Granderson will head to Shanghai and Beijing By Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY Detroit Tigers center fielder Curtis Granderson, who just spent the last six months traveling across the country playing baseball, boarded a 14-hour flight to begin his winter gig as an ambassador to China. Granderson, the first active major-league player to promote the game of baseball in China on his own, is traveling to Shanghai and Beijing in his third annual winter tour. He went to England, the Netherlands and Italy in 2006, and South Africa last year. He's scheduled to make an appearance with the Shanghai Eagles of the China Baseball Association, the country's six-team professional league, and conduct clinics for school children and the Fudan University baseball team. "The big thing for me is to go to a part of the world that I've never been to," says Granderson, who traveled with his parents. "Then you get there, and you see the talent, the interest, and the excitement on the kids' faces. "Most kids know or at least have heard of the Red Sox or the Yankees. They may not know me, but they'll recognize my face as being the guy in the picture we've been promoting." The beauty of the trip, Granderson says, is to helping expand the horizons of baseball. Granderson grew up in Chicago playing baseball not knowing the game even expanded past the United States. "You're watching games on TV, and I didn't know where they were from," Granderson says. "Everybody thought Sammy Sosa was black. You didn't know he was Dominican. You didn't know there were guys from different parts of the world. We're seeing guys now from Japan and Korea, why not China?" It's Granderson's hunger for a worldwide game that has him volunteering to play in next year's World Baseball Classic. If they want him, Granderson said, he's in. "I'd love to have a chance to do that," Granderson said. "I've never had a chance to represent my country in the Olympics, or even Junior Olympics. So this is the closest I'll ever get." For now, he hopes to simply survive the grind of the two flights lasting a total of 26 hours. "The strangest thing is that when I leave (Oct. 26)," he said, "I'm boarding a flight at 4:24 p.m. And I'm scheduled to land at 4:20 p.m. On the same day. "Talk about a time warp. I hope I don't look too out of whack." --

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