Childhood in The Bronx
Colavito grew up in The Bronx as a devoted fan of the New York Yankees, particularly Joe DiMaggio. By age nine he was playing semipro baseball, and he dropped out of school at age 16 to pursue Major rules to wait until his school class graduated before signing, and only a special appeal allowed him to go pro after a one-year wait. The Yankees expressed little interest in him, and the Philadelphia Athletics had to bow out due to financial problems; the Cleveland Indians finally signed him in 1950, with two-thirds of his signing bonus deferred until he progressed in their system. He spent most of the next six years working his way up. With the Indianapolis Indians in 1954, Colavito would hit 38 home runs and accumulate 116 RBIs.
Read more about this topic: Rocky Colavito
Famous quotes containing the words childhood and/or bronx:
“When we raise our children, we relive our childhood. Forgotten memories, painful and pleasurable, rise to the surface.... So each of us thinks, almost daily, of how our own childhood compares with our children’s, and of what our children’s future will hold.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery
to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children
brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain and drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)