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<\/a><\/p>\nPhysically I could do more, and did more, than anyone with whom I was put in competition. I was 6 feet 2 inches tall, and weighed 210 lbs of \u201crock-solid-muscle\u201dwith a 19 and 1\/2 inch neck. When everyone else would jog their laps around the field, I would sprint, wearing leg weights around my ankles and harnessed around my chest and back. Any spare time, while not on the practice field, I\u2019d be doing strength-building exercises with pulleys and \u201cmachinery\u201d other than \u201cweights\u201d (my dad didn\u2019t believe in \u201cweights\u201d- it could make me muscle-bound).<\/p>\n
Most \u201cbaseball\u201d people couldn\u2019t help but be impressed with the things I would do, on and off the field. On the field, at times I would demonstrate prodigious power batting. On defense, I could run and play Center-field as good as or better than \u201cMickey Mantle.\u201d I did and wanted to do things that I never saw players do before. I \u201cbacked-up\u201d everyone. If any ball got passed a charging left-fielder, I was always there to prevent the runner from advancing. When I was playing left-field I had occasions to tag runners out at third\u2013base.<\/p>\n
After a third out, I would sprint to the dugout in an attempt to beat the third or first baseman. When I got a walk, I sprinted to first base. I was actually \u201cCharlie-Hustle\u201d before Pete Rose was.\u00a0Off the field I consumed vast amounts of food that I felt I needed to sustain my physical prowess as well as continue the \u201cmyths\u201d that were surrounding \u00a0legendary feats of incomparability. I was photographed once holding 5 bats in one hand, and 5 sandwiches in the other. And legend had it that I was banned from the \u201call-you-can-eat\u201d Miners\u2019 Shack in the Superstition Mountains of Apache Junction, Arizona.<\/p>\n
My \u201cthinking\u201d prowess, although ensconced in the higher levels of \u201csuperficiality\u201d would have been all that the \u201cold-school\u201d mentality would want to highlight and develop for the future. So it was no doubt with great disappointment that after experiencing the greatest moment in my baseball career (and arguably in Baseball history), at the age of 18 I was soon to become just another footnote to the remarkable saga of Sports figures who have experienced both the glory and gloom of athletic competition.<\/p>\n
But, as a tribute to what is called the \u201chuman spirit,\u201d the phoenix can rise from the ashes and attain an even higher glimpse a noble achievement. As Shakespeare\u2019s Hamlet deliberated the moment, he pronounced, \u201cThere is nothing Good, or Bad, but thinking<\/strong> makes it so!\u201d<\/p>\n My exposure to the “Thinking Man’s Game” began even while I was still enamored with the seemingly simplistic batting perspective of, “see ball, attack ball, hit ball,” and rely solely on my quick reflexes and strength and speed to overcome the pitched ball. I soon found out that, on the professional level, the speed of the “fast-ball” and the curve of the “Curve-ball” and the other subtle varieties of pitches were not the same as I was used to in the “small-pond.” Although I always showed enormous “potential” as a hitter, I was inconsistent (to say the least). So, when I took the occasional opportunity to conscientiously observe players like Rusty Staub, Joe Morgan, JIm Wynn, and others, players who were less concerned about merely “looking the part” but rather “being and doing the Part,” I discerned that there was a higher and more discriminating pattern of thinking that preceded their intentions at the “plate.” They possessed a more sincere and genuine “IDEA” about what was transpiring before them. Perhaps I too would have acquired such a “mental-approach,” but that really never started to be realized until my playing days were over. “If I knew then, what I know now…”<\/p>\n Part 2 will focus on the evolution of patterns of thought that revolutionized my approach to more competently understanding the Game of Baseball. “THE TIME FOR THINKERS HAS COME!”<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The \u201cOld-School\u201d Baseball philosophy into which I was officially indoctrinated in the Fall of 1962 was primarily one of Action, and pre-oriented to the acclamation of Physical prowess, with little or no accommodation for the \u201cindependent \u2013 thinker\u201d who might, if left to the initiative of his imagination, reconstruct a new paradigm that would … Continue reading A Thinking Man’s Game – Part 1 of 4, or 5<\/span> <\/p>\n