On a warm summer night in the late 70s, a team you never heard of, the Cadamus Court Killers, dressed in uniform, were playing a local neighborhood team at their cul-de-sac ballpark in a quiet neighborhood in Teaneck, N.J. That team had a young, passionate child learning the game of baseball.
That child was Doug Glanville.
Doug Glanville’s early years
Glanville’s childhood sounds like it could have been a scene in the movie Sandlot. From playing baseball with his neighborhood team daily to playing Strat-O-Matic baseball when he wasn’t trying to mimic his heroes in the pavement batter’s box, Glanville was enamored with the game. Thanks in large part to one of his teammates, his older brother by nearly eight years, Ken.
“As soon as I could hold a bat or ball, he had me outside and we started talking about the game,” Doug said reminiscing about his childhood with his brother. “He loved the game right from the gate. Our dad being from Trinidad and Tobago was a cricket fan, so it translated well.”
Throughout their childhood, their passion for baseball picked up speed like a Nolan Ryan fastball, transforming into what Doug calls “the plan.” It was a map, laid out by Ken highlighting the steps he was going to take to help his sibling make it to the big leagues one day.
Fittingly, it was written in a scorebook.
“It was an itemized list that included wiffle ball, stick ball, the Cadamus Court Killers and it moved to bigger things like Strat-O-Matic Baseball and going to tryouts to be recognized by major league teams,” Glanville said.
Strat-O-Matic, a dice-rolling game that served as the first version of today’s fantasy baseball was the premiere entertainment for the Glanville brothers and their friends.
“It was monumentally important,” Glanville said with a smile beaming from his face describing the impact the game had on his understanding of the sport.
“It was big part of my development because my brother recognized how it taught you the strategy and nuances to the game. It taught me how to construct a lineup, how to manage a bullpen, when to pinch hit, all of it. Here I was at 7 years old learning about all these things.”
Glanville won a couple of championships against high school kids in the neighborhood as the youngest “manager” using his beloved Phillies, led by Mike Schmidt.
The critical thinking, strategizing, and love for numbers warped into what Glanville wanted to pursue as he got older. His parents’ passion for education was also a factor. His mom was a math teacher from the Jim Crow South while his dad had a brilliant mind and was a psychiatrist.
“They certainly set the tone. I loved the sciences. But some of my frustration before high school and in high school was what am I going to do with this stuff? So I started looking into applied sciences and engineering.”
At Teaneck High School, Glanville excelled in and out of the classroom. Come senior year, he was searching to further his education.
Bill Wagner, a longtime assistant coach at the University of Pennsylvania, along with Quakers’ legendary head coach Bob Seddon, recruited Glanville. Wagner recalls a conversation he had with the outfielder’s concerned mother, asking him, “How would you handle a black athlete?”
Wagner was taken by surprise.
“I grew up in Camden, New Jersey,” he said. “The color of a person didn’t matter to me.”
According to Wagner, he knew how important this decision was for the entire Glanville family.
“His parents really wanted Doug to get an Ivy League education. I told her that Doug would be considered as an athlete, not by his skin color. He could be purple for all I care. We put the best guy on the field and Doug was the best. He had all those tools and he was a sponge. He was always eager to learn.”
Penn checked a lot of boxes for the systems engineer major and his parents. Being close to his hometown and playing in a city he grew up loving was a bonus.
The next step
Without a scholarship, the outfielder shined from 1989-1991 being an integral piece on one of the best teams in program history when they played in the Eastern Intercollegiate Baseball League, which preceded the Ivy Baseball League. Glanville helped lead the Quakers to two of the three-championships during their three-peat run.
His play garnered attention and Glanville became a projected first round talent. However, coming from the Ivy League, scouts and others questioned his commitment to the game. The great Hall of Fame journalist, Peter Gammons, echoed those concerns in a column that Glanville remembers.
“I love him and respect him, but back in the day I was kind of mad at him because he wrote a column about all the potential first round draft picks and next to my name it said “Talented player, but some wonder if he wants to play,” or something like that. I had a lot of that.”
Wagner, one of Glanville’s biggest advocates, believed the criticism was unwarranted.
“Doug would take his books with him on road trips to study on the bus to be prepared for his class work. But when he took the field, Doug was always ready.”
With the inspiration from his mother, Glanville wrote a speech to reinforce his commitment to not only his education, but also playing at the next level.
“The speech was along the lines of, I’m committing to graduating,” Glanville said. “It was a commitment to myself, but most importantly, to my parents who paid for this expensive school, who were first generation college students and who wanted to see their kids make it. I will finish this and I will make the same commitment to baseball.”
After dazzling in the Cape Cod League in the summer of 1990 where he won the Outstanding Pro Prospect award, the outfielder was now fully on MLB scouts’ radar and in turn, checking off another item on his brother’s map. The Chicago Cubs saw the promise in Glanville and selected him with the 12th overall pick in the 1991 draft, right in front of MLB All-Stars Manny Ramirez and Shawn Greene.
Glanville spent six seasons in the minor leagues before enjoying a nine-year career in the bigs. However, he credits his time playing winter ball in Puerto Rico as not only a turning point in his career, but the most memorable experience as a ballplayer.
“It was literally heaven on Earth,” Glanville recalled. “The experience playing baseball down there was by far the most positive and exciting experience playing the game and I played in the playoffs.”
Longtime coach Tom Gamboa brought Glanville down to play for the Indio de Mayaguez, a winter ball team that was located in the countryside, with less resources than the premier team in San Juan.
Infatuated with absorbing the culture, Glanville chose not to stay in the luxury resort with the team. He lived next to the team hotel with no phone, no television and at times without hot water.
“It forced me to get up every morning and go talk to people. Every day I went to the mall, I was there for four hours just talking in Spanish, Spanish, Spanish. I got pretty fluent at it. It was just incredible,” the always learning outfielder said.
Now 54, Glanville to this day remains extremely gracious for how the people embraced him.
“It was so powerful for me to feel welcomed and celebrated, but to also play well and to watch how much the fans love the game.”
In his two winter seasons in Puerto Rico, Glanville won a championship, named MVP, beating out future Hall of Famer Roberto Alomar and won the Fastest Man Award.
“I thrived down there. It felt like a lot of pressures I didn’t realize I was feeling with the dynamics of race in America and all those things were lightened there to a certain degree. Of course, Puerto Rico being part of the U.S. there was a certain cultural overlap, but there was a whole Spanish culture that I loved.”
A stunning career in the Bigs
Glanville turned in a respectable nine-year career with the Cubs, Phillies and Rangers. In 1999, playing for his childhood team, he hit a career best .325 while racking up a career-high 204 hits, good for fourth-most in the league. In the regular season finale in 2002, Glanville recorded his 1,000th career hit. Sadly, that was the same day his father passed. A day the outfielder describes as “surreal”.
Retiring at the age of 34, Glanville had to find a new adventure to pursue. He turned to his late father for inspiration. His dad Cecil had a passion for writing poetry while also writing two self published books.
“When I reconnected with writing, I understood what he was so passionate about. Writing was so reciprocal. It was also a way of keeping his memory that I didn’t realize I needed. Photos are nice, videos, but writing was really my connection to him.”
That eureka moment for Glanville along with the help of Penn alumnus and New York Times columnist Alan Schwarz ignited his writing career.
A new passion is born
“I’m compelled to write. That’s how I express myself. I just need to write,” Glanville exclaimed.
Glanville used that determination, boldly walked into the New York Times office to tell them he had something to offer.
“People were looking at me sideways at first, but when I wrote that first article, it did so well amongst writers, they actually invited me to New York and said let’s see what you can do.”
Much to the surprise of Glanville, that intrepid decision landed him a weekly column with the publication. It became a full circle moment for him, recollecting how his parents would read the New York Times in the morning at the breakfast table.
“It was a natural evolution. Inspiration from my family, their causes and their experiences along with the craft of writing and the passion for it by itself and meshing it with a very poetic game in baseball, it was just unstoppable.”
Glanville signed his first book deal, transforming his columns into, “The Game From Where I Stand”, a book highlighting stories from his playing career.
ESPN took notice of his work, ultimately hiring him, but not after initially turning them down to focus solely on writing. Since then, Glanville has worn various hats. From being a well respected voice in baseball on ESPN’s television and radio broadcasts, to co-hosting a popular podcast with Baseball Hall of Fame journalist Jayson Stark called “Starkville”.
On top of that, he also has taught a course for the last 8 years at UConn, Yale and Penn that dives into the intersection of sports and how it effects changes socially.
“He was a great player, but he’s an amazing human being. He’s very genuine”, Wagner said. “What he’s been able to do after his playing career is truly impressive.”
Glanville’s remarkable résumé has a new experience ready to be added. He is starting a new Substack that is on the verge of debuting.
“I just want to write more. I want to engage the fans, hang out, and talk about stuff. I love talking as an expert about automatic balls and strikes, but I actually want to talk to the fans and ask, what do you think about that? I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
Wearing multiple hats during and after his playing days, Glanville enjoys sharing his love for the game anyway he can. But on most Friday nights, he takes off his writing cap and puts on another all too familiar to him…his Strat-O-Matic manager’s ball cap.
“A friend of mine and I still play. We use the Negro League stats and play at least two games. I still love it.”
