Athletes come and go in the world of sports. That’s just the nature of it. Some athletes feel like it’s time for them to step back and live a semi-normal life. While others feel like their bodies can no longer keep up with the sport. There are so many reasons for athletes to step back from playing professionally. It’s sometimes hard when all of your life was spent playing this one game. Getting yourself out of the mindset that you have keep playing takes a long time to get used to.
NEXT: Be Rich Like Casey Blake
I’m not really great at keeping track of sports personalities from before I was born. Though, it also applies to the ones that I grew up on. I’m not really that fond of any type of sport. I understand why people enjoy watching it and rooting for their favorite team or athlete. But I never really got into it. Fandom fuels the world of sports. As long as there are people who support a certain team or a certain athlete, it’s sort of easy for sports organizers or team owners to monetize it. That’s really the only way for these big sports team to continue being a team.
Baseball is one of my blind spots when it comes to sports. I vaguely know how the sport is played. But since it wasn’t something that was shown on TV, I didn’t really know much about it. Baseball feels quintessentially American. And if you’re someone not from America, you probably wouldn’t know that many baseball players. Though I guess it’s somehow popular in Japan. Compared to basketball and football, the non-American one, baseball doesn’t seem like it’s the type of sport you could easily do in other countries.
There have been so many people who have played a position in either major league and minor league baseball. If you asked me to name a baseball player, I could probably name at most two people. And it’s usually the ones who become well-known enough that they do cameos in movies or do interviews in late night talk shows. This post feels like it’s disparaging the sport. And I get why. I don’t really get baseball.
Casey Blake was the third baseman for a few teams in major league baseball. I could, for the life of me, explain what a third baseman does in the game. But based on the name, he must be involved in being adjacent to third base. Possibly to defend it so that the guy who hits a baseball doesn’t do a homerun. I feel like that’s the most baseball terms that I could muster up.
Casey grew up in a household that was super into sports. He was the third of four brothers in the family and all four of them played whatever sport they could join in their hometown of Indianola, Iowa. His dad was the one who instilled that kind of drive to Casey and his brothers. And it sort of made sense. His dad also played baseball for a farm team connected to the New York Yankees. The Yankees are one of the more recognizable teams out there, regardless of people’s awareness of the sport they’re playing. I feel like you may have seen a guy wear a cap with the letters NY in it.
Somehow, Casey managed to play four different sports in high school including basketball, football (yes, the American one), baseball and even track. Considering that he played three other sports, I am sort of amazed that he stuck with playing baseball. From what I read, he was actually more interested in football during his high school years. Still, being able to do four different sports that have very different methods of playing is an impressive feat. It’s no wonder that he’s considering as one of the top school athletes in the history of the state.
Eventually, he went to college at Wichita State. There doesn’t seem to be any information regarding what degree he took up. But it doesn’t seem all that relevant. It’s no surprised that Casey did well in collegiate baseball. All of his other siblings also pursued becoming baseball players. But it seems like Casey was the only one who managed to get drafted to a major league baseball team. He played major league baseball for 12 years before retiring. Still, he managed to rack up a net worth of about $13,000,000.
