Curtis Granderson To Be INducted in 2021 Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame Class

Curtis Granderson is a Chicagoland Sports Hall of Famer. We are happy to announce that he will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at our awards dinner on October 28th at the Wintrust Arena. Curtis embodies just about every trait we look for in selecting candidates. A hometown hero, a stellar athletic career and a strong commitment to charitable endeavors, his work speaks volumes.

​The son of two Chicago teachers, Curtis was born in 1981 and grew up in the south suburbs of Blue Island and Lynwood. He attended Thornton Fractional South for High School where he played baseball and basketball. An All-State selection his senior year on the diamond, he chose to attend college at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to play both baseball and basketball. An immediate impact player his freshman year, he led the UIC Flames with 7 home runs and 45 walks. Quitting basketball to focus on baseball, he continued his career at UIC hitting 304 as a sophomore leading the team in walks, home runs and total runs scored. In his junior season Curtis held a .483 batting average which was the second highest in the nation. He was named Second-Team All-American by Baseball America and USA Today's Baseball Weekly and a Third-Team Louisville Slugger NCAA Division I All-American. Curtis graduated from UIC with a double major in business administration and business marketing.

The Detroit Tigers selected Curtis in the third round of the 2002 MLB draft and he made his major league debut on September 13, 2004. He spent his first six of 16 total seasons in Detroit. In his career, Granderson played 2,057 games and totaled 1,800 hits, 344 home runs, 153 stolen bases, 937 RBIs and 1,217 runs scored. At retirement in January of 2020, he was MLB's active leader in triples, with 95. Granderson made it to the postseason eight times and played in two World Series, with the Tigers in 2006 and the Mets in '15.

His best seasons came in 2007 with the Tigers and 2011 with the Yankees. In '07, Granderson batted .302 with 23 homers, 26 steals and an MLB-best 23 triples. In '11, he hit 41 home runs, stole 25 bases, led the AL with 119 RBIs and the Majors with 136 runs scored while finishing fourth in American League MVP Award voting. 

Curtis is well known for his contributions to his community. While still playing he was the 2016 winner of MLB's Roberto Clemente Award - given annually to a player who demonstrates Clemente's values of commitment to community and helping others - and he was also named the Marvin Miller Man of the Year four times by the MLB Players Association, including in 2019.

​Granderson has served as an official ambassador for Major League Baseball International and has visited England, Italy, the Netherlands, France, South Africa, China, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan to promote the game. He has also served as something of an unofficial baseball ambassador to the African-American community, often participating in and initiating dialogue about the lack of Black players at all levels of the sport. When he endorsed Nike, Inc., Louisville Slugger and Rawlings, he asked them to donate money to his "Grand Kids" foundation or equipment to inner-city baseball programs rather than pay him. Most recently Curtis provided the narration for a video that went across all ballparks commemorating Jackie Robinson Day on April 15th of last month and he donated 42,000 meals to the COVID-19 food bank partners in honor of Robinson's jersey number 42.

In addition to his work with the "Grand Kids" foundation, in 2013 he donated $5 million to the University of Illinois at Chicago for the construction of their ballpark, Les Miller Field at Curtis Granderson Stadium. Welcome to the Chicagoland Sports Hall of Fame Curtis. You are most deserving!