Rob Gronkowski Confesses Big Career Regret as Fox Broadcaster Clears Stance on Giving Up Baseball Dreams

Let us go back to Oct. 4, 2008. In an important game against the Washington Huskies, Rob Gronkowski matched an Arizona Wildcats school record with three touchdown catches. His efforts paid off as Arizona won 48-14 that night. One would have thought nothing could go wrong when he later entered the NFL. But his retirement at the age of 33 perhaps stemmed from some mistakes he made early in his career.

Yes, he won four Super Bowl rings and several other accolades, but post his retirement in 2020, he came back once again to play in the NFL. That didn’t last long, though. He retired in 2022 once again. “I will now be going back to my retirement home, walking away from football again with my head held high knowing I gave it everything I had, good or bad, every time I stepped on the field,” Gronkowski had posted.

But very few people know he played multiple sports as a student. In a new interview with ‘Barstool Sports’, he stated, “I played all three sports. Football, I went into basketball, then I went into baseball all four years. And right after football season, I didn’t really care about football season anymore. It was all about basketball. But the thing is, I am a big advocate of playing all different types of sports because you learn the background of different cultures because all different sports have different backgrounds with the people that are involved…”

Now, some skills can be transferred across different sports. But not all and his is something Gronkowski understood.

Rob Gronkowski further stated, “The problem was after my sophomore year, as I knew I was going to be a football player. So I did start doing that heavy lifting. And I am not a big believer in that anymore. If I can go back I will train totally different than how I trained, man. I feel like I could still be playing if I started that training at a younger age. Because it was all about how heavy of weights you can lift and just toss it off. That’s all and then, my baseball game started fading.”

Well, not everyone is Deion Sanders. ‘Prime Time’ was one of the very few athletes who played in both the leagues. In fact, in 1989, he became the first and only player to score an NFL touchdown and hit an MLB home in the same week. Things don’t end here. In 1992, he almost played two pro sports in one day.

But coming back to Gronkowski, he further discussed his early baseball career. Was he any good?

Rob Gronkowski stopped playing baseball due to football training…

While in football, you must be strong and athletic, baseball requires you to be super agile. And let’s just say that by his junior year, Rob Gronkowski realized this. Maybe too late. For those who missed, the TE in his freshmen year was a beast in baseball, with a batting average of .440.

Jeez, that man was a true all-rounder!

But, as the saying goes, focusing on one thing causes the others to vanish. This is what Gronk went through after heavy weightlifting training. Although the man had a fantastic sophomore year on the baseball field, his Junior year was significantly worse. “I was getting too jacked and too stiff and that’s not good. If you want to be an athlete, you can’t get stiff. And all I cared about was getting jacked,” Gronkowski shared.

As a result of his rigorous training, he saw a drop in his hitting average. This was hardly an ordinary setback, as his batting average dipped to .240 in his junior year. Now that’s a big downfall.

Rob Gronkowski explained his frustration: “Like how do you decline that bad in two years?” This shows that, while he desired to be a footballer, he never wanted to lose touch with any other sport.

And perhaps if he had hit several home runs, we could have referred to him as a baseball legend. But, as previously mentioned, everything happens for a purpose. So what do you think about it? Do you think he should have pursued baseball instead? Let us know in the comments below.