Before I joined professional baseball, I started umpiring in San Diego, California. I worked 155 games in a five-month season. For three years in a row, I was working tripleheaders on Saturday and doubleheaders on Sunday.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I had 12 years under my belt of baseball at the amateur level before I got to the big leagues.
I started in the lowest league in baseball, and I worked my way all the way up to Triple A and then to the big leagues. I never reached the level that I thought I would reach as a player. But that's the way it goes. So then I started from the bottom as a manager, and I worked my way up to managing the Dodgers for 20 years.
I was a ballplayer, but only for a limited time. I grew up playing in Wisconsin. It's a very sports-centric part of the country that I grew up in and I played a lot of sports, but baseball first and foremost. I played through high school. I was a middle-infielder.
Believe it or not, I worked four summers in college as a sports writer covering baseball for a parks and rec department in Bayonne, N.J.
My first year of pro ball I played in the Northwest league and made the all-star team, and the next year I played I led the team in hitting and was third or fifth in the league.
I'm in the major league now.
As a youngster, I played in Little League, Pony League, and all sorts of amateur baseball programs growing up.
When I signed a contract, I was here to play 162 games.
I was a professional baseball player from the time I was drafted out of high school in 1981 until the time I retired in 2003.
I've been playing baseball since I was 5 or 6 years old. I've been on a schedule, pretty much, since I was in eighth, ninth grade. I look forward to not doing that.