maybe babe ruth impersonator and if you want to get in touch with me i'll give you the phone number it's nine seven eight six four nine two eight three one you can also key in stiefel than as babe ruth park a couple of years ago when the cubs came in and i was on the phone on the field with mrs babe ruth that was really a thrill done a couple of minor league games and appearances like this with henry and remember playing hockey or anything like that it was street hockey couple guys played soccer but i guess a picked a baseball or picked up sports in general just because other people in the neighborhood were playing  them and so you had learned how to catch a football you learn how to dribble a basketball you learned how to swing a wiffle ball bat you know what it was at one point that you would think maybe i'll go pro zero when you were younger did you find a day that you would baseball more than anything i'm not saying it was i think i enjoyed sports in general and really i don't i don't want to say that i said did i have dreams of playing in the major leagues yes i did like many other  young guys from knowingly i don't think it's something you can say ok i'm going to turn pro the game selection you don't select it you can love the game and select it that way but just because you love the game doesn't mean you're going to get an opportunity to play minor league baseball are you going to get a chance to have an opportunity to play in the major leagues what happens is they find you you don't find them usually maybe it's changed in the last twenty years or thirty years and but  certainly a lot more exposure now for young players they have these databases now right but you're up on that stuff henry i mean you know and that's ok but i guess i guess what i'm saying is i played in the days of sandlot i might have been the last age group that came through that were you would you could go to the park and they used to have these little shacks that the city owned or set up for kids for the programs in the summer at a park for a kid because you play maybe ten games a year or something where kids in california play it all the time did you find it really hard when you're behind a little in terms of just like experience or i  probably didn't play as many games as a lot of other players and there was a big learning curve but i think i got in there young enough to where for a little while people are saying well he's just a kid and he's from new england give him time be patient with them he's going to get there and i think that really helped and the nice part was being able to play one hundred forty games then go to instructional league and have another sixty more and it was like before i was twenty years old there was almost there was three hundred four hundred four hundred fifty minor league games that i was involved in that really accelerated  that i was i was a catcher in the minor leagues but when i was younger i played everywhere you know i played third base of pressure and stuff i played right feel the pain you know i caught little league but only because nobody else wanted to do one thing i understood about baseball that was really kind of neat was i had to find a way to get up three times or four times in a game that's really why i played as a kid i really enjoyed hitting a baseball bat in if catching gave me that opportunity infield he says well you know you could probably play third base b i don't see you as a power guy you're a you're a contact guy you're a line drive guy and obviously so let's take second base and shortstop and throw those out and he said let's go to first base what do you do there he says not that you're not a good first baseman he said but what they do in the major leagues now is they go ahead and prolong the careers of older guys and move them over there so we don't play he says and another thing i know for a fact he says the fastest way to the major leagues is t catch you not to sell me anymore if you're going to give me a contract and let me fulfill a boyhood dream so i said i'll catch and i'll tell you what and reduce those first six weeks a catch and it was not a whole lot of  fun i was black and blue up and down my arms my hand was swollen like it didn't even belong to me it was very difficult throwing a ball second base trying to get the ball on the mask of all the things that could go wrong in a short period time did you know i saw a curve balls that broke more than i ever saw in my life i saw sliders that i've never seen in my life i saw a change ups with pitchers during differential more than then i ever saw before but the one thing i could always do a sort of fast ball so i was able to get to the fastball they said well if you can hit the faster we can teach you how to hit the brake ball and so that's how it all started but the one the one nice thing was the consummate courage when i got home my parents said you can do this you know no matter how bad  matter how bad it started off it was like you're going to get there don't worry just keep working hard we love you just the way you are just keep work and have fun and whether i had a good day a bad day it was always just do the  the nice part about it all was when i left was still and went to play in winter haven it was just the game that was my focus every day get a chance to play the game and i was given an opportunity and i made the most of the opportunity i don't know if i worked hard in a body else but i worked as hard you know but eventually you made the major leagues so tell me about that first that that what was that like walking out to the plate to get after his first hit bad did something to his back so they were you know as they usually do you he was a d h so they were waiting to see if i was going to be if he's going to be able to go second to bat when they finally decided he can't go and not sure if it's bowl or joey but it was it was one of the two and i actually get to a pats maybe three a pats against them and your first at bat gears on long flights centerfield at least it was a long fly ball to  finally got into the world series let's see eight i came up at the end of one thousand nine hundred eighty and so i didn't come back in eighty one until may lucky break or a lucky break yes and fortunately that run held up so what about catch and roger clemens he struck out twenty guys one night that night did you know that he was right on or what happened that all of a sudden there was twenty strikeouts well then the part about catching roger was nobody really know what to expect of him they all had high praise for him they all had high expectations of him but he really hadn't made his mark yet and he was coming off an injury the year before so nobody really know knew what to expect s his seventeenth straight the thing i remember most about the game and i'm not knocking anybody any player but it was like playing chads there were not many fall balls there were a whole lot of swing misses and there are plenty of taken called strikes and you just don't see that often where somebody is that dominant like the guys would be looking for a fastball and be way late or the location would be so good that even if they were looking for it they couldn't do anything with it was there was never his way he had hit one of the fiercest competitors i've ever been around and on game day you don't really talk to him much light up to you and more than anything else what he would say is  sometimes you don't feel it or you don't feel like you're you have as good a stuff as as you might have and that one of the things i learned over the years at the head is that tell you what kind of stuff you have so if you're if you're that number way pretty easily you have very very good stuff and you know we were we were playing against a team that you were just coming off i want to say they were playing c and i think maybe they're playing california or somebody and they had struck out fifteen times recently and so they came louis and there was dennis eckersley and and then there was mike torres and the people before and i'm sure i'm missing somebody but the first guy that you go a jim lomborg when i was a kid was the man right and so now we have that guy now boston is change you know that every night that roger clemens goes to start you get a chance to win and as a group of individuals in a locker room you're going wow that's pretty special the red sox said right now don't have that they have less the vocals but not the same type of horse a guy that's going to go out there if they're great but i mean you don't yeah but you know one day this beauty in that too because there they don't depend on any one guy you know bucholtz lester you know the guys have bonded together as a staff they've come in this team the red right now overcome so much because of the expectation leading into this year we hire was not the closer hanrahan was the closer the bailey who would have been if hanrahan failed he was the guy in the they have done it by we have a bunch of good players and it does not matter who you call on they're going to do the job and that's what's really kind of neat about thirteen and the sixty seven team member little bit older than you i remember the sixty seventeen same outfit they had dad yaz they had a few guys that were like superstars but they found a way to win you know no matter what and basically that's that's how they played there's a lot of good players in baseball it's really special when you have a great team ok but what about the eighty six series what about eighty six years ago what happened somebody talk about a possible you know i would say that's a see that's how you remember that henry but angels come back and beat them we win the last three games of the series and come home to boston oh yeah right then we go to new york for the first two games of the series we're up to nothing coming  boston lose game three of those game four when game five at home go to play game six in new york we're cruising along it's you know bruce hearses pitching a great game fine fine man and a great teammate we had we had first and third or and the score was and i think we're ahead six to five maybe or five before some like that and he threw a ball a cut into the inside and it nips off my glove and goes to the back so technically the people who like bob stanley call it a wild i mean they call it a pass ball and the people who like me or think they like me they call it a while pitts it's the damnedest thing you know it happens in the game of baseball when you're in the heat of the moment and the tension is high and everything is riding on it but sometimes things don't get done quite the way i'd say geez i've had  i feel and that's what i felt the i felt really bad about that knowing that in my heart of hearts if i pick up the ball clean and get a really throats and stay only we may be done that might be over on a you noticed the way i put it right i said the ground ball to first because it does not matter who is playing first it's just it's a play the happen in a game and you're right as a teammate i don't sit there and hold anything against him because as a baseball player i know that there's so many things that could happen in that game so that could change the outcome now this is my way of dealing with it henry i love the book and i want you to know that he was a great teammate and certainly a great player in the scheme and so to be sitting here talking about him i kind of i feel bad for what he went through because that's not the way he should have the right if he should have been remembered here you know his teammates knew he was special because what we watched him go through just to get on the field and he didn't have every after every game and had a bucket of ice jacket on the field and that's before and after the game i mean there are some men who love the game but you'd watch him walk around he let our team he let our team in stolen bases that to play you know we were up three nothing in game seven you know it's one of those things that you flashback you we had i related to this in game and i don't remember if it said clear when the red sox are playing the yankees remember they were down three to one day for nothing it was three four three to one in the c l four to get it done three to one in the series right the yankees had more i  mean the yankees had more chances they went to the red sox did and it didn't happen but you sit there you go and it's almost impossible what they did yeah and they did it why and you don't you don't know how come but it's like they e it just happened it was time for that to happen you say they did they did everything that they needed to do big papi beats out a double play ball they've robert steel second base you it you get a base hit of the greatest reliever right the history of the game then it was like the chains were let up then they just they went off for the next know change the subject the second you talk about yankee stadium and so i've star yankee stadium the original yankee stadium as a kid and watched it and when you were coming up there was the originally new stadium they had renovated and stuff i'm wondering your feelings the first time you went on the field and yankee stadium as a player that you had you seen it before or just in pictures yeah right but the hardest part for me in the red sox yankees series was emotion really just growing up i didn't like the yankees it was read into me as a knowing when exactly as a new england kid and so i tried almost too hard when i played in yankee stadium they were the team that everybody measure themself against fortunately in the eighty's they were not quite the right that they had been earlier or in the right or more recent but still they were the yankees and there was something about playing the yankees here is something about being in yankee stadium with fifty four thousand people just crazy for their team being in new york city just that most guys just it's an incredible feeling but certainly when you walk into that stadium you have to control a motion and you see that right field it's really short and you know all the sudden you turn into somebody that you want to see it's like to hit one out of there it's off it didn't happen often right it was it happened in the most majestic place of all i mean let's face it i love fenway park i love everything about fenway park i love what they've done to fenway park but yankee stadium is pretty special place st louis and never get back to the major leagues again although i want is free training i want to spring training the following year with all click and i get released on a spring training and so i ended up playing with the and just how special baseball people are one of the coaches for the orioles was named a right hand rick's he was a former category he had been around the organization for long and when i mentioned to him that it at that to me was meant so much to the to me that i really thought that much of me as a player but that he was that emotional about it and how much the game must mean to him and for the longest time i am going how come i cannot feel that way about the game the way he feels and i think i've learned after you're out of it after a lot of it and learn and i've come back to it i think it's really kind of the i think it's time and so now you're working as a coach yes we're coming to the last two minutes really as you just saw so give the fans maybe a little tip on catching or whether what you're doing in the fall or you're coaching in double a and so forth it's well the hardest thing about the game in baseball and it's a thing you learn the thing you hear the most is keep your eye on the ball if you keep your eye on the ball you know where the ball is you actually can pick up the scheme very quick more people i know lose track of where the baseball is and so whether it's hitting fielding throwing no one where you're going to throw it how are you going to throw it just keep an eye on the ball and know where it's going to go next