“As I waited for Todd Hollandsworth, last year’s Rookie Of the Year in the National League, I had a good chance to look around the Holy Grail of baseball lore—the Los Angeles Dodgers locker room. Piazza, Mondesi, Hollandsworth, Nomo, Karros—the names above the lockers read off like a roster of an all-star game. This marks the fifth year that the Dodgers have had the Rookie of the year. Hollandsworth just signed to a $550,000, one-year contract, turning down a more lucrative multi-year contract.
Several promising rookies walked past me from the locker room to the massage table. One, I realized, was not a rookie, but one of the greatest knuckle ball pitchers of all time, Charlie Hough. The players were not stuck up or snobby like people make them out to be but are really down to earth. Most of them greeted me with a “Hi” or “How are you doing?” This brought peace to me—I was nervous being down there.
Todd Hollandsworth sat down in front of his locker and I was thinking this guy should be a football player because of his size. Oddly enough, that was what he played until a friend of the family told him that he should try out for baseball. He figured it would give him something to do over the summer. He made the team and has been going strong ever since. His heroes growing up were the great Philly Mike Schmidt and Andy Van Slyke, who he has often been compared to.
He had a few words for the younger generation:
“We all can’t be professional athletes. Some of us that are, are blessed and lucky. We aren’t all lucky. We all have a purpose in life, God put us on the earth for a purpose. No matter what you do, give it your all and stay determined.” He signed an autograph for me and headed out to practice.
I wasn’t exactly sure how to get down to the dugout but, lucky for me, Chan Ho Park was around and showed me the way. He spoke English surprisingly well. As I walked to the dugout I could hear the crack of the bat as players started to spray baseballs over the field. The Tornado or Hideo Nomo was talking with his interpreter inside the dugout and he walked right past me. Hollandsworth had told me that the multiracial, international members of the team have a lot of unity: “Baseball is a universal language that we all understand. We learn from each other.””
