MLB: Seaver highlights Legends Dinner

I haven’t seen a young punk achieve such pantsloadian heights since Jim DeRogatis moved to Chicago!

Following a video display of the three-time Cy Young Award winner’s career, Seaver said: “How beautiful that was—it led me to believe that it was not a destination, but a journey. I was a young punk coming out of the University of Southern California trying to get a job doing something he loved to do, to achieve an art form. It became something that grabs your soul. It gives you life, with all your mental and physical energy.”

...“It reminded me of when I was in Cincinnati, and you’d get beer boxes full of fan mail,” Seaver said. “I got one letter from a teacher that read: ‘We have a little boy here, seven years old, who will not talk. He won’t talk to his parents, won’t talk to his schoolmates, won’t talk to his teachers, won’t talk to anybody. There is nothing physically wrong with him; he just won’t talk.’ So I signed a photo saying, ‘Good luck to you. Tom Seaver.’ I got a return letter from the same teacher: ‘Dear Mr. Seaver, Thank you very much. I gave the picture to the boy in class, and he said, ‘This is really a picture from Tom Seaver, isn’t it?’ And it’s a compliment to all the players here how we can change things just on a personal, one-on-one basis. That is what this organization is all about. It does it through the players, and I’m damn proud to be one of them.”