When I was 12, I was taking batting practice with an aluminum bat at Tiger Stadium. I don't know where it landed exactly, but upper deck somewhere. Yeah, people were surprised.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We lived near a playground that had four baseball diamonds on it, and when I got to be 11, 12 years old, I was always over at the ballpark practicing or playing or doing something pertaining to baseball. And when I wasn't doing that, I was bouncing a rubber ball off the steps of my front porch at home.
I played American Legion ball starting when I was 14. But I didn't catch until I was 17. I was 75-3 as a high school pitcher, but it was like everybody knew that I was supposed to be a catcher. When the scouts would come around, and I was pitching, they'd make me take infield practice so the scouts could watch me throw.
When I stepped into the box, I felt the at-bat belonged to me. Everybody else was there for my convenience. The pitcher was there to throw me a ball to hit. The catcher was there to throw it back to him if he didn't give me what I wanted the first time. And the umpire was lucky that he was close enough to watch.
My greatest moment as a jock occurred when I was 14 and playing punch ball in front of my house on Albemarle Road near East 17th Street in Brooklyn. I ran back, back for a ball, and it fell in my hands. I didn't even see it. Everyone congratulated me on the catch, and I never told them how it really happened.
It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course.
One afternoon when I was 9, my dad told me I'd be skipping school the next day. Then we drove 12 hours from Melbourne to Sydney for the Centenary Test, a once-in-a-lifetime commemorative cricket match. It was great fun - especially for a kid who was a massive sports fan.
I played baseball growing up, second base, and then when I got to high school,it just didn't exist there.
The fall of 1912 my fielding was above the average, but my hitting was not so good. However, I was the talk of the town because of my peculiar way of catching a fly ball. They later named it the Vest-Pocket Catch.
There is a special sensation in getting good wood on the ball and driving a double down the left-field line as the crowd in the ballpark rises to its feet and cheers. But, I also remember how much fun I had as a skinny barefoot kid hitting a tennis ball with a broomstick on a quiet, dusty street in Panama.
You know, when I was a young boy I used to play baseball in my back yard or in the street with my brothers or the neighborhood kids. We used broken bats and plastic golf balls and played for hours and hours.