The Brewer is a vintner: Greg Vaughn on wine, his son’s recovery and the greatest compliment Robin Yount ever gave him

LODI, Calif. — More than 350 home runs ago, long before he debated red or white, Greg Vaughn toasted an early baseball milestone by cracking open a 40-ounce brewskie. He did so with another promising young slugger, Gary Sheffield, and they clinked bottles of the cheap stuff to commemorate their first professional spring training in 1987.

“Oh, there’s definitely no wine in the minor leagues,’’ Vaughn says now, swirling a glass of cabernet on a spring afternoon. “Me and Sheffield, we made that a ritual every spring training. And then we switched to good wine. Now it’s really good wine.”

Vaughn says this while reclining on an unpretentious throne. He is on a plastic folding chair, parked by the rickety card table not far from the tank room. The conversation is occasionally interrupted by the low rumble of a tractor on its way to the vineyard.

We are situated in the middle of a 430-acre family farm in Lodi and Vaughn is introducing the really good wine, which is to say his wine. It’s the one he made on this land, featuring the flavor profile he selected, then wrapped in the label he designed and topped with the tinted-black foil he picked out to cover the cork. Vaughn was there in the fields one night to see what a 12-hour harvesting shift looks like and he was there when the finished product came rattling down the bottling line.

The Brewer is now a vintner. Vaughn, who delivered one of the stealthiest 50-homer seasons in baseball history, for the Padres in 1998, says he likes a strong first sip and a subtle finish. In this life, as with his old one, he enjoys barreling one up.

Like so many others, Vaughn turned to wine in large quantities as a way of coping with the shutdown of 2020. Unlike so many others, Vaughn focused not on consuming it but producing it, working with the established winemaker Brett Ehlers of E2 Family Winery to craft more than 100 cases as a way of generating money for charity.

Vaughn, 55, is now a community activist who runs a foundation, but COVID-19 restrictions nixed his biggest fundraisers: a celebrity golf tournament and comedy show. Needing the money for his foundation, he ventured into the pandemic-proof world of alcohol. Profits from his GV23 cabernet and chardonnay, which sell for $30 a bottle, go to the Vaughn’s Valley Foundation, and the four-time All-Star in turn pours it back into various causes.

“We passed out a ton of PPE during this pandemic. We fed over a million people. I bought over 3,000 Chromebooks and 10,000 whiteboards for distance learning,’’ Vaughn said. “Whatever is going on in my community, or as I call it, my village — and I think the whole world is part of my village — I want to do my part to try to help.”

The label of Greg Vaughn’s Chardonnay features the raised seams of a baseball.

This whole happy ride owes its origins to fear. Starting in the summer of 2000, Vaughn grew terrified of climbing the stairs of his home in Elk Grove. That’s where his son’s room was.

Each morning, over the course of several months, Vaughn would pause to gather himself at the bottom step before making the mentally arduous climb to check on him.

“Walking up the stairs the first year or so was tough. ‘Is he gonna be OK? Is he gonna be all right?’’’ Vaughn said.

Cory, at age 11, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes that September, but only after doctors missed it a few times first. They took a look at the kid’s lethargy, non-existent appetite and glassy eyes and told his parents it was probably the flu.

But it kept getting worse, leaving a once-vibrant kid suddenly struggling to stay upright.

“We’d have recess and I’d play outside for 5 minutes, and I’d be so exhausted and just feel terrible,’’ Cory, now a 31-year-old firefighter, said by phone. “I would go in the bathroom and sit on the tiled floor because it was cool and had AC. And I was peeing every two seconds. It was just a weird feeling. So I remember telling my parents like, ‘Yeah, I don’t feel good.’’’

Cory laughed.

“But I grew up drinking hose water, so they’re like, ‘Oh, you’ll be all right. Take it easy and you’ll be fine,’’’ he added.

Not until Cory was rushed to the emergency room at Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento, where his blood sugar level hit 700, more than three times the normal range, was his Type 1 diagnosis finally identified. One doctor told him they caught it just in time; Cory was roughly 24 hours away from going into a coma. Vaughn’s former wife, Michelle, made the call while Vaughn was on a road trip with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and was about as far away as he could get. It was a scramble to get from Toronto to Sacramento, but Vaughn got there as quickly as he could with the team’s blessing.

“I remember getting a phone call that he had diabetes. And I didn’t know anything about it. I thought it was for older, out-of-shape people,’’ Greg said. “I didn’t know there was a ‘juvenile diabetes.’ I was very ignorant to it. And I tried to get as much information as I could, even before I got on my flight.”

Cory wound up spending five days in an intensive-care unit before coming home. His dad’s presence there proved as constant as those damned beeping monitors. The Devil Rays kept asking Vaughn when he was coming back and the answer was the same every time: “I have to get this handled.”

What Cory recalls most about his time in the ICU is that his dad camped out by his bedside, despite the less-than-lavish accommodations. “I remember he slept in the hospital in the little recliner chair next to me every night,’’ Cory said.

Vaughn recognized that the diagnosis was a tough blow for Cory and acknowledged as much. But a week in a busy children’s ward had a profound influence on framing that discussion. “I said, ‘Son, we feel like we got screwed and we don’t know why. And maybe we’re not supposed to know why. But if you look at the pastor going to some of these rooms, those kids would pray to have what you have right now,’’’ Vaughn said. “So, let’s get it together and educate ourselves on diabetes.”

Both Greg and Cory are now actively involved in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the leading non-profit agency when it comes to funding research and advocating for what was once known as juvenile diabetes. Vaughn represents JDRF at events all over Northern California.

The slugger created the Vaughn’s Valley Foundation specifically to focus on Type 1 diabetes before realizing he had narrowed the focus. To put it in baseball terms, he expanded the zone, and now his foundation, which is affiliated with the Maryland-based Players Philanthropy Fund, reacts to evolving needs within the community, whether it’s funding youth sports, arranging meals for the elderly, encouraging better fathers or various challenges that come with a global pandemic.

“What you have,’’ Dusty Baker, the Astros manager and longtime friend, said, “is a genuine person who cares about the community and who cares about people. Yes, he’s strong-willed and strong-minded, but he’s also sensitive to the needs of others. He’s always trying to help people.”

Former infielder Jerry Royster, like Baker, is part of Sacramento’s surprisingly tight network of major-leaguers from the area. Royster praised Vaughn’s ability to rally ex-athletes — whether it’s baseball players or NFL stars like Charles Woodson or NBA stars like Gary Payton.

“Greg has made quite an impression on everyone in Sacramento, to the point where, if Greg is having some event, the mayor and everybody else are going to show up,’’ Royster said. “And that’s just a tribute to who he is.”

In a nod to the Sacramento area code, Royster added: “He says it all the time: ‘I’m 916 forever.’ He’s been giving back to this community ever since he left to go to college. He’s involved with schools. He coaches kids. He’s got stadiums named after him. It’s never-ending for him.”

Greg Vaughn hit 355 career home runs, made four All-Star teams and, in 1998, won a Silver Slugger award. (Ronald C. Modra / Getty Images)

A bottle of wine and a rollicking baseball career make for an ideal pairing, and Vaughn delights with name-checked tales from his playing days. There’s an air of wistfulness when he talks about a brand of camaraderie that now borders on extinction.

“It’s the one-on-one relationships that you got to build, you know? There was no device sitting in your locker. You go into locker rooms now and they don’t talk. They’re staring at their phones or their iPads,’’ Vaughn said. “I couldn’t imagine that. All I did was talk. Me and Cammie, me and Tony, me and Robin, me and Paulie.”

He means Ken Caminiti, Tony Gwynn, Robin Yount and Paul Molitor. A marvelous vintage, indeed.

Vaughn said one of the two greatest compliments he ever received came from Yount, who told his young Brewers teammate in the early 1990s, “You could have played in our era.” In Milwaukee, this is the equivalent of Mick Jagger saying, “Nice song.’’ The words touched Vaughn because he knew what they meant: that he played both ferociously and wisely, breaking up double plays, moving runners over, taking extra bases and thinking along with the game.

“Yount was my locker mate. That was like a dad. Big brother. He took care of me like I was part of his family,” Vaughn said. “That’s who I sat next to every single day. And that’s what I played for. I played for the respect of my teammates and my peers. That was the most important thing to me.”

But when Vaughn reaches the story of the second greatest compliment he ever received, it arrives with an air of second-glass embellishment. Or maybe it was the third glass. There are no advanced metrics on a winery. But something compelled Vaughn to insist that longtime Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman called him, “The best leader I’ve ever seen in 40-plus years of broadcasting.”

That, on its face, is an absurd claim. Brennaman began doing Reds games in 1974, which is to say just as Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and other robust personalities were on the verge of catapulting Cincinnati to back-to-back World Series titles. Vaughn’s lone season in Cincinnati was for a 1999 squad that finished second in the division.

“He didn’t say, ‘best player,’’’ Vaughn explained, “he said best leader.”

So, a few days later, just to make sure it wasn’t the wine talking, I checked with Brennaman to see what he’d actually said that somehow wound up innocently misconstrued.

As it turns out, Brennaman’s exact words were: Greg Vaughn is the best leader I’ve ever seen in 40-plus years of broadcasting.

“I’ve said it a million times. For me, he was just special. He stood out,’’ Brennaman said by phone. “If I made a top-10 list of the best leaders I ever saw, the Big Red Machine would be well-represented. It would have Tony Perez and Johnny Bench and Pete Rose and Joe Morgan. They’d all be on there somewhere.

“But Greg Vaughn would be No. 1.”

He recalled how Vaughn, a newcomer to the Reds in ‘99, took command from the start, even on a team with respected veterans like Barry Larkin and Sean Casey. Those guys led by example, the broadcaster said, while Vaughn delivered messages with jackhammer force.

“He just did not tolerate anyone who didn’t play all-out every minute they were on the field,’’ recalled Brennaman, who was honored by the Hall of Fame with the Frick Award in 2000. “If someone was jogging, he would be at the top of the dugout waiting for him and would call him out and get in his face. He was an intense guy. Nobody would say it now, but I think those guys were afraid of him.”

Vaughn’s version now is that he had played for a pennant-winning ballclub earlier in his career and, upon being the first 50-home run player ever to be traded, encountered a Reds clubhouse culture that made it clear why the squad had finished 25 games out the year prior. Luckily, Vaughn didn’t mind installing a little fear. Think of him as the Big Dread Machine.

“I shut the door at one point and was like, ‘Hey, man, I just came from the World Series. I don’t know what you guys are doing over here. But this is not how we’re gonna do it!’’’ Vaughn said.

Then he ordered the coaches out of the room on the spot. The meeting was for players only.

“I guess I was the bad cop?” he continued. “But I said, ‘You’re not taking BP because it’s too hot? Well, it’s hot for the other team, too. Get ready, because we’re taking BP. And you’re gonna come out and you’re gonna stretch. And we’re gonna be a team.’”

Those Reds teetered as far as four games out of first midway through September, but Vaughn hit 17 homers with a 1.083 OPS after Sept. 1 to help the Reds force a 163rd game. “He just put that team on his back,’’ Brennaman recalled.

It’s a good thing Vaughn didn’t play for individual accomplishments because he nearly blew the biggest milestone he ever reached. Vaughn is one of 33 players to hit 50 homers in a season, but it was easy to miss because of his unusual path. For one thing, Vaughn did so as the distant undercard to the Mark McGwire-Sammy Sosa summer of love in 1998. For another, Vaughn hit homer No. 49 that season on Sept. 14 — before vanishing into the sinkhole of a terrible slump.

Needing just one more homer for the rare feat, he instead went 4-for-35 with zero extra-base hits and nine strikeouts over his next 10 games. Feeling the pressure, he went from Mantle to Mendoza in the blink of an eye.

Vaughn headed into the final game of the season, in Arizona, still needing one more pesky dinger. He walked in the first inning, lined out in the third and then, as if to build the drama, flied out to center in the sixth.

Bruce Bochy, who managed the Padres at the time, kept telling Vaughn to relax. San Diego won the NL West that season by 9.5 games.

“So after my third at-bat, I went and had a talk with myself in the dugout,’’ Vaughn recalled. “I said, ‘You know what, dummy? Forty-nine is still a good year. Quit being so hard on yourself.’’’

In his fourth and final at-bat, Vaughn fell behind 0-2 in the count. Then he crushed a hanging slider from Aaron Small into the Diamondbacks bullpen. No. 50, the longball at long last.

“The whole dugout ran out there like it was the Little League World Series. And you know, I almost broke Davey Lopes’ arm high-fiving him at first base,’’ Vaughn said. “The whole city and everybody was pulling for me to get in that special club.”

In a way, that happy vibe never ended. There is to this day a text chain featuring 23 Padres of that era. “Every day, there’s somebody saying something, you know?” Vaughn said of a bond formed 22 years ago.

The text chain includes players, coaches and clubbies. Bochy, who is on the chain, too, says now that Vaughn is one of the reasons the good vibes proved so long-lasting.
“Oh, Vaughnie, he’s one of my all-time favorites,’’ Bochy said by phone. “He’s just so highly thought of by all his teammates. It’s really good to see this group stick together like this.”

Bochy said that the massive celebration surrounding the 50th homer went beyond ceremonial. The Padres had lost their spark in the waning weeks of that season, dropping eight of 10 games before that eventful season finale.

“I think I had more meetings in September than I had the whole year, just trying to get the club ready for the postseason,’’ Bochy said. “You don’t just turn it on (in the playoffs). But I think what the biggest difference-maker was in terms of us getting back on track was Vaughn’s last at-bat of the season. I mean, this was it: his last shot at doing it. And he hit the line-drive home run and it won the game for us. That just seemed like it brought the team back together because they were so happy for Vaughnie. They were pulling for him so hard. It definitely brought the club together.”

For his GV23 cabernet and chardonnay, Greg Vaughn collaborated with established winemaker Brett Ehlers. Along the way, Vaughn rode a harvester, designed the label and picked out the corks. (Aaron Moses via E2 Family Winery)

Vaughn is back on a farm club again, much to his surprise. As a kid growing up on the urban streets of south Sacramento in the 1980s, he turned up his nose whenever his John F. Kennedy High team traveled to the nowhere land of Grant Line Road.

“It was all frickin’ farm country,’’ Vaughn said. “When we played Elk Grove, we’d be on the bus and I’d think, ‘Who would want to live out here?’ All you smell is cow and horse crap. I don’t like flies. I don’t like dirt.’’

Vaughn made an estimated $55 million during his playing career, according to baseball-reference.com. So when it came time to buy a permanent home, he took all that money and bought himself a place … in Elk Grove, just off Grant Line Road.

“It’s peaceful for me when I’m on a tractor,’’ Vaughn said. “It was a new way of life for me. But I think it was awesome to raise my kids out there. But as a 14-year-old kid, I’m like, who would ever want to live out here? I still don’t like flies, but I love everything else.”

From his home, it’s just a 30-minute drive to the underrated fertile vineyards of Lodi. While Napa and Sonoma and other grape-growing regions of California draw more tourists, this Central Valley town keeps pushing toward oenophile prominence. In 2015, Wine Enthusiast magazine named it the “2015 Wine Region of the Year.’’

The Ehlers family was among the earliest to recognize the potential of the soil here. Herman Walter Ehlers was the first winemaker in Lodi, in 1921. This was during Prohibition, so they made sacramental wine for churches.

Today, his great-grandson makes wine with ballplayers. Brett is sitting on what was once his great-grandfather’s chair (“I’m staying on this until the wheels fall off … and two of them are already off,” he says). He is parked near that rickety picnic table while explaining Vaughn’s role in the process. The GV23 wine was created mostly from 2016 Cabernet, with other wines blended into it. A little bit of Merlot here, a little more petite Syrah there. “And then just work backward to where we got to where he’s like, ‘Yeah that’s the profile I want,’’’ Ehlers said.

And then he showed the wine rookie the ropes. Ehlers has done this for other celebrity winemakers. He helped a professional wrestler create The Undertaker Limited Edition Cabernet Sauvignon. He partnered with “Star Trek” executives to concoct the United Federation of Planets Special Reserve. Former Cy Young Award winner Vida Blue is interested in partnering soon, raising the possibility of being able to order red, white or Blue.

Baker also owns a winery, in nearby West Sacramento. (Baker Family Wines recently debuted a Hammerin’ Hank Cabernet Sauvignon in honor of his former Braves teammate.) Baker said he is happy to see another African American enter into the industry and even happier to hear that Vaughn, like himself, is actually hands-on when it comes to the non-glamorous part of making wine.

Because Vaughn got pretty deep into the vines.

“Greg got to ride on the harvester and be a part of the chardonnay being harvested,’’ Ehlers said. “And going through the whole process from there. He wanted to be able to get from the ground up, you know, to be part of the processes from start to finish.”

Then again, Vaughn said, there is no finish. He said that as the pandemic ebbs, the wine will be intertwined with his previous charity ventures. As the world starts spinning again, they’ll serve (and sell) GV23 wines at his golf tournaments and comedy shows.

“It’s helping out our community. And it’s helping out our kids in need,’’ Vaughn said. “It’s been able to touch lives. I just try to do my part. I was blessed. I just tried to bless other people.”

Cheers to that.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED: Vaughn will be taking photos and signing bottles at the Rib Cook-Off and Cornhole Tournament at E2 Family Winery on June 5. The event starts at noon at 9009 W. Highway 12, Lodi, CA 94254. Admission is free and rib tickets are $2 each.