J. R. Richard - Early Life

Early Life

Richard was born to Clayton and Lizzie (née Frost) Richard in Vienna, Louisiana and gained prominence at Lincoln High School in nearby Ruston in both baseball and basketball. By the time he was a high school senior, Richard stood six feet, eight inches tall (2.03 m) and weighed 220 pounds (99.8 kg; 15.7 st). That year, he was one of the starting pitchers for Lincoln High School and did not concede a run for the entire season. In one game Richard hit four consecutive home runs while pitching his team to a 48–0 victory against its local rival, Jonesboro's Jackson High School. Richard, whose baseball idol was St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson, never lost a game he started in his high school career. Upon graduating from high school, he turned down more than 200 basketball scholarship offers to sign with the Houston Astros. The Astros would later select him with the second overall pick in the 1969 amateur baseball draft, behind the Washington Senators' selection of outfielder Jeff Burroughs. Richard later recalled, "There were other guys in my high school with as much ability as I had, but instead of working at a job, they wanted to drink wine on Saturday nights. They thought that was the in thing to do, and consequently our lives went in different directions. For some people it takes that to make a world. It does not for me."