Grassroots Baseball by Jean Fruth

Author:Jean Fruth
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781683583264
Publisher: Sports Publishing
Published: 2019-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Hall of Famer Randy Johnson, five-time Cy Young Award-winner, Main Street, Cooperstown, NY.

The nickname on my Hall of Fame plaque says, “Big Unit.” But it was Little League that began my 44-year journey to Cooperstown. I was 7 years old and growing up in Livermore, California, a city east of Oakland. Our games were played on Max Baer Field, which is named after a great heavyweight boxing champion from the 1930s who was from our town.

My mom Carol was a secretary at General Electric, and my dad Bud was a police officer. When his shift was over, he would come over in his uniform to watch me pitch. He did that all the way through high school. I always enjoyed it when my parents would come to my games. They were so supportive of me.

I remember my very first Little League practice. My parents were at work. My five brothers and sisters and I were raised to do things on our own, so I took myself to practice. There were so many people there that I became confused and just went home without playing. Fortunately, when I walked through the door my mom was there. She took me by the hand and made sure that my life in baseball started that day.

I wasn’t overly tall but still a few inches taller than everyone else. My baseball pants were always a little shorter than everyone else’s. My mom would get two pairs and sew them together so I fit in, instead of looking like I was wearing knickers. She is still the most important person in my life.

I played first base and pitched. Because I was still growing, when pitching, I had to coordinate my body with my mechanics. I was a work-in-progress. Back then it was, “Here’s the ball, throw it over this little area to the catcher.” There wasn’t a lot of instruction like there is today. By the time I got to the majors in Little League, I was starting to throw harder than the other kids. I had a few games where I dominated and that’s when I started to really enjoy the process of pitching, more than hitting.

I grew up in the Bay Area watching Willie Mays play for San Francisco and Vida Blue pitch for Oakland. I emulated Vida, who was lefthanded like me and won the Cy Young in ’71. I would be out in the front yard throwing a tennis ball against our garage door, a wooden garage door, pretending I was him. My dad would come out after about half an hour with a hammer and say, “When you’re done playing catch against the door, make sure you pound all those nails back in.”

My greatest moment as a youngster was getting to walk on the field at the Oakland Coliseum, where Vida pitched, on Little League Day in 1975. It was unbelievable. One of my most memorable moments as a major leaguer came one day in the early 1990s. I was with the Mariners and warming up in the bullpen in Oakland when I saw all of these kids on the field.

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