CHICAGO — You know the expression “Go big or go home”?
Curtis Granderson found a way to do both.
About five years ago, the outfielder, having just completed his first season with the Yankees, agreed to fund a stadium at his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“It started out as, [let’s emulate] Yankee Stadium,” the Mets’ leadoff hitter said earlier this week at Wrigley Field. “And then we started to tone it down.”
The finished product is toned way, way down from the behemoth in The Bronx. But Les Miller Field at Curtis Granderson Stadium, which opened last year, stands as a marvel, in both its aesthetics and its cultural significance, in the Windy City’s West Loop — about a 30-minute drive from Wrigley, where Granderson and the Mets secured their invitation to the 2015 World Series by sweeping the Cubs in the National League Championship Series.