Back in 1998, I was a scrappy 18-year-old kid having a down year.  I had a horrible first semester in college prompting me to believe college isn’t my thing.  I was looking for something to pick my spirits up, and I found it in baseball.

It was the summer of 1998.  Temperatures in Philadelphia were swelling to the typical 90 degrees with 100 percent humidity that I hate with such a fiery passion and causes water shortages with all the showers being taken.  In St. Louis and Chicago, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were making things hot with their bats as they sent more baseballs into orbit than NASA sends satellites.

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