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| Subject: baseball | |
Author: Greg Carlton | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 19:33:16 03/05/05 Sat It's baseball season again. How 'bout them steroids! Speaking of those, I just printed off four copies of me and Barry Bonds' godfather, Willie Mays. The photo was taken by a Look magazine photographer in 1968. Willie has on his Giant's uniform, and mine says Chicago (of course when I was a batboy). Mays was always my favorite player as a kid and to talk to him, stand next to him, and watch him play right in front of me was a dream come true for me. May's is the greatest living ballplayer, not Bonds. You'd better e-mail me, Anna Sue, and tell me what's going on. I go to church with an old friend of yours. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
[> Subject:  Re: baseball
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Author: Michael Cole [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 08:19:13 03/06/05 Sun I have always wondered, how did you get to be a batboy? [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: Re: baseball | |
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Author: Greg Carlton [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 13:33:40 03/06/05 Sun Well Michael, it's kind of a long story. In 1964, the year the Cardinals beat the Yankees in the World Series, I attended spring training in Arizona that year with my grandparents and my mother. As we were walking in the gate of the ballpark where the Cubs trained, a official with the opposing team, the Los Angeles Angels, came up to me and aked me "Do you want a batboy." He was using the term loosely as a verb meaning "do you want to be a batboy for us." I thought he was saying "Do you want a bat, boy." So, of course I wanted a bat. So I said yes and my mother nodded approval and I proceeded to follow him into the visitors clubhouse. As soon as I entered I knew I didn't understand what was going on because a coach came up to me and told me to "suit up" and get out on the field. Of course being only nine at the time, I misconstrued this as meaning I was going to have to play and I knew at nine that I couldn't hit major league pitching. So I became scared and left the clubhouse and said I don't want to do it and appeared up in the stands by my mother with a tear in my eye. I told her I just couldn't hit that fast pitching. She then pointed out to me what a batboy was and I agreed to do it the next day (like it was an easy job to get with a major league baseball team.) Sure enough, the next day I arrived at the ballpark and my mother asked some coaches if they needed a batboy. Several minutes later the equipment manager for the Chicago Cubs came and got me, offered me a cup of soup, showed me what to do, and the rest is history. With the exception of 1965 I attended spring training for two weeks every year and was the Cub's batboy and would also travel to do the same thing for them in St. Louis during the regular season. The neat thing about that is the most heated rivalry in the National League is between the Cardinals and the Cubs and the games were always packed with people from Chicago and St. Louis. I continued doing this through my senior year in high school, for nine years, and met everybody from DiMaggio to Mays from Brock to Gibson and many more. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |