Here is a rare thing – Fernando Martinez, an 18 year old baseball player already established as one to watch out for:
Martinez grew up in Rio San Juan, a fishing village on the Dominican’s north-central coast, where his father, Odalio Fernando Martinez, was a cattle farmer. He has three stepsisters and a stepbrother, and lives near his mother, Ana Luisa Alvarez. From the time he was 13 or so, Martinez said, he took 400 to 500 swings every day. To increase his bat speed, Martinez swung a weighted bat and tried to hit kernels of corn tossed to him by a trainer.
Now I know what to blame my lack of success in life on – my parents failure to toss hundreds of corn kernels at me every day of my young life.