find out they're reading my column so we could do something together.

DP: Where do you see yourself going from here?

DG: I really love writing. I feel very fortunate that I was able to have a career in baseball, which I loved, did something that I had a passion for. And then within a few years after leaving, I found something else that I felt equally passionate about. And then on top of that, I get to write about what I was passionate about before.

As a result of the column, I was able to get a book deal with Time Books. I'm currently working on that, and I'm hoping to have that come out in May 2010. Really my focal point now has been to try to sort of establish almost an ambassadorship to the game.

DP: What's the book about?

DG: It's not really about me, it's about players and life in baseball. And I'm hoping people connect to it because they see how common it is and, in a certain sense, how similar it is to some of the things they go through. So I hope in the book to use the same essay-type concepts, tying in various stories, but use the framework of a season.

DP: What was a day in the life of Doug Glanville at Penn?

DG: Freshman year I lived in King's Court.I didn't really do a lot socially my freshman year. I was a baseball player and an engineer.

I loved systems [engineering]. And I had a great professor, Vukan Vuchic-he's still at Penn and he teaches transportation systems, and I absolutely fell in love with his classes. I'm still very close to him. I ended up, years and years later, going to South Africa with him to help him teach a seminar on urban transit systems.

I played a lot of cyberball. That was a great game in Houston Hall.It was a video game that was like a futuristic football game, and you had to score before the ball exploded. And I loved breakfast. I would get up early on the weekends, and actually, when I was there, they didn't have a weekend meal plan, so you'd have to fend for yourself on the weekend.

Junior year was real complete chaos, because now the draft was coming up. . I had some crazy meetings with Scott Boras and Arn Tellem, who wound up being my agent for many years.

DP: What was Scott Boras like?

DG: Scott Boras was dynamic. He came, flew halfway across the world - LA to Philly - and . gave like a four, five hour presentation in my dorm room. He came up, and very compellingly, he made the argument that I was an Ivy League engineer, and the teams need to compensate me for the lost wages.

He added all these other bells and whistles. Basically, the number he came up with was about three times the value of my draft slot, outside all these other calculations. So I thought it was a great argument, and I thought it was fascinating, but my personality was more geared to sort of an Arn Tellem, who was brilliant and very positive. . He still has that bulldog side to him, he can get it done. But he has a lot of respect and he doesn't really burn any bridges.

Tellem came to Philly, and the thing that was so cool about him is he took me to Lee's Hoagie House. That's where he took me. He didn't take me to some fancy Italian spot.

DP: What was your favorite establishment on or near campus?

DG: There used to be a place I used to go have breakfast on Sunday with my roommates, called Kelly and Cohen. It's definitely not there anymore. But it was on 38th - there's a little plaza there. It's like where that new Wharton is.

I think there were like two Roy Rogers a block away, I'd go there once and a while. .I ate a lot at 1920 commons, because I lived in Superblock for three of the years. I braved that wind tunnel.

DP: That hasn't changed

DG: Yeah, nothing's changed. Knock you right over.

DP: Were you in a frat?

DG: No, I didn't pledge. I was pretty low key. I think I did more once I got drafted and I came back to Penn. Then it was like, "OK, I got a job," so I kind of was more comfortable. But I wasn't big on going out and going crazy and stuff. I wasn't a drinker or anything. I was just pretty chill.

DP: Other schools wanted to make you a pitcher. Penn was open to you playing the outfield. Do you ever wonder what Doug Glanville the pitcher might have looked like?

DG: Pitching just kills you-your back, your arm, your elbow, your shoulders. You just hurt. I don't know how long I would've lasted. Arm problems, it's a given that you're going to have arm problems. I had a pretty nasty curve ball in high school, and I know that would've probably blown out my elbow at some point. So that was all in the forefront in my mind.

And I really liked hitting. I liked to be involved in the game everyday. It wasn't something I really regretted. I just didn't think my arm was going to make it. But it was cool.

DP: Jimmy Piersall famously said that coming from an Ivy League school, you were "never used to the discipline it takes to play baseball." How would you assess that transition from college to the pros?

DG: When we first met, we were sort of like oil and water. We just had such different experiences and he didn't understand where I was coming from. I think it was a challenge because as an Ivy Leaguer, having such a strong focus on academics, it was seen as a weakness. You're not focused, you don't want it bad enough. So I got a lot of heat about desire and being nonchalant, and reading on the back of the bus and not interacting with teammates as much.

It was intense. I was an enigma. I think I was very much an enigma for quite some time. I was cerebral, I was trying to ask questions-some people took it as challenging authority. But then with the Ivy League resume, also this cloud followed me like I thought I knew everything. So I always thought it was interesting that I could ask too many questions and think I knew all the answers at the same time.

I think in the end, it became a tremendous asset, especially at the Major League level, because then it became a colorful part of who I was.

DP: What's the No. 1 highlight from your baseball career?

DG: Highlights are, in no particular order: Getting called up fro the first time. Wrigley Field. Just unbelievable. That was just a tremendous experience to see my name in the lineup, and then go outside and be at Wrigley and then Ryan Sandberg-it was just phenomenal. . My roommate in college. [had] promised me that if I ever made the Major Leagues, he would be at my first game. So years later, in 1996, I get called up - I called him at like 2 in the morning saying that I got called up, and he flew in from DC to be in at the game.

Another one was getting my 200th hit of the season as a Philly, on a home run, and it was against the Cubs -to go out there and get 200 hits in a season, and get it against the team that traded you, was extremely sweet.

Making the playoffs in '03, and then getting that game-winning hit in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, was certainly well up there. That was just a cool, cool day.

DP: What about your most embarrassing moments?

DG: Cape Cod [League] was a good one. A ball was hit in the gap. I was playing centerfield, and it was a chain-link fence. So the ball was sitting at the bottom of the fence, and I try to do one of those cool slides that the catchers do . and I went right through the fence. My leg got caught in the chain link. I got the ball and I couldn't get up. I couldn't move. So I had to throw it to the right fielder, and he threw it in, and I still couldn't get myself out. They had to stop the game . I was stuck in the fence for I don't know how long, just laying in the grass, so that was pretty bad.

There was one moment that was pretty crazy. . We were playing the Red Sox. and I was feeling really good about myself. I'd stolen a lot of bases; I hardly ever got caught. I had this big ol' lead. So [Brett] Saberhagen stepped off the rubber, and I just started playing chicken with him. I didn't move. I just stood there like, "OK." And I guess he had this move where he acted like he was getting back on the rubber, and he fired to first. He picked me off by like a mile.. Later in that game, he stepped off, and before he even thought of throwing over, I had dove back into the base. He hadn't thrown the ball. I was just like, "Hey, I am not getting picked off again."

We had Kangaroo Court, a court of your peers. ..One time, we were playing in Boston, and the hot water didn't work. So there were cold showers - most people took 'em. But Mark Lewis decides to step in the whirlpool and take a shower in the rehab whirlpool, which was the nastiest thing anybody had seen. So I wrote him up for sheer nastiness. And he won in court because they said it "showed ingenuity." So I ended up getting voted down. I had to pay his fine and then pay double it. I thought that was pretty ridiculous; to this day I thought I was totally shafted.

And then the city of Philly, just the pain they've been through. They're known to be so hard-nosed. And they just needed the win. They needed to know that they have a winning town.

DP: How should baseball view those players who have been linked to steroids? Should Barrry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez be in the Hall of Fame?

DG: I think the best thing that can be gained from this is taking the game to the next level, by not only cleaning it up, but using this as a tool to educate young people about it. That's a great byproduct from this challenging time in the game.

It's not that I'm not frustrated as a player who played clean, knowing that there were guys who were cutting corners. Selfishly, yes, that's something that's frustrating, and it's frustrating for a lot of other players who played clean.

[But] the other side of the coin is look what they've given up in their lives. Alex is in shambles. . The one thing he was sort of giving his soul for, he's lost his credibility in because it's tainted.

If you cut those corners, you do yourself a disservice, because basically your coping skills are compromised. And now you don't really know who you are without this. . I wouldn't want that. I don't think $15 million is worth that.

The crucified players, or one player, or 105, or whatever it is, I think that doesn't really solve the problem. It makes you feel good for a minute, by hanging people from wherever, the rafters, but it's not the long-term solution.

So as for the Hall of Fame, I don't have a vote, but I certainly feel like it's a red mark on their paper, for sure, about making that kind of choice.

In the A-Rod article, I talked a lot about the privacy issue. You need a balance. For me, I would want to stop crime in my neighborhood, but I wouldn't want a police officer every six feet.

I think it may get more intrusive - and I think that may come with the territory - but I think we have to be careful that we don't start throwing away civil liberties, civil rights, confidentiality, anonymity, all the things that got thrown in the toilet when they outed Rodriguez.

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