Word: rodding
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Despite a long career at the top of his sport, Rod Carew is the least-known star in baseball's galaxy. He works his wonders in Bloomington, a suburb of Minneapolis-St. Paul, cities owned-in the national mind, if not in reality-by Fran Tarkenton, Mary Tyler Moore and blizzards. Carew's feats have gone virtually unnoticed by the national press. Without argument the outstanding hitter of his generation, he has appeared on the cover of the Sporting News-baseball's Bible-only three times in more than a decade. In an era of jocks selling...
...long ball and the glory of homers has contributed as much to the decline in high-average hitters in the post-World War II era as the oft-cited rise of relief pitching. Trying to cream a fastball low and away is a sure way to strike out. Rod...
...baby would not wait, so Margaret Allen, a nurse, and Dr. Rodney Cline, a physician, both of whom happened to be aboard the train, delivered the woman's second son. The nurse became the child's godmother, the doctor forevermore the stuff of baseball trivia. Rod was a sickly child who contracted rheumatic fever when he was twelve. His resulting weakness drew his father's alternating scorn and uninterest. His uncle, Joseph French, a recreation official and Little League coach in Panama, became a kind of foster father, taking the boy to ball games and encouraging...
...Rod grew up playing with rag balls wound in tape; his prize possession was a Ted Williams bat won for his superior play in local Little Leagues. He even slept with the bat and was brokenhearted when it was stolen after a pickup game. His mother recalls: "He was still, quiet and alone as a child. He was always walking around with a bat and ball in his hand." His two childhood dreams: Go to the U.S. Become a big league baseball player...
When Carew was 15, his mother immigrated to New York City and, after finding a home and a job, sent for Rod and his older brother Eric. Flying into New York at night, Rod stared down on the city. "It was so big from the air," he recalls, "I couldn't believe it." He entered Manhattan's George Washington High School (Henry Kissinger's alma mater), but did not go out for school sports; his afternoons were taken up by a part-time job in a grocery store to help support the family...