Astros Legend Jeff Bagwell Featured on Season Premiere of “The Road to Cooperstown” Podcast
(COOPERSTOWN, NY) – A new season of “The Road to Cooperstown,” a podcast collaboration between SiriusXM and the National Baseball Hall of Fame, debuts this week with a long-form conversation with Houston Astros great Jeff Bagwell.
Each episode of “The Road to Cooperstown” features host Jon Paul Morosi sitting down with a different Hall of Famer to get their first-hand reflections on their remarkable lives and careers and the unique path they took to earn a place in baseball’s most storied club.
Bagwell, who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2017, finished his career with a .297 batting average, 449 home runs and 1,529 RBI. He was selected to four All-Star Games, finished in the Top 10 in the National League MVP voting six times, and won three Silver Slugger Awards and a Gold Glove. As one of the rare players to have done it all playing for one club, Bagwell shares how meaningful it is to him to have spent his entire career in Houston.
“It means everything,” Bagwell says. “And it’s something that Craig [Biggio] and I both made a point at. You know, there’s two things that have to happen in that situation. There has to be want from the player and it has to be want from the organization. And we had both. Craig and I were very conscious of wanting to finish our career in the same organization.”
While the episode celebrates the highlights of his career, Bagwell also speaks openly about his struggles with alcohol, and the challenges he faced after hanging up his cleats for the last time.
“When you wake up and it’s Opening Day, and it’s 2:30 in the afternoon and you’re sitting in your living room, and you’re supposed to be at the ballpark, that’s a different feeling,” shares Bagwell. “To be able to deal with that separation, and more importantly, [what] is your identity, who am I? So I think what I’ve learned through all this is baseball is not my identity. It’s what I did for a living. It’s not who I am.”
Now almost nine years into sobriety, he credits his wife with helping him through what is a long and difficult journey in sobriety.
“Getting sober is a hell of a lot harder than it was to make the Hall of Fame,” says Bagwell.
Hear all this and more on this week’s season premiere of “The Road to Cooperstown.”
The series is available on the SiriusXM app and on all major podcast platforms. Episodes also air Saturday mornings at 9 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s MLB Network Radio channel.
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