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Reply to "What do you remember about your first baseball coach?"

You can always count on Smoke for a nostalgic topic. I played Little League in Oklahoma City in the 60s. Our team was the Windsor Hills Astronauts. I honestly don’t remember one thing about my first coach - or any of my Little League coaches for that matter. My memories are more of a teammate named Clint Sanderson. Clint lived on the same street as we did and we were together all the time, especially during the summer. We both threw very hard for our age and we were the only players who could safely play catch with each other. So I caught when Clint pitched and he caught when I pitched. We were best friends and were both super competitive. If I wasn’t happy with Clint’s effort during a game I would throw the ball back to him harder than he pitched it. And he would do the same to me. On a couple of occasions it resulted in one (or both) of us in tears. It was one of those first best friendships where we each thought our job was to push the other as only kids can do.  But the other teams players couldn’t hit us so we won all the time. In 2019, when I was up in Oklahoma all the time watching my son play, I decided to see if I could find Clint. I even drove thru the old neighborhood. I was able to find an article about his career as a rescue helicopter pilot and I thought that was pretty cool.

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