Quote:
Originally Posted by candyflip
One of my favorites too, along with Don Mattingly and Dave Winfield.
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Now you just gave me chills! My all time favorite was Don Mattingly, followed by Ricky and then Dave.
When my brother Stephen and I were young (starting when we were 4 and 5 as we were a year apart), my Dad would take us to all the Yankees spring training games that were played here in Fort Lauderdale at the 'Little Yankee Stadium'.
My Dad was friends with the guy who did the security for the player parking lot and would let us come in and hang our waiting for all the players to arrive. Needless to say our toe-heads were always at full attention with our gloves, sharpie pens and baseball cards for the assorted players in hand. I cannot tell you how many times I saw, spoke with, and received autographs from the 3 players mentioned above.
Another memorable person that we met was Whitey Ford. I believe he was helping as batting coach back then. Oh and I have a pretty funny story about us meeting Steinbrenner at one of the Spring training seasons too.
For the life of me I can't remember what Don or Dave drove, but Ricky always had this bad ass blue tricked out mercedes.
I was big in baseball growing up and always played first base and wore the number 23. As I got older and played many different sports, I still always wore 23, and by that time everyone assumed it was because of Jordan. Nope, it went a lot further back than that and was always my ode to Mattingly.
Ricky Henderson was our hero, watching him steal bases and break season records year after year was a big part of my childhood
