Intercontinental Cup Gold Medal Game against Cuba. (Photo by Baseball Australia)
Over 40 years ago, as I entered my senior year of high school, I heard tell that my school had a trio of international exchange students.
Three baseball players from Australia!
Color me intrigued.
While I’m sure the presence of Brett Roach, Darren Sadler, and Gary White in the hallways of Lakeview High School didn’t sit well with many prospective varsity baseball players, I was not among them. My competitive baseball career ended several years earlier when pitchers started throwing breaking balls, which I could neither hit nor catch (I was a catcher).
No, I was fascinated by their accents, their life stories, their homeland, and just about everything about this trio.
I suppose it was one of the many reasons I volunteered to be the team’s scorekeeper/equipment manager that spring.
As someone who was on the bench every game, I had opportunities to get to know each of the three. I probably got to know Brett the best but always felt a special connection to Gary, who, like me, was a catcher.
Unlike me, he was a sweet-swinging lefty and had no trouble handling fastballs or off-speed pitches.
I was able to keep in touch with Brett because, after a year or two at Purdue, he wound up at Eastern Michigan University with me before signing with the Detroit Tigers’ organization. I kept tabs on Gary, who found his way into the Philadelphia Phillies organization for a couple of seasons, but then the scent went cold as he returned to Australia in an era before the Internet.
Well, after 41 years, I reconnected with Gary, and the result is this episode of Conversations. Imagine my surprise when, doing show prep, I discovered that Gary’s basically a living legend in his homeland, being among the original Australian Baseball League‘s (1989-99) most prolific hitters, delivered one of the most famous base hits in the nation’s history (see the video below), and was a 2009 Baseball Australia Hall of Fame inductee.