Early Life and High School
Kinsler's father, Howard, was a warden at a state prison on Tucson's Southeast Side. He has been a major influence on Kinsler. When Kinsler was four his father would toss him fly balls, and his dad says Kinsler would "get under them like he'd been doing it his whole life."
His father coached him until high school, and was especially tough. When Kinsler was 13 years old, and the best player on a PONY league team coached by his father that was playing for a championship, his dad caught Kinsler rolling his eyes as he gave the team orders. "I benched him, without hesitation", said his father. With Kinsler on the bench, the team lost the game.
Kinsler had a physical challenge to overcome. "I've had asthma my whole life", Kinsler said. "That was tough when I was younger. I woke up a lot and couldn’t breathe, and had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night. It kind of held me back from athletics. I still have it, but I control it. Now I use an atomizer or an inhaler. When I was younger, I used this breathing machine… I hated that thing. I always wanted to run around and be active."
He graduated in 2000 from Canyon del Oro High School in the Tucson suburb of Oro Valley, Arizona. Kinsler helped lead the baseball team to state titles in 1997 and 2000. He hit .380 as a junior, to earn second-team All-League honors, and .504 with 5 home runs and 26 stolen bases during his senior year, in which he was named first-team All-State and first-team All-League. Four of his high school teammates have also made it to the major leagues: Brian Anderson (his best friend in high school), Scott Hairston, Chris Duncan, and Shelly Duncan.
Read more about this topic: Ian Kinsler
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, high and/or school:
“Foolish prater, What dost thou
So early at my window do?
Cruel bird, thou’st ta’en away
A dream out of my arms to-day;
A dream that ne’er must equall’d be
By all that waking eyes may see.
Thou this damage to repair
Nothing half so sweet and fair,
Nothing half so good, canst bring,
Tho’ men say thou bring’st the Spring.”
—Abraham Cowley (1618–1667)
“There are two births: the one when light
First strikes the new awakened sense;
The other when two souls unite,
And we must count our life from thence,
When you loved me and I loved you,
Then both of us were born anew.”
—William Cartwright (1611–1643)
“Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye.
What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high,
And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher,
Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I never went near the Wellesley College chapel in my four years there, but I am still amazed at the amount of Christian charity that school stuck us all with, a kind of glazed politeness in the face of boredom and stupidity. Tolerance, in the worst sense of the word.... How marvelous it would have been to go to a women’s college that encouraged impoliteness, that rewarded aggression, that encouraged argument.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)