Mr BioFile Interviews by Scoop Malinowski
By Scoop Malinowski
The vitals: 6-3, 215
DOB: March 7, 1960 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Childhood Heroes: “The Big Red Machine – Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron – guys we heard a lot about.”
Nicknames: “Jody – growing up. Only the people who really knew me called me that.”
First Job: “Pumping gas at my father’s Coneco gas station (age 8). Had my own Coneco green uniform.”
First Car: “1975 red and white Chevy Monte Carlo.”
Early Baseball Memory: “The things I remember as a youngster, after a game, we’d always go out to the A&W to have a root beer float. After every game. And then, whoever had the great game, always got like two or three. So I was always one of the better players, so I’d always get like two or three root beer floats [smiles].”
Favorite Meal: “Seafood. With a lot of water. Water’s good for you.”
Favorite Ice Cream Flavor: “Butter pecan.”
Favorite Movies: “The Wiz. In fact, I watch that two or three times every year when I go home. Any Harrison Ford movie. Any movie that he stars in is going to be a good movie.”
Musical Tastes: “Nice slow ballads.”
Greatest Sports Moment: “Oh, that’s a hard one [smiles]. Oh, let me see, I think it might have been the 1993 World Series [laughs]. Yeah, that was by far the greatest moment (Joe hit the Series-winning, bottom-of-the-ninth-inning HR in game 6 vs. Philadelphia’s Mitch Williams). To be put in a situation like that, to come through for your teammates with something as dramatic as that…you can’t really put it into words. I’ve talked about it for years now and you still come up with different ways to express how climatic it was. I could go on and on because every year it gets better and better. Because you realize, How often does that happen? I could describe it so differently than when I first hit it. It was the ultimate dream.”
Most Painful Moment: “Getting hit in the nose. Breaking my nose (by Keith Atherton in 1987 at The Metrodome). A slider got away from him. Hit my nose, broke my nose. I had the operation a day later. My nose was like under my right eye. It was really bad. Most painful experience in baseball. But after the operation, I was back playing again. Wasn’t painful enough to keep me out.”
Toughest Competitor(s): “Well, fierce in the way they prepare themselves…I played with Roger Clemens. I saw how he gets himself ready. The whole day, what he goes through. His gameplan. He’s very ferocious out there on the mound. You know when he’s out there pitching, you know it’s gonna be a tough ballgame. He’ll challenge you, he’ll knock you down. He’ll throw at you, he’ll throw behind you. He hit me like four or five times over in Boston. But now I respect that. It’s more out of respect…more from a respect part than from being a cocky guy. Everything has a purpose. I respect guys like that.”
Interesting Fact: “I graduated high school with a 3.66 GPA. Top 10% of my school. Always loved going to school.”
Funny Baseball Memory: “The best joke was when we got on Derek Bell back in 1992. The last day of the season they put it up on the Jumbotron…that we raffled off his car. We brought his car in. We gave away his brand new Jeep with a new $10,000 stereo system. I orchestrated the whole thing. That was the funniest thing…to see his eyes when we drove his car on the field. He didn’t know what was going on.”
People Qualities Most Admired: “I like to see people who are true and honest, who like to have a lot of fun. A good sense of humor. I’ve always been one…I don’t take things too seriously. But when I do, it’s for a purpose. But I like to have fun. I want to be around people who are very enthusiastic, who like to laugh. If I’m around people like that, it makes life better, makes life fun.”
Career Accomplishments: Two-time World Series champion (1992, 1993); Five-time All Star; 395 career home runs and 1445 RBI; .259 career batting average with 2184 hits; Major League Baseball outfielder 1983-1998 with Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians, San Diego Padres, Toronto Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles and San Francisco Giants.
Scoop Malinowski is a contributor to MLB.com. He created the Biofile interview feature in 1992. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.Joe Carter
By Scoop Malinowski / MLB.com
