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:
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life ... can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“What generous beliefs console
The brave whom Fate denies the goal!
If others reach it, is content:
To Heaven’s high will his will is bent.
Firm on his heart relied,
What lot soe’er betide,
Work of his hand
He nor repents nor grieves,
Pleads for itself the fact,
As unrepenting Nature leaves
Her every act.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One non-revolutionary weekend is infinitely more bloody than a month of permanent revolution.”
—Graffiti, School of Oriental Languages, London (1968)