Palmetto Proving Grounds

Yaz
Johnny Unitas
David Thompson when playing at NC State

Stan "The Man" Musial my all time favorite.

Nicklaus
Staubach
Dr J
Brooks Robinson
Bjorn Borg

I lived in DC in 1966 and 1967. We went to quite a few baseball games to see the Senators, and in 1967 we must have seen the Red Sox 8-10 times. We saw them in Washington and saw a few games in Baltimore as well.

If you remember, 1967 was the year Yaz won the triple crown, and I started following the Red Sox forever that year. I read the paper each day to find out how many hits he had and also computed his average, counted his rbi's, and compared his homers to others in the league, etc. Each Sunday I memorized most of the batting averages of the players in the American league. I saw every game the Red Sox played on Saturdays during the year. Yaz was a great part of my childhood.

Today, I am still a Red Sox fan and was at Fenway Tuesday night for a game, which was postponed because of rain. I still love Fenway Park.

Also growing up, I was a ballboy for a team put together in Pensacola on the Naval base. The Vietnam war was going on and the draft insured that many college football players would end up in the service. Many quality players were sent to Pensacola to play on their team. They would play teams from other military bases such as Quantico, but they also played games against teams like Grambling and New Mexico. The games did not count for New Mexico and Grambling. For them, they were practice games or exhibition games. They counted for the Pensacola Goshawks, however, and their star player was Roger Stabauch, the Heisman trophy winner from Navy.

We saw Roger everywhere on the base. He played basketball with us and played softball with us as well. During the week, he would practice with the team when they got off work and as ballboy he would warm up by throwing soft passes to me. There was not a nicer man than Roger Staubach. He went to church every day and made sure everyone felt special around him. I still have an autographed Heisman trophy picture he signed to our family. For those of you choosing Roger as a hero, I salute you. Not only was he a great player, but he was absolutely a great person. When he went to Dallas to play pro ball, all of Pensacola became Cowboy fans.

MJ, Barry Sanders, Ken Griffey Jr