Amateur Career
Swisher was a two-sport star at Parkersburg High School in football and baseball as well as a letterman in basketball. As a strong safety he was recruited by several Division I-A football programs, including University of Notre Dame, but chose to pursue baseball.
Undrafted in the Major League Baseball Draft out of high school, Swisher enrolled at Ohio State University, as that school and Ohio University were the only colleges to recruit him for baseball. Playing for the Ohio State Buckeyes baseball team in the Big Ten Conference, Swisher was named Big Ten Freshman of the Year in 2000, after hitting .299 with 10 home runs and 48 runs batted in (RBI). He was an All-Big Ten selection as a first baseman as a sophomore in 2001, after hitting .322 with 56 RBI and a league-leading 15 home runs. He earned All-Big Ten honors as an outfielder in 2002, after batting .348 with 10 home runs and 52 RBI.
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Famous quotes containing the words amateur and/or career:
“The true gardener then brushes over the ground with slow and gentle hand, to liberate a space for breath round some favourite; but he is not thinking about destruction except incidentally. It is only the amateur like myself who becomes obsessed and rejoices with a sadistic pleasure in weeds that are big and bad enough to pull, and at last, almost forgetting the flowers altogether, turns into a Reformer.”
—Freya Stark (1893–1993)
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)