Early Life and Minor Leagues
Youngs was born in Shiner, Texas, the second of three children, all sons. His father was a railroad worker, but suffered disability and moved his family to San Antonio where he worked as a rancher. Youngs' mother ran a small hotel in San Antonio and Youngs had a paper route.
Youngs was educated at West Texas Military Institute. He received offers for scholarships to play college football but passed on these, as he preferred baseball. He made his professional baseball debut for the Austin Senators of the Texas League in 1914. Appearing in 17 games, he hit just .145 for the class-B Senators and, in 1915, found himself down in the Class-D leagues, playing for Brenham of the Middle Texas League and the Waxahachie Athletics of the Central Texas League; both leagues disbanded during the season. In 1916, playing in the infield for the Sherman Lions of the Class-D Western Association, he hit .362 as a switch-hitter, drawing the attention of the New York Giants, who purchased his contract in August for $2,000 ($42,716 in current dollar terms).
Read more about this topic: Ross Youngs
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early, life, minor and/or leagues:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“I could be, I discovered, by turns stern, loving, wise, silly, youthful, aged, racial, universal, indulgent, strict, with a remarkably easy and often cunning detachment ... various ways that an adult, spurred by guilt, by annoyance, by condescension, by loneliness, deals with the prerogatives of power and love.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“The intellectual life may be kept clean and healthful, if man will live the life of nature, and not import into his mind difficulties which are none of his.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summon’d am to a tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end:
Methinks it is no journey.”
—Unknown. Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song (l. 57–60)