How did Orioles star Brian Roberts get to where he is?
This would be a good time to lie. A great time, in fact, to tell you that I knew Brian Roberts was headed for stardom 26 years ago, when I saw him in diapers hitting Wiffle balls in the basement of his parents’ house. From both sides of the plate, no less. Yeah, I could spin a good one, talk about how I saw him taking infield with a college team at the age of 6. Saw him sweating through workouts in 100 heat, participating in soft-toss and BP alongside those college players, when he was 7. And how I saw this kid as a can’t-miss prodigy who would one day, as a 27-year-old, switchhitting second baseman and leadoff man for the Baltimore Orioles, be the talk of baseball. But I can’t lie. The truth is, I saw Brian do all those things when he was a little boy, dating back to the spring of 1979, when he wasn’t even 2. But there was no way I thought he’d be anything more than a kid who was pushed too hard, too soon by his dad, Mike Roberts, who was the baseball coach at North Carolina then. And
