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Ryan Klesko
Ryan Klesko caught the attention of scouts early in his high-school baseball career. Scouts clamored for the prime spots behind home plate to watch Klesko, a freshman on the Westminster (California) High School varsity. Klesko hit 278 home runs and batted .279 in a 16-year major-league career. But the scouts weren’t there to watch him hit. They were there to watch him pitch. “I went to Ron LeFebvre’s pitching school eight years,” Klesko said. “At first I was going for fun. But after a certain point I was good enough that I knew I would do something in baseball after high school. I thought it would be pitching.” Klesko, a hard-throwing left-hander, struck out 138 in 96⅔ innings as a sophomore and junior and compiled a 13-6 won-lost record in his first three seasons on the Westminster varsity. After his junior season (in 1988) he was a member of the US Junior Olympic Team. But an elbow injury limited him to playing first base as a high-school senior. “I was always a pretty good hitter, too,” Klesko said. “When I was a freshman and sophomore at Ron’s school, I started batting against college pitchers and I did fine. I knew I could make it as a hitter, too.”
In the Braves championship year of 1995, Klesko hit .310 with 23 home runs and 70 RBIs in 107 games and 329 at-bats. After the Braves defeated Cleveland in the first two games in Atlanta, Klesko hit home runs in all three games at Jacobs Field in Cleveland to become the first player to homer in three consecutive World Series road games. His home run in the sixth inning of the Braves’ 5-2 victory in Game Four landed near where his mother, Lorene, was sitting in the bleachers. “It missed her by about 10 feet,” said Klesko. “She went down and got it, but she had to bribe them for it. It cost her a baseball bat, two balls autographed by our whole team and a couple of pictures. But it was worth it.” - SABR
Redid the facegen. While Ryan had several distinctive facial hair styles in his day, the one in the fg wasn't one of my favorites so I chose a source file with a proper goatee. It was that or go to his baby-faced, young Braves self...
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