RAISING BOYS:

Harmon Killebrew: The Hall of Fame induction speech (Pioneer Press, 05/17/2011)

I was born and raised in a little town in Idaho called Payette, and when I was 8 years old, my father gave me my first baseball glove. He was a great athlete. He played football for James Milligan University in Illinois, and then he played at West Virginia Wesleyan under the great Greasy Neale, who not only was the great football coach for the Philadelphia Eagles but he also played baseball for the Cincinnati Reds. And it was through my father's insistence and persuasion, I guess, to insist that I participate in sports, not only in baseball, but in football and basketball and a little track, that I became acquainted with this great American pastime.

I grew up in this small town in Idaho, and my father used to like to go to the movies, and I'll never forget that a lot of times on warm summer evenings like this my father would take my brother, Bob, and I to the movies. And then after the movie was over, he would race us home. He'd always win. He was a man that took a great deal of pride in his children. I'll never forget, we used to play a lot of ball out in the front yard, and my mother would say, "You're tearing up the grass and digging holes in the front yard?" And my father would say, "We're not raising grass here, we're raising boys."

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