Early Life
Garcia was born in San Gabriel, California, and grew up on his family's horse ranch in Orosi after his Mexican father, Merced Garcia, moved the family there when the younger Garcia was two years of age. Garcia worked sparingly as a jockey a teenager. He played four years of high school baseball, the first three years at Orosi High School before he transferred to Visalia High School for his senior year.
Garcia began pitching semipro baseball when Cleveland Indians scout Willis Butler noticed Garcia in Tulare, California, and in 1942 signed him as an amateur free agent to the organization's Class D farm team Appleton Papermakers of the Wisconsin State League. With Appleton, Garcia earned a 10–10 win-loss record before he spent three years as a signalman in the United States Army during World War II.
He was discharged from the military at the age of 22 and signed with the Class C Bakersfield Indians of the California League. With Bakersfield, Garica's ERA and strikeouts led the league and he earned 22 wins. In 1947 he joined the major league Indians during spring training but before the regular season started was sent by Cleveland coach Bill McKechnie to Class A Wilkes-Barre Barons of the Eastern League, where he finished with 17 wins and a 3.24 ERA. He joined the Double-A Oklahoma City Indians of the Texas League and earned 19 wins.
Read more about this topic: Mike Garcia (AL Pitcher)
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Boswell, when he speaks of his Life of Johnson, calls it my magnum opus, but it may more properly be called his opera, for it is truly a composition founded on a true story, in which there is a hero with a number of subordinate characters, and an alternate succession of recitative and airs of various tone and effect, all however in delightful animation.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)