[jsq]

if the below facts were about beautiful weather california they would not mean so much, but coming from gritty industrial frostbite falls illinois it is somewhat interesting.

played with/against these guys all from major league baseball:
jesse barfield mlb hr champ, also w 241 lifetime homers, bill gullickson p, 162 major league wins, jeff reed c, 17 yr mlb career, (and his brother kurt who played minor league ball then coached minor league teams (probablly still coaches)), may have played against a few others in various leagues or pick up games - such as mark grant p 9 yrs mlb, jack perconte 2b - 6 yrs mlb. 2 of the above had real solid careers and the rest at least hung around a while.

tom thayer, played pro fb for the nfl super bowl bears for a while and we played against him in high school.

about 20 additional guys from our 8 team conference and same age range were drafted and played minor league ball but never made it out of the minors. 7 of my high schools starting 11 (counting the 3 main pitchers) were drafted as i recall and 2 other teams in the 8 team conference had some pretty good draft numbers at that same time, which is how the 20 players drafted as mentioned above came about from the 8 team high school conference. one common trait of most of the people mentioned above is they were all underfed. no money where i came from and the people were small. this is no joke, true statement. for example jesse barfield was about 160 lbs as a senior in high school. he was a solid player but not yet a star in a very very competitive league when he weighed about 145 lbs as a sophmore as i recall. another good example is a guy named lorenzo who lived in the projects. lorenzo did not have money for a glove, he also had a really really low iq, but was a nice guy and good athlete. so lorenzo and some friends "borrowed a car" one night and went outside of town to a farm and stole a pig. took the pig back to the projects and sold it and now had the money for a glove, which he was quite proud of his entreprenurial effort!

ironically all the better high school players peaked in high school and early minor leagues, the 2 high school all americans we had never made it out of the minors. the guys listed above who made the majors kept growing and kept improving and made it to the big leagues and had long careers.

some of us migrated to softball as we got older. a national championship tournament softball team i played on had for a starting line up 7 or so guys out of the 9 starters who had played on final 4 teams from pony league, american legion, bronco league etc. and or played in the minors when they were younger. they had all tasted some relative sucess at one point from a national perspective.

a real hotbed of sports fanatics to say the least.

it was quite a line up of weekend warriors. almost all of the starters on the tournament championship softball team had at least one major league attribute ie a major league arm but couldnt hit at the, major level etc. so it was quite a joy to see on a regular basis, albeit with softball, some spectacular plays and players. our softball center fielder was a small college all american fb center. his arm was as good as jesse barfields and if you ever saw jesse barfield gun someone down from deep you know how awesome that arm is and why jesse led the majors in outfield assists several times. i was the catcher on that softball team and the opposing players who were fast and trying to come in to home to score that got gunned down could not believe what happened. watching fast runners hit what appeared to be sure singles to the outfield and thrown out at first base, etc. fielding plays that the pros dream of, hits out of the park.....truly awesome to see stuff like that on a regular basis.

some of the older guys on the softball team had been on teams with larry gura (won the national college championship w Arizona and reggie jackson and then won 126 mlb games and made the all star team in the pros, and bill sudakis who played 7 yrs at mlb level.

all of the above from a town of 75,000 people.

also while playing some basketball at chicago stadium played pickup games with/against patrick kane of the blackhawks and bill wennington of the bulls. i used to have a 39 to 40 inch vertical leap.

oh to have my body back from those days!!!!

getting older is a cruel joke on us humans.