Tell us a little about yourself, your background and where you are from.
I’m a Chicago native and was raised there and actually went to school on the Indiana side because we lived in the suburbs.
I went to a private school with a great athletic program, to the point where I actually got a football scholarship originally.
I had scholarships from schools all over the country, I was that lucky. I remember sitting down with Dan Devine, who was the head coach at Missouri. He offered me a scholarship, and I also had an Air Force Academy appointment.
I ended up going to the University of Tulsa, a small school, and I was the starting quarterback there.
Fast forward, I shifted over to baseball after I got tired of getting hit by linebackers and became a shortstop for Tulsa when we went to the 1971 College World Series.
I still love college baseball to this day, but we don’t have a program anymore at Tulsa, which is just devastating.
I played parts of two years in the big leagues and seven or eight years in the Cubs organization between the major leagues and minor leagues, back and forth.
What was your path to the major leagues like?
I got drafted out of Tulsa as the 31st player taken in the 1974 draft by the Chicago Cubs, which was like being a hero being a Chicago boy.
The Cubs came to the house, and I signed a bonus contract and went to double-A and triple-A before getting to the Cubs in 1977 and ’78.
My claim to fame from my standpoint is that I came through the minor leagues and got to play with Bruce Sutter, a Hall of Fame relief pitcher and Bill Buckner, who became one of my closest friends.
I got shipped to Midland-Odessa, Texas for double-A and it was in the middle of nowhere, which is why they call it Midland.
Triple-A was in Wichita, Kansas, which was the home of Pizza Hut, and it was one of those places where they didn’t serve drinks. You had to get a liquor card every time you got a vodka tonic or a beer.
I remember my wife saying that when TWA flew out of Chicago and flew over Kansas, they couldn’t serve drinks on the plane when they were flying over the state.
The minor leagues were crazy because we’d travel all over from Shreveport and Lafayette, Louisiana to Victoria and El Paso, Texas and all riding buses.
We went from Midland to Shreveport, which was like 14 hours on a bus, and then we’d play the game and come out to a double-wide which was our locker room.
The hottest place I ever played was in Louisiana. I had puddles of water in my leather cleats. You’d lose five or seven pounds a game.
Do you remember getting the call-up to the major leagues?
I was in Indianapolis playing in triple-A and we were called into our manager’s office, and he said we would probably play that night, but we’d be on a plane tomorrow.
I didn’t know what he was talking about and back then if you go on a plane it wasn’t good. I thought I was getting released or something.
I was in shock because I had been in big league camp for spring training and expected it but it was still a shock.
In the big leagues we rode on chartered planes. I never even knew what a charter plane was. It was unbelievable.
The best part about it was that the comradery that you established in the minor leagues was there all the way through the big leagues.
What are you involved with currently?
When I played you had to have four years in the big leagues to get a pension, but they changed a lot of that and today you just need like one day and you’re vested.
What they did was they grandfathered people in from 1980 on to the tune of being vested after one day.
My minor league time doesn’t count towards it, only my 101 days in the big leagues counts, but even with that I would get probably at least $1,000 a month. So essentially, I’m getting shut out, and there’s 500 of us it’s happening to.
There were big lawsuits all the way to circuit courts in Los Angeles. We feel like we should have been grandfathered like everyone else.
What do you enjoy most about living in the North Florida area?
Florida’s great. I lived in Delray Beach and Boca Raton for 15 years and raised my kids there, but this area and the people up here are really cool.