Posted By:
Mark AndersonMaybe not as OT as you'd think...
Sammy is a favorite of a lot of my coworkers. While he may have declined to go to big Hall of Fame events and such, he actually was very open to fans going to his ranch to visit and talk. Some of the guys here went down to spend a couple hours chatting with him, and he shared that, although he made his career in pro football, it was baseball that was his real love.
Sammy was one of those Jim Thorpe type of athletes who could have excelled in virtually any sport, and it would have been great to see him as a pre-war baseball player.
You have to love the old school athletes. These are the guys who still realize that fans are the only reason they were able to get paid to play a game they loved. Wish more modern athletes would learn from them...