(This story originally appeared in the July 2019 edition of Yankees Magazine.)
This was as much a function of timing as anything else. I had plans to be in Cleveland for another story, and it just so happened that the trip I had planned coincided with Didi Gregorius’s first games back from Tommy John surgery.
Didi can be a tough guy to go deep with, which might seem surprising considering his huge smile and engaging social media presence. When the microphone is off, he’s the guy you expect — funny, candid, insightful. But once you start recording, it’s as though he’s working his hardest to give you nothing. One example: I asked him what he did during his downtime-filled rehab that he couldn’t have otherwise. He kind of talked around the question, didn’t give me anything interesting. A few minutes after we got done with the interview, when we were making smalltalk, he talks about this trip he took with Nike. Turns out, Nike asked him to go every year, and he always turned them down. But with so little to do after the surgery, he decided to take them up on it this year.
I mean …
I yelled at him. “Didi! Why couldn’t you say that when I asked you?” There was nothing about it that he didn’t want to put in the story, and when I asked if I could include it, he said of course. He just puts up such a crazy shield when he’s being interviewed. He’ll challenge questions, dispute premises, etc. It’s not as frustrating as, say, Mark Teixeira was during his prime, but it’s still not what you expect the first time you try to interview this otherwise bubbly, hilarious star.
Didi had an interesting season. He returned SO fast from the Tommy John surgery (after playing through some gruesome injuries in the last games of 2018), and he may have rushed things in a way that impacted his performance. Who knows. He’s also a free agent now that the season is over, so we’ll see if he’s back in 2020.
But as difficult as it can be to get him to open up, I thought this was a good piece about the kind of guy he is, the way he works, the things that are important to him, and the drive he has to be the absolute best at everything he touches.
