Professional baseball player
(1963– )
As a kid, I knew that I excelled at playing certain sports, like baseball, but I had just as much fun playing basketball. I had just as much fun playing football in the snow and I had just as much fun playing roller hockey, which was my favorite. It was such a blast. My friends and I, we shared our interests in sports and played all year round. If it snowed, we put Baggies over our feet because otherwise our socks would get wet. My mother is a psychologist and wasn’t big on sports. She just made sure that I was home before the streetlights came on. I never heard those words “Stay in the house.” It was, “Be home before the lights come on.” Now things are so different. Everything today is a playdate. Like, “What time should we meet on Thursday?” Really? Everything we did, we did on our own.
I never had the sense that we lived in small apartments. That’s how everybody lived. I didn’t have to worry about the “Joneses” because everybody in my neighborhood was the same as everyone else. We were all in the same situation. I had friends who had houses, and we had an apartment. I’m not going to say it was as luxurious as some of the apartments in the city, but it was home. This is something I can share with my kids now. “Why do you think you’re cramped? Why are you complaining about being cramped?” We were four kids in our apartment. Two sisters and two boys. Fraternal twins and my little brother.
My dad was an electrician and would do little things to motivate me. For instance, I never really had jobs as a kid, but sometimes I would go to work with him and do odd jobs with him. We were somewhere in the South Bronx and the buildings needed an electrician because the wires were frayed. He’d diagnose a problem and try to find the live feeds and the negative feeds. So he’s on the ladder, you know, and suddenly he gets shocked. He falls down from the ladder and doesn’t say anything to me. He’s okay and he climbs back up the ladder, finishes the job, and looks down at me and says, “Is this what you want to do for a living?”
He was telling me to go after what I believed I wanted for myself, but to also finish the job first. I couldn’t ask for more than that, especially because my mom wanted me to go into the medical field. At the time I guess they were looking for male nurses and stuff like that. She was pushing me in that direction. They needed big guys to pull the gurneys around, and if anybody got unruly they needed someone stronger to hold them. But my dad would give me little words of encouragement, like he did on the ladder. I probably would’ve followed in his footsteps, but he wanted me to do my own thing. Me—I like this baseball stuff.
As I said, my friends and I, we were sports nuts. One time eight of us were gathered together at eight-thirty in the morning because we were going to another neighborhood for a basketball game in a gym there. There was this bizarre moment. What the hell is going on? This guy was chasing another guy with a pistol in his hand. It was a blur and we all just stood there in amazement. He was running after this guy and he missed on every shot. It was a shock to see something like that but it didn’t deter us from our game.
Little League kept me busy. Which is not to say that other kids didn’t have arts and music, but I didn’t. Would it have been ideal if someone introduced me to art or something like that? Yeah, it would’ve been great. I play golf now, and say I wish that someone would’ve gotten that glove into my hand sooner. I just say that ’cause I’d be a better golfer, but I don’t think it would’ve changed anything. Maybe one thing I wished I would’ve gotten into my hand—but it’s more of a wish than something real—was an instrument. To play an instrument, that would’ve been a cool thing to do. To play the drums or a six-string guitar or something is a good way to unwind when you have a stressful day, instead of going to bars with your buddies. That can’t lead to anything good. But would I change? Absolutely not.
I had such a love for my dad, it’s indescribable. He died at sixty-three almost ten years ago. It was a big loss. My parents got divorced when I was very young but you’d never know that my parents were divorced because I saw my dad every day.
As things started to happen for me, he had an interesting take on fame. I was playing in a game in Boston, in Fenway Park, and he said after the game, “Listen, I don’t want you taking this shit too seriously.” “What’s wrong, Dad?” He says, “They’re all booing you and everything”—I was not on the home team—“but you know what? I want to see you smiling a bit when you’re out in the field. You’re getting a chance to do what you wanna do, which is phenomenal. Not many people can say that. You’re actually doing what you love to do. I wanna see you smiling. You should show people how much you appreciate what you have.” He played such a big part in my life. He was truly a wonderful man with a great take on things.