****** Marquis Grissom is leaving a legacy ******
A Career and a Calling
Marquis Grissom Made a Living Playing Baseball. Now It's His Life's Work.
By Chico Harlan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 18, 2009; Page E01
VIERA, Fla., March 17 -- Marquis Grissom was 8 years old -- or maybe 10. He can't entirely remember. He just knows that the moment changed his life.
What happened that day didn't just help him become a major leaguer, which in turn helped him become a coach with the Washington Nationals. It determined why he kept so little of the $52 million he earned; it explains why he knows how to lay concrete for foul poles at inner city fields; it set the context for why Grissom, if you let him, can't stop talking about the grand plan for his life. Best case, he saves the world. As a backup, he said, "I put a big dent in it."
"We were out in the street playing baseball," said Grissom, who grew up in Red Oak on the outskirts of Atlanta. "Just kids in the street, playing. This stranger comes cruising down the street in this big ol' Cadillac. Of course we gotta stop our game. And we're like: 'Would you pick your [butt] up and get off the field? We want to play!' So he's [ticking] everybody off, taking his time, rolling slow -- and everybody is like, yeah, we're gonna get your [butt] as soon as you get by. We'll chuck that car with these rocks and these baseballs -- watch!
"We're hollering at him, screaming at him -- 'Hurry up, we're trying to play ball!' So he drives on down the street, turns up this hill -- and of course I wait till he's as far away as he can get before I chuck this rock. So I'm thinking, 'I can't throw it this far.' [Expletive!] I chucked that rock, boom, hit the top of his car. All of a sudden he stops, turns around, and everybody else -- they take off running."
They didn't run fast enough.
The man got out of his car.
"Who threw that rock?" he said.
Grissom was surrounded by cousins. They all pointed at him.
Grissom continued: "And all of a sudden he flipped out that [expletive] police badge. He was a cop! So he pulls this badge out and of course, you know, I was an honest kid. Raised up my hand. And he was like, 'Well, come here.' I already know I'm going to jail, right. He pulled the handcuffs out -- and anyway, he talked to me. He said, 'You know that was wrong?' I said: 'I didn't think I could throw that rock that far. You shoulda kept going. If you kept going, that rock woulda never hit your car.' "
The two made a deal.
The police officer coached a baseball team. If Grissom joined, the police officer wouldn't tell his mother what happened.
The two walked into Grissom's house. The officer told Grissom's parents that their son now belonged to a team.
I hadn't played no organized ball, no," Grissom said. "I didn't have a glove. But he said: 'I'll come pick him up every day. I'll pay for him to play, too.' Next day he comes by, picks me up, and sure enough he picked me up every day, drove me home every day, fed me every day. That's how I started playing baseball."
For the next two years, Grissom played for police officer/coach T.J. Wilson. Baseball was his springboard before he even knew it. Wilson saw it: that arm, those legs. No other block-built kid in Georgia looked slower or ran faster. Colleges offered Grissom scholarships in three sports, including football and track and field, but Grissom stuck with baseball because he thought it was harder and smarter. You needed a certain concentration just to master it, and learning its secrets could pay back big-time.
Not until 1993 did Grissom really realize it, though. He'd already gone through three big league seasons with the Montreal Expos, twice leading the National League in stolen bases, but it was all part of the mad scramble for survival. In 1993, he made his first all-star team. For the first time, his salary hit seven figures -- $1.5 million. He finally thought about the big picture.
His parents, Marion and Julia, had once earned 50 cents per hour picking cotton. Marion had built the Grissom house from scratch, front doors always open wide, food from the garden available for whatever nieces and nephews stopped by. The Grissoms had 15 kids of their own. Marquis was the second-youngest.
"I went from drawing water out of a well and burning a stove for heat in the house to making $1.5 million," he said.
That's when he started buying the houses.
First he gave a house to his baby sister, just because she was the baby. That cost Grissom $78,000. He paid in cash, and because his salary kept rising -- $3.575 million in 1994, $4.95 million in 1995 -- he kept buying more houses, paying them off in an instant. He bought a house for his parents. He bought the nicest house for his sister Barbara, who always took care of him. For one brother, he threw in a car, too. Sometimes, he let the siblings pick out the property, or at least the neighborhood. He asked them to stay within a price range -- about $215,000. He bought a house for every brother and sister.
Not every sibling flourished -- one of his brothers was on drugs -- and Grissom worried about how the handouts might set a bad precedent. So he talked to them about how to use the money saved on house payments for education, for their kids' college. The houses weren't just places to live; they were parts of a foundation.
Grissom bought his own house, too -- 11,000 square feet -- and four or five luxury cars, because he told himself that he'd earned it.
"I look at that stuff now -- I didn't overdo it, but even the stuff I got, I don't need it," Grissom said. "I look back now, it don't mean nothing. Because society, the people that appreciate it: small. The people that hate it: large."
People kept telling him he could coach, including then-Atlanta Braves president Stan Kasten, who acquired the center fielder from Montreal in 1995. On his first day with the Braves, Grissom had new teammate Tony Graffanino on an otherwise empty ballfield, instructing him on how to take leads.
Said Kasten: "I thought, Wow, that's really impressive. That's a future coach or more."
He kept thinking about something bigger, spreading the foundation beyond family.
That's when he started building fields.
The Marquis Grissom Baseball Association was granted nonprofit status in 2006. Grissom wanted to mass-produce the good fortune that gave him a chance, which meant a lot of work. Kids in the Atlanta area needed gloves, fields, funding, coaching, attention. Grissom tried to create all of that. The MGBA had (and has) two employees, counting its namesake.
But its burden -- and its potential -- expanded quickly. In the first year, Grissom rebuilt an old baseball complex, laying the chalk, painting the dugouts, buying the foul poles. ("Two of 'em will set you back $1,500," he said.) He talked to Coca-Cola about scoreboards and a local gravel company about warning tracks. Soon, Grissom's association was responsible for dozens of teams and at least 200 kids, 7 and older. Grissom paid for many of their registration fees, burning more than $500,000 of his own money. He picked some of the kids up from school. Sometimes, he paid for their meals, too.
"I've seen him really stress himself, really push himself to the limits, without asking for help," said Trinderlyn Alexander, the MGBA's other employee.
Grissom called this "the second half" of his career, and again, he saw the big picture. His best team of 18-year-olds, in 2008, sent 16 of 21 to college on scholarships. Several of the younger teenagers had the ability of future pros. The many who didn't still needed money for coaches and hotel rooms on road trips. For about two years, Grissom received calls from Kasten, asking him to join Washington's organization. Grissom kept saying no: He had something big going on with his kids.
"It's just a beautiful thing," Grissom said, "to see when that kid who ain't never played, when he catches a fly ball; he couldn't even catch a beach ball when you first got him. And all of a sudden he's got his hands on his knees, reaches out, makes that catch -- dude, that is priceless. That's why I couldn't come out here for the first two years."
Only last October, when Washington offered a major league job -- first base coach -- did Grissom realize that a higher profile could be the exact thing his association needed. Yes, Grissom wanted to coach big leaguers. But he also realized that such a role could open him to partnerships with Major League Baseball, players, networks in other cities. Just imagine: What if 20 big leaguers each sponsored one of his top AAU travel players, where registration costs $2,800 per person? What if he could talk to Nationals Manager Manny Acta about arranging a trip for his kids to the Dominican Republic?
"We were blessed to be able to land a guy like him," Acta said, "because he really wants to pass all the knowledge."
These days, Grissom talks three or four times a week to Alexander, whom he has left in charge of the association. Grissom, meantime, has spent the first weeks of spring training tutoring the Nationals' outfielders, and working with the entire roster on base running. During a recent morning practice, Grissom gathered a group of four or five players on a practice field, demonstrating how to take off from second on a base hit.
When rounding toward home, always touch third base with your right foot, he told the players. He demonstrated.
Standing behind a nearby fence, Wilson -- Grissom's first coach -- stood in silence. He'd driven down from Atlanta, some 7 1/2 hours, just to watch.
"I've known Marquis since he was 10 years old," he later said. "And to see how -- him going from 17 to 22 to a pro in baseball, and now coming all the way back around, coaching now, I ain't gonna lie. To see him working with those kids, it just feels good."
Original Post