Barry Larkin Elected to Hall of Fame

It’s rare I post here about anything not directly related to the business of writing, but I’m just too excited about Barry Larkin being elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame today. I thought I’d share an excerpt from a piece I wrote on him back in 2009:

Congratulations to Barry Larkin on being elected today to the Hall of Fame. Here’s an excerpt from a bit I wrote about Barry back in 2009…

“If Cal Ripken redefined the shortstop position, Barry Larkin took it mainstream. He wore the white polyester uniform with dual red-racing stripes down the legs; his #11 wristbands ran from the bottom of his black glove halfway up his arm. He could just as easily flatten a catcher with the acceleration of a Tomahawk Missile (Mike Heath comes to mind) as turn a perfect pivot on a double play, seeming to hover like a toy glider above the outstretched arms of an incoming baserunner, his feet just a little too large for his jackrabbit legs.

“When finally elected as a starter to the All-Star Game in 1995, he ran out to his position and performed a flawless back-flip, because that’s what Ozzie Smith always used to do. The torch had been passed.

“He was cocky in a way that made other kids want to be him, to chomp bubblegum and wear their batting gloves in their back pocket. He was smooth in a way that could only have been considered smooth in the early-nineties…pre-grunge, pre-strike, pre-world-wide web…when high-fives weren’t just cool, they were choreographed.”

Congrats to one of my baseball heroes.