September 02, 2004

ZELL MILLER'S HOME RUN

Zell Miller, baseball lover vs. John Kerry, windsurfer.

"If it's high, let it fly. If it's low let it go". The Kerry team must have Esteban Loaiza handling strategy. Last night baseball lover Zell Miller got the high one and hammered it out of the park.

"...The happiest days of my life were spent on the skinned infields of North Georgia, western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. Sometimes we would ride in the back of a pick-up truck to the games. When we played at home -in the days before television- huge crowds would turn out on Saturday and Sunday afternoons to cheer the local team. When someone hit a home run, they would pass the hat and present the hero with a pocket full of change and wadded up dollar bills..."

"...Zell Miller has played baseball, coached baseball, watched baseball and scoured sports pages to soak up every statistic there is about baseball. To call him a baseball fan is a huge understatement. Zell Miller is a walking baseball encyclopedia. The walls of his Senate office attest to his love of the game. There are numerous photos of his dear friends and baseball legends, Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle. There is the New York Yankees jacket signed by Mantle. There is a shelf full of autographed baseballs, including the foul ball Miller caught in the 1992 World Series. It reads, "Caught by Zell Miller, 1st World Series game, 1992. Attest: Jimmy Carter." That ball is also signed by Ted Turner, who was sitting in the box with Miller and former President Carter, and by the player who hit it, Deion Sanders..." See the rest here.

And here are Sen. Miller's 10 baseball favorites:
Mickey Mantle
Hank Aaron
Jackie Robinson
Lou Gehrig
Ted Williams
Bob Gibson
Johnny Mize
Lou Boudreau
Whitey Ford
Phil Niekro
Pat Jarvis