by Ryan McSherry, Longwood Head Coach
First off, I hope everyone is doing well and I look forward to the day we can all step on the baseball field again to compete. When thinking about my favorite player growing up, I’m obviously a product of the Derek Jeter Generation, but I’ll go in a different direction here.
As a lefty batter, my dad always pointed out good hitting lefties when they were in the box. So here, I have my choice of guys like Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs, Tino Martinez, and Paul O’Neill. These are of course, ALL YANKEES! I would have to say one of my favorite players growing up was definitely Paul O’Neill. He was an absolute warrior when he played the game. You can look up any footage on the guy and he was always in the game and had a passion for competing and winning. He wore his heart on his sleeve. At the plate, he batted over 300 during his prime years, hit for some power and could produce runs. He even had a very nice walk to strikeout ratio which led to some nice OBP (a Longwood baseball stat we stride for!). In the strike shortened season of 1994, he could have potentially competed for the AL MVP award too. Outside of his hitting abilities and demeanor, he had a rifle for an arm in right field. He also appeared on one of my favorite tv shows of all time, Seinfeld!
He’s the reason I wore 21 as a high school player and wore 21 when I first began coaching (now I wear 42 in favor of Jackie Robinson). He flipped over the 1996 Yankees World Series dog pile, caught David Wells’ final out of his perfect game on my 11th birthday, was cheered enthusiastically by fans in his final Yankee home game (Game 5 of the 2001 World Series), and was the heart of a talented Yankees’ Dynasty. Paul O’Neill always came to play!
