"From a scared minor leaguer to winner of the Cy Young Award--baseball's highest honor for a pitcher--almost overnight!"

Got my bent, bony fingers on a copy of Tom Seaver’s 1973 softcover book, “Baseball is my life.” Co-authored by sportswriter Steve Jacobson, this 127-page Scholastic Books publication is graced with a few cool photos and was aimed at kids.

“Tom Terrific” looks back on his childhood and how he went from Little League to the pinnacle of the big leagues. He definitely plays the humble hero for kids in the book, though I haven’t heard a whole lot of flattering things over the years about Seaver’s personality. At any rate, he was treated like a Beatle after he led the Miracle Mets to the 1969 World Series and could have published all the books he wanted. In the following excerpt, Seaver recalls the culture shock he experienced after joining the Marine Corps Reserve when he was a 17-year-old American Legion pitcher:

“I hated being in the Marine Corps. But I don’t think anything was worse than the first day at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. I’ve compared memories with other fellows in the service. It just wasn’t my outfit or me; it was everybody and every outfit. It was the first day: anger, frustration, tears, fear–all wrapped together in the unknown.

Seaver on the mound during the 1969 World Series. If baseball hadn't panned out, he planned to become a dentist.

It began with Russ Scheidt, an old, friend, and myself getting on a bus that went to San Diego. When we were five or six years old, Russ and I used to play catch. He’d stand on one side of the street and toss the ball to me on the other side. Neither of us was allowed to cross the street then. He was the kid who told me, when I showed up for my first Little League game, that I had my socks on backwards.

They picked us up at the bus station, got us onto a truck, and they told us to sit down and not talk. It wasn’t bad. Then when we drove through the gates it was like going into a new world.

The door opened and the screaming began. You always know that sticks and stones will break your bones and names will never harm you, but this was something else. When they screamed, we had to jump and move, and we never jumped high enough or moved fast enough. Get out of the bus, stand in line, and hurry up–screaming, screaming with all the foul language that goes with it. I heard words I could never write on a printed page.”