Sam Granoff wrapped up his college baseball career in 2018 as a relief pitcher for the Duke Blue Devils during their most successful season in school history. In 2022, after not picking up a baseball in nearly four years, he decided on a whim to create a profile on the Baseball Jobs Overseas website to see where it could take him. At this time, Sam had completed two master’s degrees in the States—at Duke and Columbia University—and was an adjunct professor at the latter. His goal was to be a novelist, and when he signed up for a membership, he was in the midst of a work of fiction about baseball. It was his hope that returning to the game would allow him to better write about the sport—and he also felt that he still had more in the tank as a player.
After signing on with a team to play in the French first division, he was picked up by the BBJO Globetrotters to compete in the mid-summer tournament, Prague Baseball Week, in the Czech Republic. It was there where he earned the name “The Professor” as he educated batters on the game of baseball with his savvy pitching repertoire, and had one of the best moments in Globetrotter history.
“With baseball, and sports in general, the hardest part is knowing that you do not get to retire on top,” said Sam in a Zoom interview soon after the tournament. “There are a select few athletes who get to retire when they want to retire. But usually, something gets hurt, or you run out of gas, or for whatever reason, the game kinda gets taken from you. For me, showing up to Prague Baseball Week, with another 30 guys still pursuing their dreams in a dozen other countries, was a very special thing. It had been a long time since I had been on a team with a group of guys who were there just to win, to accomplish something together collectively. On the second or third day, we were playing the Czech National Team, and my family had come all the way out from the U.S. to watch me play. I knew my arm was on its last legs, I had already put cortizone in it, and I told pitching coach Jimmy Jensen that this would be might last outing in my career. He told me to go back out for my third inning, strikeout the first guy on three pitches, and let’s call it a career. This is exactly what Sam did, and the moment, caught on video, was a beautiful one, as Jensen called time, took the ball from Sam, and then the entire roster of 30 Globetrotters paid a special tribute to Sam as he walked off the field for the last time. “That team was spectacular, the week was unforgettable, and for me, that was a moment that I will always cherish. That week in Prague with that group was something unmatched. If I could write it all up, if you can take me to the beginning of baseball and tell me that is where it would finish, I would be ok with that.”
