My final full day in China began as we left the hotel at 8 a.m.  We headed to a Play Ball coaches clinic today.  The Play Ball program is set up to help the kids in the school system to learn and begin the game.  Well eventually someone has to be able to coach these kids.  This coaches clinic is just that and was held at a local university here in Beijing.
 
The men and women who were at the clinic will all graduate from the college and also be certified to coach baseball in China.  I think this was great idea because it isn't just a class where you read about and study the game.  These future coaches are also playing the game, so they fully understand the rules, actions, and correct ways to play the baseball.
 
After this clinic, my mom, dad, and I headed to the Great Wall of China.  Once arriving there, we had an option of either walking up to the top or taking the ski lift car.  Since we were being lazy and saw how far we had to walk, we decided to take the lift.  This was a great suggestion, because once we made it to the top, there was even more to walk up.  If you ever make it the Great Wall, I would suggest the lift, just because once you do make it to the top, you want to be able to walk around up there, instead of exhausting all your energy trying to walk up it.
 
After making it to the top of our section, the sites that I was able to see were amazing.  It's tough to imagine that over 2,000 years ago people were able to build this 2,000 mile long wall with no equipment, and up at extremely high points of this hills and mountains.  It is rumored that this is the only man-made object that can be seen from the moon.
 
After seeing it, the Wall isn't that wide, but even though it is over 2,000 miles long, I still have trouble believing it can be seen from the moon.  We headed back into Beijing and got a chance to head to the some of the Olympic sites, stopping by the Birds Nest and the Water Cube.  These two places, along with the Great Wall, and Tiananmen Square were other great indications of how many people are in China.  All of these places that are really only an hour apart all had thousands and thousands of people.
 
The thing to do now in the China is to come to Beijing and get your picture taken by the Birds Nest.  Everyone is so proud of this stadium, and they should be.  I have never seen anything like it.  Now we are all hungry and were going to head for Peking Duck tonight.  We ordered duck side dishes along with the whole duck (very similar to the duck at the end of the movie Christmas Story).  If you have seen this movie, they ended up cutting of the head at the dinner table before serving it.  Here they served everything including the head.
 
XiaoXiao and I both split the head and we each ate the brain and the other parts of the head that were edible.  It was good.  We headed out for a little bit tonight to catch the Beijing nightlife, which wrapped up our final evening.  Tomorrow begins early again with an interview with Sports Illustrated China.  This I'm really excited about, because I know how big Sports Illustrated is in the States, and to get a chance to be in it here in China is really cool.  I hope i get a chance to get a copy of the issue.

After getting the chance to sleep in this morning until 9:30 a.m., we left around 10 to head out and see some of Beijing.  We started walking down the street headed towards Tiananmen Square.  This is one of the most recognizable areas in the world.
 
We all remember the footage from 1989 when a student was standing in the street with a briefcase trying to stop the People's Liberation Army''s advancing tanks.  The is the video where the military marches with their high leg kicks, to raise and lower the flag.
 
A ton of people were out in this area and a lot of those people were also staring at my parents and I.  I know it wasn't cause they knew I played baseball (even though one person said he did see me in the newspaper here).  I remember talking with a few people my first few days here in China and they were saying that the Chinese people aren't use to seeing African-American people.  So throughout the day, it was funny to see little kids almost fall down to try and turn around and look at my dad.
 
We then walked into the Forbidden City which is a HUGE city in itself. I thought it would have been a smaller, more secret and secluded, type of place, but it is very big and surrounded by a 30-40 high brick wall.  Before heading out into the Forbidden City, my mom, dad, and I went and dressed up in Chinese outfits.  This again drew even more people over and this time they were taking photos of us.
 
After we got some site-seeing in, I headed over to one of MLB's Play Ball schools.  The Play Ball school is a program used to help get middle school kids a chance to start playing team baseball, have practice and learn the game.  In Detroit we have a Play Ball campaign, which is very similar to the one in China, to help grow awareness and passion of the game of baseball in the inner city community.
 
We had a few lessons, a short camp, and some interviews and then got ready to head home and change.  At night, we headed to a place called the Goose and Duck, which is an American-style sports bar.  The place had games to play, TV's to watch, American food, and a whole pig which was part of the meal.  This event at the Goose and Duck was to also held to help raise the awareness of the game of baseball for the people of China, and also to thank those who are currently in China who are helping to make baseball a success.
 
We handed out prizes to those who attended, we did a small raffle and even had the re-run of game two of the World Series.  It's a very good place if you are in Beijing and looking to see American sports on TV.  After finishing up there, we finally arrived back at the hotel at 11 p.m.

The day started with us heading to the Shanghai Media Group, which is one of the big sports broadcasting groups in Shanghai.  We left the hotel at 8:30 a.m. so we could get there to do the interview during game one of the World Series.  With the time change, all the games come on here in the morning.  It's a little bit funny for me to have to eat breakfast and watch baseball.
 
After the interviews, I headed back to my hotel and finished watching a really good game one.  I left after lunch to Fudan University, which is one of the best colleges in Shanghai.  We went there to work out with their baseball team, which isn't exactly the same as the college team I played for.  What I mean by that is that baseball is still a fairly new sport at the university.  There are both men and women on the team.  A lot of them are happy to try something different, and others are mainly out there to be with their friends.  Either way, they are learning a new game and having fun doing it.
 
The good thing about seeing baseball start at this university is that the younger kids now see that if they want to play baseball at a young age, there might be rewards by also getting a chance to play in college.  There was also a student from San Diego who was studying abroad at this camp, so that was cool to have someone from the states out here.
 
These kids all knew a little bit of English, so it made it even easier to communicate with the group, and we finished up the day with a guys vs. girls hitting competition.  There was a tie in the first group, and the girls won in the second group.
 
After the camp and competition, we had to rush back to the hotel to check out and head to the airport to catch our flight to Beijing.  I ended up having McDonalds at the airport for the first time in China.  It was interesting to have to order everything by pointing to the pictures.  For the most part, the menu was about the same as it was in the US, but they had three different levels of spicy chicken sandwiches and also really spicy fried chicken wings, which were really good.
 
So now i'm in my room at 2:15 a.m. finally ready to get some sleep and get ready for the day tomorrow.  Another interesting thing to note is that while speaking with one of the coordinators and translators (XiaoXiao Jiang, who actually received her masters in the United States) we got on the subject of Chinese food and fortune cookies.  She said there is no such thing.  When she was in school in the states and would go to a Chinese food buffet, she was wondering what that thing (fortune cookie) was at the end of the meal.  I thought always that the fortune cookie was a Chinese tradition.  Come to find out that it isn't.  So who invented those?

Our third day began with breakfast again at 8:30 followed by travel to our first baseball academy here in China. We stopped at the Shanghai Eagles practice, which was held at a sports complex that houses softball, basketball, and many other sports. Kids ages 15-19 practice and play their sport twice a day, 365 days a year in this complex. You would think that with all that practice, these kids in all those sports would be some of the best in the world.
 
One of the things I have found out really quickly here is that the Communist government controls everything that happens from all angles. Even though they train and practice every day, the Shanghai Eagles may only play 5-10 games a year. As you can see, it this is the main reason why their skills aren't to their full potential. The kids have a lot of talent and a great make up in terms of baseball bodies.
 
I gave them a few basics thoughts about hitting and they asked questions. I'm not coming here to try and change anyone here and how they swing. I never do that. The great thing about baseball is that everything can look different at the start, but at the moment of contact, play, or pitch, everything will look the same and have the same result, so I never say "do it like me." To prove that point, these kids wanted to see me hit. Everyones stance, including mine, were all different, but we were all able to hit the ball off the tee.
 
After concluding the session with the Eagles, my parents joined me for lunch with AmCham (which had a lot of baseball fans from the states). At this lunch we talked about the chances and reasons why baseball should be here in China. There was a representative from the NBA at the meeting too, and he mentioned some of the things that has made the NBA work in China, though they feel they still have a long way to go. If you think about it, Yao Ming, Yi Jianlian, and Sun Yue are the only Chinese players currently in the NBA.
 
After this lunch, we headed to our second school, which is part of the MLBI Play Ball Program. Basically what this program does is gives kids ages 8-12 the chance to start with baseball as a part of the education in school. These were a great group of kids, which also followed with some media and a lot of great questions from the kids. For some reason, they all wanted to see me slide (which I did not do), but that was the popular question among the group. It was a very long day, but I had a lot of working with the kids and getting to see some baseball in China.

Today we woke up and had breakfast in the hotel, where we were greeted by a Chinese lady and a gentlemen who spoke great English who took us to our seats. After we began to eat, that man came back over and asked if we were American, and we said yes. He was so happy to see another American. He and his girlfriend had moved to China about a year and half ago and have been and plan on staying there for a long time. Then the questions began.
 
He asked what I was doing here, and I told him I was here to promote baseball. He asked if I played and I said yes for the the Tigers. He then asked who I was and I told him. That's when he said he was a Phillies fan. We talked for a little bit, finished our breakfast, and went out around town to site see.
 
We headed to Xintiandi which is a big shopping mart area where my family and I were able to get a lot of gifts for people back home. I was able to pick up some chop sticks to hopefully add to my new house. We had lunch at a very popular place called NanXiang. The food was good and the wait was hours long, but we had a reservation, so we walked right in. We had many different types of dumplings and I also had a hairy crab, which was a crab with hair on its claws. It was good but messy and was a lot of work to eat.
 
After lunch we went to the LuJiaZui (PuDong New District). The reason they call it the new district is because a majority of the area has all been built in the last 10 years. It's amazing to see big buildings on top of big buildings all over the place and they all came in the last few years. We ended up going to the World Financial Center, which is now the tallest building in the world. Right next to it are two other buildings that are also in the top 10 tallest buildings in the world.
 
We made it to the 100th floor, and that was the first time I could truly see how big Shanghai was. This is a city of 14 million people, and it is a huge area that it covers. The sky lines in Chicago and New York City Sky are amazing, but Shanghai blew both of those away. After seeing that, we came back to the hotel, showered up, changed and headed to eat at the M on the Bund. This was a very nice restaurant and had a great view of the PuDong area we had saw earlier. At night with all the buildings lit up, we were able to get another amazing view. After dinner, I think the time change had finally got to me, as it's a 13-hour difference from home. I found myself falling asleep at the dinner table at 8 p.m. So we finally headed back to the hotel to get some rest.

My flight from Chicago to Shanghai was a 14-hour trip. This was the first time my mom, dad and I have been on a plane for this long of a flight, so we weren't too sure how we would be.
 
To start, we ended up with about an hour delay because they had to switch the battery of the plane out for some reason. After that, everything was good, and we were finally able to take off. I'm one of those guys that can sleep on any plane as long as I have a window seat and it's not hot on the plane. So sure enough, I fell asleep right away once we got into the air. I only really woke up a few times to eat, and walk around the plane for a bit, which made that 14 hours not seem so long. I also had to check my Rosetta Stone out.
 
When we arrived here at the Shanghai airport, we had to find our group from MLB International to get our ride to the hotel, but none of us had every seen each other, so it was going to be a little bit difficult. The good thing was that they were American and everyone else waiting with their signs for their guest were all Chinese, so it helped to find them. We drove into the city and arrived at our hotel, where we checked in and went to eat. You would assume that our first meal when we got in would be Chinese food, but it wasn't. We actually at at a Tony Roma's for ribs our first meal because it was right next to our hotel. After dinner, we walked around a little bit, and my parents were a little tired, so we called it a night.

Note: This blog is also published on ESPN.com. This blog may not be re-published without the expressed written consent of Full Athlete Marketing.

A lot of the same communication is done up here at the major league level. In the outfield, I'll call off the infielder by saying "I got it, I got it, I got it." In the infield, if I steal a base, I hear the first baseman or even someone from the bench yell "runner." As for cut-offs in the infield, I'm not 100 percent sure, because I haven't played there since high school, but if the fielder doesn't want the ball to be cut, then they don't say anything. If they want the ball to be cut, then they yell which base to cut the ball too. Now the cutoff man also makes a decision without having to be told anything either. If the ball is offline, it's his judgment to cut the ball off. Even though it is pretty noisy with the crowds, we end up so close to each other when we are communicating that for the most part we can still hear each other.

Curtis Granderson is the starting center fielder and leadoff hitter for the Detroit Tigers. In 2007, he became one of four players in MLB history to record at least 20 doubles, 20 triples, 20 homeruns and 20 stolen bases in a single season. He is the founder of the Grand Kids Foundation, and holds college degrees in Business Marketing and Business Management from the Univ. of Illinois-Chicago.

Note: This blog is also published on ESPN.com. This blog may not be re-published without the expressed written consent of Full Athlete Marketing.

Curtis Granderson is the starting center fielder and leadoff hitter for the Detroit Tigers. In 2007, he became one of four players in MLB history to record at least 20 doubles, 20 triples, 20 homeruns and 20 stolen bases in a single season. He is the founder of the Grand Kids Foundation, and holds college degrees in Business Marketing and Business Management from the Univ. of Illinois-Chicago.

Note: This blog is also published on ESPN.com. This blog may not be re-published without the expressed written consent of Full Athlete Marketing.

Curtis Granderson is the starting center fielder and leadoff hitter for the Detroit Tigers. In 2007, he became one of four players in MLB history to record at least 20 doubles, 20 triples, 20 homeruns and 20 stolen bases in a single season. He is the founder of the Grand Kids Foundation, and holds college degrees in Business Marketing and Business Management from the Univ. of Illinois-Chicago.