Hammerin' Hank Fletcher

Draft Day

Cameras flashed constantly in Hank Fletcher’s eyes, as he stood at the podium on Major League Baseball’s Draft Day. Reporters pointed black microphone booms at him, as if they were villagers hunting a wild hog.

As he held up the Boston Red Sox jersey, with the number twenty-five in brilliant red on the back, he smiled wide, and it was this image that would be on the cover of Sports Illustrated and ESPN Magazine the following month.

With nineteen-year-old spark he said, “Thank you all for giving me this opportunity. I will not let you down!”

He shook hands with the man next to him and walked off the stage, floating just a bit higher than everyone in the room that day.

Hank Fletcher, or Hammerin’ Hank as everyone called him since his Little League days, was the best baseball player his hometown of Winter Haven, Florida, ever birthed. He was absurdly tall, just under seven-feet, and his white skin was muscle-bound from head to toe. He had long, brown hair that was almost always tucked underneath a ball cap, and green eyes that were hidden beneath sunglasses on most days.

In his senior year at Winter Haven High School, which concluded a month before signing with the Red Sox, he led his team to the state championship. Hank possessed a deadly arsenal of three pitches. The first: a blazing one hundred miles per hour (mph) plus, fastball. Next up: an eighty-five mph slider that fell off the table just as it crossed the plate. Completing his repository was a sixty-five mph knuckleball that fluttered like a butterfly as it made its way to the catcher’s mitt. There had been nobody in the history of Baseball to throw a hundred mph fastball and a knuckleball. He was a freak of nature that scouts from all over the country flew to see.

In the state championship game, he struck out twenty, allowed one hit, which was a bunt down the third base line from the speediest player on the opposing team, and gave up no runs. A complete game shut out, with the final score Winter Haven Blue Devils 3, and West Nassau Warriors, 0.

Not long after, he was named the Florida State Player of the Year, an award he won the year prior as a junior.

A month later, in the living room of his father’s house, a scout for the Boston Red Sox handed him a rectangular piece of paper: a check for ten million dollars. If he agreed to sign the three-year contract, he would be a professional baseball player and starting pitcher for the Triple-A Boston Red Sox Affiliate team, the Pawtucket Red Sox. He glanced over at his father, who appeared to be ecstatic, and asked, “Should I?” His father nodded, and Hank looked over at the scout and asked, “Where do I sign? And better yet, when do I start?” The rest was history.