LaTroy Hawkins | "I want to be remembered by how I treated people, and not the stats on the back of my baseball card."

Black Diamonds

SiriusXM

History, Baseball, Black History, Sports, Negro Leagues, Documentary, Equality, Society & Culture, Civil Rights

4.8 • 617 Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You could call him the modern day Satchel Paige - A man who played three sports and pitched for 12 teams over 21 years, on his way to becoming one of just 16 men to ever pitch in over 1,000 games. And along the way, he enjoyed every minute of it. LaTroy Hawkins sits down with Bob Kendrick at Play Ball Park in Seattle to discuss his admiration for Negro Leagues baseball, and how Buck O'Neil deserves credit for every ounce of greatness of the last 70 years of baseball. Hear about the rocky start to LaTroy's career, the keys to his historic longevity, the lessons he learned along the way about how to treat people with dignity and respect, the work he's doing today to bring baseball to every young Black kid who wants it, where the game is headed, how to protect where it's been, a few words about his Godson - reigning NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes II - and so much more.

Transcript

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0:00.0	All I want from you is your ear.
0:07.0	I don't want any money from you.
0:10.0	I don't want you to say when you get drafted and LaTroya Hawkins help me.
0:13.0	I don't want any of that.
0:15.0	I just want to give you what I didn't have and give you some of the knowledge that I was able to
0:19.0	accumulate over 21 years.
0:21.3	And I always tell them this, I'm not your travel ball coach, okay?
0:24.6	I guarantee your travel ball coach don't have the experience that I have.
0:27.5	I can guarantee you that.
0:28.8	Unless it's Jamie Moyer or somebody, that's it.
0:43.8	When I think about so many of the legendary Negro League pictures, and we have an amazing exhibit that we debuted this year in 2023 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Satchel Page, joining then the Cleveland Indians,
0:58.2	of course, now the Cleveland Guardians and helping them win the pennant and move on to win the
1:04.7	World Series. And as my Cleveland fans get so tired of hearing me say, at the time of this recording, that was the last
1:14.0	time Cleveland won the World Series was 75 years ago in 1948, led by the old man Leroy Satchel
1:21.9	Page, and of course, the great Larry Dobie. And people would oftentimes ask me to kind of roll off the list of teams that Satchell pitch for.
1:34.4	And I would look at them and I would just smile and say,
1:37.6	it is easier for me to tell you the team that he didn't play for that it is to rattle off all the teams that Satchell played for
1:46.3	because Satchell played virtually with every team, everywhere that you could absolutely
1:53.6	towed about. And I guess you could say the same thing about my good friend, LaTroy Hawkins.
2:01.7	21 seasons, I believe 15, 16 teams that he played for over those 21 seasons,
2:08.9	he was a true throwback to the Negro leagues because he never met a city that he wasn't afraid to pitch in. And he wanted to pitch there.
2:21.8	And he talks very glowingly about having become kind of this baseball nomad and how much he
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