John Boruk: [00:00:00] Welcome into Raising a Champion. I'm your host, John Boruk. With me toda, the 2010 Ivy League baseball player of the year. He was a three-year Letterman at the University of Pennsylvania and recently inducted into the Penn Baseball Hall of Fame. He currently serves as the head baseball coach at Episcopal Academy, which he has served over the past four years.

Tom Grandieri. Thanks. Welcome to the show for Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting when I read your profile and I looked at your family history. You had a brother who played basketball at Penn, another brother who played basketball at Gettysburg College. A third brother who played basketball at Widener.

What did you just, you didn't like dribbling a basketball, You didn't like what? Throwing it into a hoop. But somehow you decided you were gonna go on a completely different course.

Tom Grandieri: I didn't dribble it well enough, and I didn't shoot it well enough clearly, but yeah, it was very interesting growing up my most of my childhood.

Was spent in the Catholic League gyms watching my brother my oldest brother Fran, my second oldest brother Chris play. And then Brian was fast tracked [00:01:00] to follow in the O'Hara footsteps. And then he was probably the first brother that was recruited, which was a newer concept and that takes us back to 2004 when he graduated high school, so 1999, which seems like not too long ago. 

And then Malvern came into play and the funny story is my dad basically said, you have to take Brian's younger brother, Tommy or you're not gonna get Brian. And they're like, All right, we'll take him.

We know really nothing about him. Showed up the first day at Malvern. A year after my brother Brian was there. I met the baseball coach and he was like, You play baseball? I'm like, Yeah, I play baseball. He was like, Do you play baseball? I'm like, Not well enough . And that's how it all happened, and yeah, baseball's been with me ever since.

John Boruk: How was that with your parents and what did they stress to yiu. When you got a house full of full four boys I'm sure their time was spent and shuttling and making sure that all the boys had equal playing time. Nobody was slighted. And what did they stress to you as parents?

Tom Grandieri: Yeah, sure. And in fact we had six total. So there's five boys. The youngest one is a boy Daniel who played club baseball at St. Joe's. And then [00:02:00] my sister who's directly below me. She had microfracture surgery on her knee in high school. So that kind of derailed her athletic career. But yeah, it was just that there were six of us.

Time had to be shared. My mom was a homemaker. My dad was a restaurant sales equipment guy. So he, the one thing I will say, which was consistent with all six of us, he was at every. Single game. So we didn't talk a lot about sports after the fact. Just play hard, listen to the coach, go about your business.

But the one thing that was constant was my dad was always there. He was always there. He never missed a game. His schedule worked around our schedule and you could see that. You could feel it. And, as I was the fourth brother, it was just how things operated and it worked out nicely.

He the loudest voice in the stands? No. You didn't hear much from my No, he didn't. No, he, now he's, he pretty now he would do work calls. Actually. You'd see him walk around on his phone. This was before AirPods and different things like that. So you'd see him on his phone, but now he was pretty quiet.

My mom actually actively, there's funny little league stories. She'd actively root for the other teams to get hits off us cuz we were pretty decent [00:03:00] athletes at a young age, so she quote, felt bad for other kids who met, have struggled a little bit more. So there's all these glory stories and my mom actually like cheering other people to get hits off her kids and stuff like that. Just funny stuff that you laugh about. 

John Boruk: Now, the challenge of being a student athlete is one thing, and I know that, being at Texas Tech for four years, but to do it at the University of Pennsylvania because, You have to be a student, number one.

Sure. It's not where, Hey, we have a tutor set up for you and this, and hey, just make sure the grades are good because we need you out here on the you're gonna be a student and if you happen to play sports, that's great. Sure. The, tell me about the challenge that came with juggling those two things and really excelling at both because not only were an excellent baseball player, but you were also I, I believe an academic all Americans.

Tom Grandieri:. Sure. People might not believe that, but Yes. That's only your old teachers who don't believe in, that's exactly right. Yeah, it was I did have help from my brother Brian, who was also a basketball player at Penn. So he gave me some guidelines [00:04:00] on how to stack your schedules a little bit.

So we took a lot of classes during the fall, and then we would lighten the load during the spring. So the big thing. We always went to class. We're not probably natural intellect, but we were in the classroom, we got to know the teachers, they saw our faces, they did things like that. But yeah, it's not for the faint of heart.

It's a full schedule pretty much all year. I would say that's probably the different expectation with a college sport than a high school sport is your expectations of being a student athlete last pretty much the entirety of your year. So there's not a lot of downtime. There's not a lot of time. In trouble, which is good for me.

It kept me on the straight narrow, but it also allowed me to just focus on the things I needed to, because at the end of the day, I do like academics, I do like learning, but I loved the sport of baseball, so I didn't want to, sacrifice the academic side to lose the baseball side.

And as a result, they both ended up working out pretty nicely in the classroom and on the baseball. 

John Boruk: But you, yeah, you had to [00:05:00] develop structure at some point in your life. I don't know, did that come, during the middle school years, high school years? Because look when you're taking on a course load and then you're playing baseball, a student athlete and maybe there's a buddy who wants you to go down.

Sure. And get a drink or whatever. Have a good time with the guys. You gotta make sacrifices. Sure. So where did that structure come into place?   

Tom Grandieri: Yeah, I would say it probably started in grade school to a degree. And I think it also, Obviously I was fortunate to be a younger brother, so I saw the right way to do it sometimes with my brothers, the wrong way to do it, and then eventually how they got onto their own path.

And then in high school at Malvin Prep, you had a set schedule, but if you didn't, live up to the expectations, you lost, extracurricular activities. To me it's a little bit of Catholic guilt to a degree. It's, if you can't do this, you can't do the thing you really want to do.

But I think it did start early and then I think, having a modicum of success kind of all the way through, it's like, why would you mess with that model? Just keep going with the thing that kind of works. But it does take serious sacrifice and, there's a lot of guys [00:06:00] that didn't make it through their four-year baseball career pen because they just couldn't figure out how to do it.

Or they prioritized spring break or missing out on spring break to, over baseball, or they just wanted to go out all the time. Their grades suffered and then their grades suffered. So then they had to go to after school, after class activities, which cut into baseball practice time.

To your point earlier, Penn, they don't really look at you as an athlete. Like they look at you as a student. So yeah it's a real thing and I was fortunate to get through and I enjoyed it. I will say you come to enjoy those things to a degree and that was helpful as well   

John Boruk: Yeah. I'm sure you fell into a routine when you're a freshman. Sure. You're wide eyed, you don't know what to expect. And then once you get into that routine, you know what to expect. You come your second, third and fourth year. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. How much did the brothers push you?

There's obviously, you see it all the time in the families where you have  brothers just that competitive aspect of it, if one is succeeding at college doing this, you don't want to be the one that's gonna let your parents down. 

Tom Grandieri: Sure. Yeah. It, oh, [00:07:00] it was definitely helpful.

And you can't really script that because, it was my parents who had the six kids. I was the fourth of the brothers. But you kind. If you're paying attention you can gleam things from everybody. My oldest brother, he wasn't in the weight room, but he was just tough.

So he got by on pure toughness and grit, if you will. So you saw that and you're like, All right, that works a little bit. And then my second oldest brother is more calm, cool, collected, and he got, he got through on that. And then I think Brian, On the basketball court probably took both of those and then saw hey, if you get your body right and you get in shape, that's gonna help too.

And then by the time I was around, I paired up with a couple buddies in high school who were always in the weight room, who were always hitting after practice. And I was like, You know what, I'm gonna give it a go. And then it worked out nicely and, but I think it's, you just see it. You experience it and you take the good stuff and the bad stuff as well, and you try to find your own path.

John Boruk: So here you are and you're at Penn. You're putting together, you're gonna have an impressive diploma at what. Point did [00:08:00] you decide, You know what, I'm gonna take my four years at Penn and I'm gonna be a head baseball coach. I'm sure that wasn't the plan No. When you went in but here you are. Sure. You're, whatever your love of baseball trumped, whatever it was that you were studying at an Ivy League school. Sure. 

Tom Grandieri: So I do have a, I do have a regular day job and. Might contest that a little bit cuz I spent just as much probably time on the baseball aspect as I do my my regular career.

But yeah, it's a funny story. I think your love for something at some point may dissipate or may stop I, but I think if you love some enough, you try to find any way to stay involved. To make a long story short my, to fill my gap of not playing baseball, I joined a semi competitive slow pitch softball league, which for the first year, I think I was numb to the idea.

And it was you go out, you go have some beers, answer, have some wings. 10 new guys that you never met before. Everything was great and then. The second year we went to some tournament in the middle of Pennsylvania and things got a [00:09:00] little bit chippy. And I was like, this is just slow pitch softball. Like you can't even throw the, Yeah, everybody has to throw the ball high in the air.

There's no fast balls. So then I subsequently quit after that. And then my actual high school baseball coach and I had fell in and out. And he was a big mentor for me. We reconnected. And what we have now is what I call my. Four, I think it was a, yeah, my famous four hour lunch. So we met for lunch.

We, we caught up and he said, Hey, I've always thought this about you. I'm looking for an assistant coach. He was at Episcopal Academy at the time. Hey, give this a chance. At the time I didn't have any children. My wife was like, Sure if slow pitch softball sounds terrible. You get home.

Late at night, you're playing slow pitch softball. This seems a little bit more healthier. You're coaching high school kids, you're doing the thing you love. And then honestly, from there the rest is, as they say is history right now. And I'm gonna try to keep it going for as long as my wife will let me. 

John Boruk: we'll let you exactly until you need to start toting your kids. It's exactly. So the sporting events that, that day will come. As a head coach you're now you've completed four years, as we talked about at the [00:10:00] top of the show, four years going into year five. What have you learned about yourself as a manager from the time that you first started year one to where you are now, how you learned about yourself, how you've changed, how you structure practices and stuff. 

Tom Grandieri: Sure. A lot. And if you had some of the kids, So I finished, yeah, four years. So I basically took one class. This'll be the first time I took a class from their freshman year through their senior year. And I'd say if you poll all of 'em, they'd probably say that, or hopefully say that I did grow as a coach and just a person.

Cuz at the end of the day, I think now more than ever, Kids need that. They need to know that you care about 'em. And I think if you genuinely do it, it shines through. But I will say the first few years, I guess couple years, two years, I would say I, I ruled a little bit more. Firmly, And when I say rules the wrong word, but I probably coached a little bit more firmly, which is traditionally what I was coached like.

And I think, I'm not gonna totally say it was a bad idea. I think it, it laid a decent foundation that, I'm here to not necessarily win, but we're [00:11:00] gonna, we're gonna do it right. I think this is, when I've had successful or been a part of successful things, this is how things typically operated.

But I think what I did is I misread the room a little bit. And I think it was just a lot too much too soon. And then subsequently, I think the past two years. And I think it's easy to say for me cuz we've had more success. But I really do think it was just that transition.

Most of the kids a lot more, leeway or more of a sense of, they, it was their program. If they wanted to get it to the next level, they needed to take on more. And what ultimately happened was there was a lot more coaching inside the players and I was actually able to take a step back, which was great on all fronts.

It was great for home life, it was great for play on the field. It was great for the kids, it was great for relationships. So I think I'll hopefully be able to figure. In years to come, you know when to maybe put it down a little bit or when just let them run and see how they figure it out. So I think that's what happened this year. 

John Boruk: It's interesting what you said there at the beginning though, is that you thought that maybe [00:12:00] the way that you coached them, you were a little bit too firm. Definitely. And we almost learned that generation. I'm in my early fifties, you're in your mid-30s, and even in a 10 year period, it seems every year how we’re as coaches a little bit different.

I was, look they didn't care about players. Like they, they ask you too now, but you learn. For kids who are coming up and now the kids in the 10 to 15 they've gotta be, I don't know if the right word is coddled, but you got, you have to handle 'em a certain way than even when you came through.

Tom Grandieri: Definitely. Yeah. It's the coddled. Yeah. That's probably the, the buzzword and it has a negative connotation. I don't think it's negative. I coddle my own kids. I'm sure you coddle your own kids. It's not necessarily a bad thing. I think the. The thing is, it is different.

But I think if you just show them how much you care or kind of present to them, Hey, this is why I feel this way, or this is why I feel strongly this way. They tend to understand a little more. I think when I was the, when I played in high school and college, like there was no reason for a coach to [00:13:00] tell me, this is why we're doing anything, so when I first started, I was like, I don't need to tell anybody any reason why I'm doing a drill or why. I'm doing it. Do it. 

John Boruk: Yeah. Don't question it. 

Tom Grandieri: Correct. Like, why are we bunting, Why would you ask a coach? Why we bunting the coach wanted to bunt. But now I think if you just say, Hey, this was my thought process.

And then on top of it, I think the one thing I've done more is I've admitted, and I didn't really hide from it before. I just was not used to it or never came from, but I admit a lot of my faults. And as a result, I think it just makes everybody feel more comfortable because if I can admit, Their expectation.

I never expected 'em to be perfect, but they might have thought Hey, coaches never said he is done anything wrong. So I admit mistakes on a daily basis. Obviously a weekly basis, a game to game basis. And I say, Hey, this was the rationale. This was with the thing that was going through my head.

Maybe it'll work this time if it doesn't work this time, but it, another situation arises in two weeks and this, plays called again, This is why we're doing it. So if anything, It I look at now as a preparation thing, but I will say in the first two years, I don't think [00:14:00] I, I don't think I said sorry about a lot of things, but I think over the past two years, I think I've said sorry more, and not even necessarily sorry, but Hey, I might have boxed this one up and this was my thought process, but if it doesn't work, we're gonna change things. We're gonna try to adapt. 

John Boruk: Yeah. When you and I were high school athletes I didn't even have a cell phone back in the day. . You may have just started to have a, maybe you had a flip phone.

Tom Grandieri: My junior year, I had a phone flip.

Got my first cell phone and I could play snake on it. Snake, Do you remember that game? 

John Boruk: So now their girlfriend could break up with them while they're out of practice or they'll, somebody will tell them through social media that they're not adequate enough or whatever the case may be. So there's an, there's another layer of pressure and stress that, that comes with being a high school athlete.

That was completely nonexistent when you and I were going through this.   

Tom Grandieri: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And it's So I'm fortunate in that, not to say that I'm, but I'm on, I would say the younger side. And I think if you see this most recent wave of coaching, not only at the high school level, the collegiate level, I mean look at the [00:15:00] NFL, they have two guys that are, 38 and 37 years old coaching the NFL.

It's probably something that nobody would've dreamt of, but it does give me a little bit more perspective, I think, on. The young men in my case are doing or going through. And then the fact that my, my brother just turned 26 this year, so he's, three, four years removed from college. So I I'm still in that world a little bit cuz he's got a lot of buddies that live locally.

So I see what the 26 year olds are doing. Not the 26 and sixteens the same, but it's closer. It's a lot. And people are just nasty. Plain and simple. I remember going. Games in high school and you would hear a mom or a dad or another high school peer kid say something, but then that was it.

You probably never saw 'em again. You never talked to 'em again. But now you have, 50 year old people on the internet saying, This kid stinks and and saying things that are extremely hurtful, and then you can't contact them. And then if you engage 'em, then you're just as bad as they are and you're in a lose-lose proposition. So our adages, and we can't get around it, but we have Snapchat issues, [00:16:00] which is to like the, around the league, 

John Boruk: But you had to bring these things up and talk about these things as a manager, because you're not managing a game, you're managing personalities, and 

Tom Grandieri: the game is an afterthought. That's, and my one buddy who's an assistant coach with me, he's actually running a youth travel program and he's the head coach. And he called me after the first practice and was like, Man, this is hard. And I'm like, Yeah. And I'm like, 13 year olds is a little bit different than high school age kids cuz parents are still hanging around practice.

We don't have, it's not like Texas football, We don't have parents hanging around practice. But yeah, all eyes, all attention. There's just a lot of, angst and responsibility and I want to get to the next spot as quickly as possible. There's not. There's not a lot of living in the moment anymore.

The kids have to just, they're just getting pushed to go to heights that they don't know about, and the people who are trying to get 'em there, I think in a lot of cases, don't know. A lot about either, so it's just this constant struggle to a degree. But I think if you lean into it and you try to engage the kids and [00:17:00] tell 'em, you're there for you, you can call me at any time.

 I will say to your point, I would've never thought to call my high school baseball coach ever. I would've never thought to call my college baseball coach, I would say. But you get those calls, 75 to 85% of the kids on the team text me. Okay. Fairly regular. Wow. And the 15% that don't they'll text another coach.

John Boruk: So I would say growing up, I don't even know if I would've wanted to approach a coach outside of the playing field, much less text them. But it's just another element of how times and the era has changed. 

Tom Grandieri: Sure. Yeah, but there's good stuff too. They'll send me pictures of them going to, the high school football game or at the Phillies game, or the Sixers game, or at the flyers game, and they're all hanging out.

So it's, it's not all, So if you lean into it, if you open the dialogue, I think I'm hopeful that if something bad happens, which I hope it doesn't I'll be an outlet for them. I'll be a resource for them. And at the end of the day, that has much more, consequences or effects on the children than.

The baseball game on Tuesday and Friday. It really does. So when 

John Boruk: you're [00:18:00] looking at athletes to, to join your program now, do you want the athlete the player who's now specializing in baseball wants to be a full-time baseball player only or do you want the two or the three sport star, the three sport athlete that playing a myriad of sports because, depending, I, there's some parents that want their kid into sports specialization at the age of 10. And the more I see it, they want, if you can play, you're, and you're good to play other sports as long as you can. 

Tom Grandieri: Sure. I would say, my personal opinion is I like the multi-sport athlete, but with that being said, I think the current construct of any team at the high school level probably has a blend of all of them.

Yeah, in a perfect world, I've like to, cuz you learn things and I'll put the story back on me and this, I tell the kids this every year to, by the time they're juniors and seniors, they'll, they're probably tuned out. But, I was a grandie from a basketball family, so everybody when I went to Malvin was like, Oh, he is [00:19:00] gotta be a good basketball player.

I set a pick role, maybe make a corner three, play really hard. Defense score, 6, 7, 8 points a game by anybody's standards. Today I was the role player, but I learned so much as a role player playing basketball that helped me in baseball. And then when I was, hitting lead off or hitting second or hitting third, I knew that the guy who was gonna hit seventh, eighth, and ninth was gonna have just as much of an impact on the game as I did as the fifth, sixth guy on the basketball team.

So I lean on them and just say, Hey, stay in there, hang in there. Or if you're a bench guy, coming off the bench, you can't learn those things. If you're just specialized in one sport, you don't learn failure. You don't learn how to not be the guy. You don't learn how to, integrate with other people who might be better than you.

And if anything else, I think the mental side of playing multiple sports is you hear different things. You learn different things. A coach will tell you one thing that you can apply to a different sport. Blend is [00:20:00] nice. I think it's going more towards the singular centric, but I would say our most successful athletes, since we've been coaching, play multiple sports, which is also an Episcopal Academy model as well. So it, it aligns there. Yeah. 

John Boruk: You've been doing this, as we said, four years, going on five years now. So you got a pretty good sample size of the kids that come in. Of, the kids that you have and obviously, don't you have to cite specific kids, but who are ready for the high school experience and how many of those still need time in terms of learning your way or learning, because now you're taking a step up from whatever, whether they played club ball, somewhere else to, to now high school ball, but they're ready or they have the foundation in place and in order to be success.

Tom Grandieri: Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's a great que And the reason it's a great question is, and I mean I could, I talk to my coaches about this all the time, that this, I think a podcast is my perfect forum is the thing with the youth athlete, especially getting into the high school ranks is, and I'll speak to baseball cause that's our sport.

So we're the third [00:21:00] season of high school sports in Pennsylvania. By the time I see them or meet them in their seventh, eighth grade years, by the time they get to their spring of their freshman year. You could already see the leaps and bounds of growth in just that, in those seasons alone, because they're playing basketball, they're playing soccer, they're running track, and they're like, Oh my gosh, there’s 18, 19 year old young men and women that I'm competing against.

So you go from this pond that is, everybody looks the same, and then there's a few outliers, and you're like, All right, that makes sense. Like they're the outliers. But then it's like when you get into this big group of all the people who look the same, but they're four years of lifting ahead of you, they're four years of training ahead of you.

They're nine seasons of sports ahead of you. You get in there and you're like, Whoa. O our credit. I think we play at Episcopal for the baseball team. We'll play the kid who's ready to play regardless of, [00:22:00] age and status. But I will say it's the true success tends to happen later, in high school.

And I think that's across the board. We've played against guys that have gone on to get drafted. Guys that have gone on to Power Five, baseball schools, and I remember them as freshmen and you're like, Whoa, this kid's gonna be a player. They're. Typically the player they are, for another two to three years.

So that's the other thing too, is I think people have to, there's a saying of, be where your feet are. A lot of people are saying that it's like a cliche that's going around. , I think it's, I think it's pretty important to just realize that though. You gotta be where your feet are.

You're 14, so you're gonna be 14. You can't transport yourself. To be 17, you can't transport yourself. You have to just go through the 14 to 15, the 15 to 16, the 16 to 17. So yeah it's a real thing. The growth and the maturation and then eventually getting through the high school experience is a process.

John Boruk: Another thing that I found I think that it's a skill set that you can transfer, whether it's in the workplace or anything, is be [00:23:00] versatile. Sure. Don't just learn one task at work. Learn a multitude of tasks. Make yourself almost what I like to call, indispensable. Baseball players don't go into a season saying, I'm only a catcher.

I'm only this. Take ground balls in the infield, take fly balls in the outfield do things to where you never know you're gonna have an injury. If you're a versatile type player you're more valuable. And how important is it to stress that amongst some of your athletes to say, Look yeah, maybe there are some that are great infielders.

Sure. But if you're one of the best hitters, you'll find a place for 'em.   

Tom Grandieri: Totally. Yeah. That's well said. And the thing is, between a combination - the kids wanting to do that themselves, and I think a lot of it does go back to home. Parents are around, or caregivers around the kids much more than we are.

So you'll know if that conversation's already been had or you'll quickly know that conversation has never been broached, ever at home. The one that's never been is much more interesting to have because you're [00:24:00] breaking news to somebody that you'd never thought you'd have to break to at 15 years old.

But I think it, it is very important and I also think. by the time they get through the season, they sometimes, and this was probably the transition from my first two years to the next two years, is if you give 'em a chance, I think they start to see it through their own eyes and that conversation's a lot easier.

So you, Hey, how you feeling? What are you thinking? Then they'll come to me and say, Hey coach, you think I can get some outfield reps? We got some guys at shortstop that, I don't think I'm probably gonna beat out over the next two or three years. And you're like, Yeah, absolutely. Like you run well.

Hey coach we don't really have a lot of guys who come in at the end of the game that are, defensive stalwarts or base runners or pinch runners. Do you think, there's anything I can work on? Yeah, sure. And the nice thing is, R Very recently we've been having more of those conversations, so I think the way I did it the first two years, probably, hopefully, I think, I'm trying to give myself a little bit of credit, has helped matriculate towards this.

But anytime you can go into anything with an open mind, like you said, and be a, a pinch runner to start, and then, you steal a base and you're like, [00:25:00] Wow, he gotta get this kid in the lineup. If he gets on, he's gonna steal second and he's gonna score from second, or we gotta put him in here.

Or we gotta do that, or he's really good at first base, like his bat hasn't come along yet. If the ball comes to first base or he is gotta make a pick in the seventh inning, he's the right guy. And any time you play, you build confidence. And that's all we're trying to do is just build confidence.

John Boruk: As a head coach, are you more of a hitting guy, a defense guy, or a pitching guy?

Tom Grandieri: So I think baseball itself I'd argue at every level is one up the middle. So I I'll even put it back on my face so people like, but I eventually got moved from center field to right field, so I actually ended up not being in , the middle side of things, but I think if you catch you pitch well, you play the middle infield well and your center fielder can play.

I think you have the dynamics of a great baseball team. And, but I think what happens is if you play enough games or you go through enough practices, you realize. The beauty of baseball is it's an individual sport inside of the ultimate team sport because you could have the best day ever, but if the other eight [00:26:00] guys.

Just not having a great day, you're probably not gonna win. So we like the middle of the field and I think honestly, if you take a backup short stop, you can move him the third base. You can move him to the left field, you can move him to right field. If you take the backup second baseman, I think you can spread him around.

So yeah we like to work, we like to work up the middle and then fill the outer spots.   

John Boruk: Yeah. It's interesting. I see so many really young kids. You start in T-ball. My two boys, only one of 'em decided to play baseball and they only did it for one year. I wanted to get, when you're the age of 6, 7, 8, I want 'em to be, I want them to be active.

I want 'em to be running soccer lacrosse my youngest got into hockey, so he is constantly moving it, it's really a thinking man's. Situational. Situational. You know what? If the ball's hit here or if it's and that's real, That's a really tough thing to teach, sure At that age level.

Yes. You just want 'em out there fun enjoying themselves. You're gonna know, you're gonna get there. You got boys? 

Tom Grandieri: Oh, I'm there. I get you. Get boys. My oldest one's seven. [00:27:00] We just went through it. It's. And you. And baseball's slow too. Baseball's not only typically slow for the kids if you're playing, it doesn't feel slow, but it's definitely a slow sport for parents as well.

So I think there's an, I think the impasse is, Oh, it was brutal 

John Boruk: as watch is brutal. I had to do everything in my power to not look at my phone and read something 

Tom Grandieri: probably for him to get back. And it probably started at the end of. Beginning of April and in Pennsylvania it's 48 degrees and it's raining.

And your kid's crying cuz you hit it off the end of the bat. Bat stings. It's a bad, it's a bad it's a bad beginning of spring sport in Pennsylvania. But the thing with that is, and I totally agree with you And it's something that I've been racking my brain about and I think, I'm sure a lot of dads and moms have been racking their brains about it too, is I think it's too structured at that early of an age.

I think they should just have skills and not, put a kid at second base cuz what is second base? If you ask, I think my kid understands baseball, he's around it, but Two years ago, he didn't, he'd run the third, he'd skip first base. They go from first to third, they cut across.

So at the end of the day, But you want [00:28:00] them just like anything else at youth age, whatever the sport is, you just want them to keep on coming back. I want to go to baseball next season. I want to go to soccer next season. I wanna go to lacrosse next season. That's, to me, that is the end goal, especially in youth sports, like super youth and I.

Hopefully it's transitioning. There's some youth local little leagues around our way that I think do an exceptional job at it. I think some others. They're just conditioned to do it the way they've always done it. But the numbers are starting to dwindle because people are going to the hockeys, cuz you're always skating around.

You can see your son or daughter flying around the ice, flying around. Loosely speaking. . But they're skating. They're getting their, they're getting their stick on the puck and yo know, lacrosse they're getting ground balls, they're running with it, they're scoring a goal. Baseball is.

It's a hard sport. It's a slow sport, and if the kid isn't into it, which is typically likely, it's six, seven years old, It just makes all those things a lot hard.  

John Boruk:. But it also goes to the point of play more or train more, 

Tom Grandieri: Play more. Play more at that age. I think [00:29:00] it's a play more. It's get on play, less structure.

If a ball is at shortstop, in a week, they might not know to field it, throw it to second base cuz there's a guy on first base. But if they say that same scenario eight times over the next week, they'll be like, Oh, I've seen this before. And you can't always just say, Hey. John, go over here.

Tom, go over here. Billy, come over here. We're gonna, we're gonna script everything. The beauty of it is it's an unscripted game, so you can talk about it after the fact, I think. But you let those things go out and you teach inside the moment, or at least that's my personal takeaway.

John Boruk: For the first time ever I was up in Williamsport this year and to never been to Cat. You've never been. Your lifelong Pennsylvania. You've never been to the Little League World Series, huh?

Tom Grandieri: It's gonna be, it's gonna be a bucket list. Even my buddies who you were certainly at the level.

John Boruk: Were you were trying to get there? 

Tom Grandieri: Sure we did. Yeah. We didn't get outta districts, but yeah. And some of my buddies who, yeah, they love baseball, but they, I don't think they play baseball past little league. They've been the Williamsport like 15 times. So it's a running, it's a running joke in the friend group too. So I'm gonna take my, I'm gonna take my son up.

John Boruk: Yeah, I, [00:30:00] it's a great experience, but I was watching that team from Hawaii. You're talking twelves and thirteens and all of these kids, just the level of talent and how well they could hit it. And the game I saw at five home runs. But It, it seems like that is as much the parent's dream as it is the kids' dream.

Sure. And I'm sure you've witnessed that. And look, it's not just for baseball, but it's any youth sports that a lot of these parents are trying to get their kids to the level because they are living vicariously through them. Sure. I don't know how much has, have you seen that element of youth sports change over the last 10, 15 years?

Tom Grandieri: So I think it might come back a little bit full circle to like, when we talked about social media, my guess is that it's, it happened back in the day, if you will. I just don't think you saw it or there was really a forum other than like your closest friend that you would even begin to have. Those conversations with in fear of, does this person think I'm crazy, but I'll probably be [00:31:00] hypocritical to a degree.

But I like my older brothers their kids are my nephews and nieces and they're friends are, they're older than my kids, so they're getting closer to high school age. Most of 'em are in like the 10, 11, 12 year old range. And they'll come to me just cuz in this world a little bit and my only piece of advice is, Do you go to Villanova?

This is another stock speech mine. Do you go to a Villanova basketball games? When I do my parent meetings and the kid meetings, every single person in this area has been to a ton of Villanova basketball games. They're great. They've won national championships. They're local. It's awesome. It checks all the boxes, but I'm like, Have you ever been to a Villanova baseball game?

Nobody goes. Villanova baseball. Baseball is a sport you wanna play in my instance. Why wouldn't you go to the villain of a baseball game like so yeah. We just don't go. And, it's not a, it's not much of an event. I usually go with my wife and my other kids and it's like, all right, take your son who wants to play baseball?

And better yet have you ever been to a high school baseball game in the area? No. I've never been to a high school baseball game. I'm like come out, come to [00:32:00] our game. You could sit in the dugout, you could sit next to the dugout. I love it. Like anybody who can come to a high school baseball game is more than most people come to a high school baseball game.

And some people will take me up on it, some people won't. But my point is, your perceived view of. Who your child is and who your child is compared to your current peers. Comparative to what else is going on in this kind of, this big world that we live in is drastically different. Like I even say to the guys I coach with and my son's seven, Do I think he'll be a decent baseball player?

Maybe not. He seems to be fairly athletic. I will say though, the guys that I coach and the guys that we coach against, these kids are unbelievable. Unbelievable. So it's not to say that you sell the farm and you only play baseball. It's you just say, Hey, like there's a long road ahead and this road is what this kid who I said was unbelievable.

Took as. I know for a fact, I know him personally. I know he played basketball. I know he played lacrosse until he was 10 years old. I knew he played [00:33:00] XYZ sport and then you see it for yourself. Like we face kids in the interact. And our kids included will get there hopefully soon, but I mean we faced, which is wild thing.

I mean we faced a kid who's gone to South Carolina who threw 92 this year, we through faced a kid who's gonna UVA who was up to 88, 89, we faced another kid who was gonna to Louisville, who was up to 88. 88 miles per hour in a batter's box from 60 feet, six inches. Like I want to put our dads and moms in a simulated environment and be like, this is what your son is dealing with.

The last thing he wants to hear in the car is like, Why did you swing at the slider in the dirt? Because he is Dad, the kid was throwing 90 miles. Is. Per hour. Yes. At 17, 18 years old. So the long and short of it and hopefully I, I stayed on, task there is, I just think people need to.

Go out and experience the local world at a three to four age increment higher. I think I experienced that because I had three older brothers. [00:34:00] That was just how our family was constructed. So I knew when I went to high school, there was a lot of work to do. My oldest brother was playing hoops against Eddie Griffin.

My brother, that was the heyday of the Catholic League. Yeah. It was just six foot seven, six foot eight NBA guys. My brother Brian was, they were playing ga. It was Ted SCOs Lee Melchione, I mean they're whole starting five. They all went to Division one, five guys on one single team.

Sean Singletary was UVA. NBA. It's, you just gotta. To high school. You gotta get to high school games. That's and hopefully you'll go and we'll have more people in the stands. It'll be great. you. 

John Boruk: And those are all really good points. You mentioned some of the parent player meetings that you have individually with the, each of the families.

And it doesn't really matter what sport it is that we're discussing. If it was soccer, hockey, baseball, lacrosse, you could make it a 12 month program. You could make it a 12-month commitment to where you're going to summer camps, you're going to showcases scouted [00:35:00] tournaments. Do you worry about some of that when it's during the off season?

Because it's so easy and you see it so often that whether it's the player or the parent, but they want to be chasing that thing. They want to make sure that their child is seen by the right people, the important people out there.

Tom Grandieri: Sure. I two, I had two phone conversations on the way. And and it's enticing. Like you get these emails, you get these phone calls, and a lot of times I will say the earlier the people who would seem more stressed out in those conversations, it's typically their first child or first child in that particular sport. So it could be a daughter plays this or a son was a hockey player and the other son's a baseball player.

So we know how the hockey lanscape is. We don't really know the baseball construct. To me, you have to just keep getting better before you put yourself out there. It's not to say don't apply for the job that you really want, but if you wanted to get into a job outside of baseball, you're not interviewing for the CEO job.

Unless you start your own company, you're gonna interview for the [00:36:00] entry level job, and then you're gonna be indispensable and you're gonna get another role, and you're gonna get another role, and you're gonna get another role. And by the time you're in your second or third role, you might wanna show yourself to the, hiring manager that gets you to the next level.

. So those are the conversations I have. I try to equate it differently than baseballs for the parents out there, you've been afforded at Episcopal. You've probably done well for yourself or you've done well for yourself and you value education. So this is why you're sitting in front of me.

When you first took your job, you probably didn't take the job that everybody wants or everybody aspires to, and the salary that you've ultimately gotten to. So the same with the kid. Let's just put good work in, put the right work in, get 'em around the right people, get the right foundation but.

And this is where the parents come into play, and I'm a parent myself, and I'm sure I'm gonna do it too. So that's why I always feel like I gotta take a step back is the kids don't know any different. They just do what your parents are told for the most part. Or at least that's the way that I think most kids handle themselves.

If my dad or mom told me that we're gonna go to this I'm gonna go to that. So [00:37:00] I just try to say to the kids, Hey, why are you doing this? So and so's doing. Why so and so doing that? Their parents said that they're gonna do all this stuff all throughout the summer. So then I get the conversation John's mom and dad said, We're gonna go fly to Georgia all summer and we're gonna play all summer.

Well John is gonna be a first round draftable prospect. He's a Power five guy. Off the top of the bat, you're gonna struggle to find JV in. What are we doing here? And that conversation happens. Frequently. The problem, the only problem I get from it is I think that if everybody was working together and everyone was being truthful with one another, we could solve a lot of the issues that go on now.

But nobody wants to be the bad guy. I joke with my buddies, I feel like I always say I have a rod in my, I feel like I have so much stress in my. and I, it's they're like, You got a rod in your neck today, . I'm like, I'm gonna pull the rod out. But the reason I think I have a rod in my neck is those conversations are terrible.

Yes. And they're terrible for a reason, cuz delivering bad news is just never good. But when I have those [00:38:00] conversations, it's not to say that nothing will never happen, It's just a, I think I just, we reset the proper expectations. I honestly feel like the rod is lifted from my neck. So those two conversations I had today, like the, both of them should be fine prospects.

They're both 14 years. No, we're just get in the weight room, make sure they're hitting, make sure they're eating, make sure they're going to bed. If they wanna do extra work, one of the coaches, one of us can meet 'em or we can put 'em in contact with so and I just think if everybody was working together, not chasing.

Something else that somebody else has. I think we could get back in line a little bit. And that's, Yeah, and 

John Boruk: That's difficult when you hear that somebody at a competing school or somebody is already committed to this university. A hundred percent. And he's still got three or two or three years left in his high school career.

A hundred percent. And it's like, what, how did he already get the commit? What, why is a college coach already looking at him? Yep. And that's what I think the hard part. It's, I don't know when I was going through all of. It was national signing day, and you didn't know what was going on until that.

Tom Grandieri: A hundred percent. Yeah. And [00:39:00] I think to that point is, colleges and that landscape has changed dramatically too. College coaches, if you look, most of 'em are public universities. So you see how much these men and women are making. And don't get me wrong it's a really hard job and the schools are making a lot of money.

So I'm not saying they shouldn't, but their. Or they, if they're good their job is to, evaluate talent. And their also job is to project Yeah. How these people project. So if the, six foot or five 11 freshman who has a six foot four dad and a six foot two mom, as a pretty good baseball player.

Now they're hedging on the fact that he might be six foot four and his mom played, field hockey in college and his dad was a, division three basketball player. So there's bloodlines there. There's a lot that goes into it because there's a lot of. Time to be, had money to be given out energy, jobs, security.

Like I'm fortunate, I coached the high school baseball team, but it's not my career, so I don't feel like, in the next second I could lose my job and my family would be moved, appreciate Episcopal, everything it's for, [00:40:00] but I do it because I love it, and I wanna be around the kids.

You flip that on its head, college is a totally different beast. This is how people make their livelihood. They've been, grinding at it for years and years. Pretty, most of 'em in the baseball community make very little to no money, especially on the assistant coach side of things. So yeah, their job is to try to make things work.

So if they identify that they might be wrong and they might swing and miss, no pun intended, but that's their prerogative. You can't make. That coach like your son over somebody else's son. So I think it's just a little more self reflection a little bit more honest talk and a little bit, Hey, this isn't the end of the world.

Just have a conversation with your kids. I think would go a long way. . Yes, I know. It's and I say this and I and it's not easy. It's not easy. I don't, I, I don't, haven't had a lot of. Life conversations with my kids yet they're seven, four, and two. But I, we're getting there. 

John Boruk: We're, You're away.

Tom Grandieri: Exactly. We're getting close, but I talk to parents who are going through that and that's genuinely. Typically, my one piece of advice is just have the [00:41:00] hard conversation. It's not gonna probably go well, but I think they're, the kids are smart enough.

I think they're cerebral enough these days to kinda understand yo, if you give 'em a little bit there, it's their world hopefully won't come crashing down on them. 

John Boruk: Yeah, I wanted to talk to you. We're gonna hold this for another time. We'll have you back on about pitching and arms and stuff. I grew up a big Nolan Ryan fam.

Sure. And I don't understand how we can't produce more Nolan RHS these days. We're safeguard and everybody, and I get all of that. I get all that. That, But that's something that we can get into. 

Tom Grandieri: The only $1 might have something to 

John Boruk: Yeah, I'm sure does. But that's something that we will we can.

The next time we have you on, that'd be awesome, but that's, Yeah. Thanks so much, Tom. Thank you for coming on it. It's baseball still to me. America's pastime, one of the greatest sports out there. The Natural's one of my favorite movies and beautiful. And it's, this is a great area for really for baseball and producing homegrown talent up here in the Northeast.  

Tom Grandieri:.

Thanks for having me. This was a blast. This is my first podcast. I'm a consumer of a lot of podcasts, but definitely, I've definitely never been on one, so I [00:42:00] appreciate it very much. You can check off that box.

John Boruk: It's been good. We, in the show every week with our quote, our inspirational thought of the day and for this week.

Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation. I'm sure you've learned that in your four, four years as a manager of a high school program. Tom, thank you so much. Thanks, John. Thanks everybody for listening to Raising a Champion.