was almost always the first Hornet to arrive at work, even beating the team owner to the door.
Horshok was the owner of a local nightclub, the Rhino, and a carnival barker who knew how to create an electric small-time environment for his big-time prospect.
He booked concerts and Elvis impersonators and postgame fireworks shows and fired confetti cannons from the stadium roof. The team mascot, a giant red and blue wasp known as Bomber the Hornet, raced kids around the bases and always lost.
As executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association, Horshok also kept a group of prominent friends that included Mickey Mantle, who showed up at War Memorial one day to shoot the breeze. The sixty-one-year-old Mick, who would soon seek treatment for his alcoholism, was en route to a golf tournament in Georgia, and he said his goal was to get there without having a drink.
“Hey, Mickey,” Horshok said, “you know who Jeter is?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Mantle responded.
“Well, you’ve got to meet him.”
Mantle did not know the identity of any other Greensboro Hornets. Just Jeter. Denbo had Horshok ask Mantle if he would speak to the Hornets, and the Mick declined. He would only agree to talk to the teenager at short.
Horshok thought Jeter was destined to become a great player, he said, “so I wanted to make sure they met.”
The team owner pulled Jeter out of the group and walked him into a handshake with a Yankee prodigy from a different time and place. They met along the outfield fence, and Horshok stepped away so they could talk one on one, $1,500 bonus baby to $800,000 bonus baby.
Horshok saw Mantle doing the talking and gesturing, and Jeter doing the listening and nodding. Long before he roamed center field and swatted 536 home runs and secured a place among baseball’s all-time greats, Mantle had been a young shortstop who struggled with the burdens of great expectations.
They had a few things in common. Mantle might have been the most popular of Yankees, and Jeter clearly was the most popular of Hornets.
In fact, Jeter was just as comfortable with the townsfolk as he was with Mantle. He was a favorite of the team’s booster club, and with the locals who wanted to make him feel at home.
“You’d see him go to potato salad, fried chicken, and hamburger cookouts with fans, when he didn’t have to go,” Horshok said. “Derek bought completely into what the people around here were all about.”
Earl “Bubba” Clary was one of those people. A former placekicker at East Carolina and a sports nut newly divorced, Clary attended a businessman’s special at War Memorial and ultimately opened up his large three-bedroom home to any Hornet who needed a hot meal or a place to stay.
Matt Luke and the third baseman, Scott Romano, moved in, and Shane Spencer and catcher Tom Wilson followed. Minor leaguers strapped for money and living three or four to a small apartment suddenly had bigger and better accommodations free of charge.
Jeter and his roommate, Long, crashed at Clary’s for the final month of the season. At forty-five, Clary was a bachelor having the time of his life. He felt like the little boy he used to be, listening to Mantle play baseball on the radio. Jeter liked to call him Big Earl, and Clary would serve as the ballplayers’ middleman when they were trying to score female companionship for the night.
When attractive women asked the Hornets for autographs, some players would include Clary’s phone number with their signatures. “So after games we’re over here watching
SportsCenter
at eleven o’clock,” Clary said, “cooking some steaks on the grill, and the women would be ringing my phone. I was the players’ agent, and I’d take the scraps. When we had enough women over here, I’d take the phone off the hook.”
Only the 1993 Hornets were not exactly the 1986 Mets. They were a serious-minded lot hell-bent on winning the Sally League crown.
Ryan Karp, the lefty
Horshok was the owner of a local nightclub, the Rhino, and a carnival barker who knew how to create an electric small-time environment for his big-time prospect.
He booked concerts and Elvis impersonators and postgame fireworks shows and fired confetti cannons from the stadium roof. The team mascot, a giant red and blue wasp known as Bomber the Hornet, raced kids around the bases and always lost.
As executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Alumni Association, Horshok also kept a group of prominent friends that included Mickey Mantle, who showed up at War Memorial one day to shoot the breeze. The sixty-one-year-old Mick, who would soon seek treatment for his alcoholism, was en route to a golf tournament in Georgia, and he said his goal was to get there without having a drink.
“Hey, Mickey,” Horshok said, “you know who Jeter is?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Mantle responded.
“Well, you’ve got to meet him.”
Mantle did not know the identity of any other Greensboro Hornets. Just Jeter. Denbo had Horshok ask Mantle if he would speak to the Hornets, and the Mick declined. He would only agree to talk to the teenager at short.
Horshok thought Jeter was destined to become a great player, he said, “so I wanted to make sure they met.”
The team owner pulled Jeter out of the group and walked him into a handshake with a Yankee prodigy from a different time and place. They met along the outfield fence, and Horshok stepped away so they could talk one on one, $1,500 bonus baby to $800,000 bonus baby.
Horshok saw Mantle doing the talking and gesturing, and Jeter doing the listening and nodding. Long before he roamed center field and swatted 536 home runs and secured a place among baseball’s all-time greats, Mantle had been a young shortstop who struggled with the burdens of great expectations.
They had a few things in common. Mantle might have been the most popular of Yankees, and Jeter clearly was the most popular of Hornets.
In fact, Jeter was just as comfortable with the townsfolk as he was with Mantle. He was a favorite of the team’s booster club, and with the locals who wanted to make him feel at home.
“You’d see him go to potato salad, fried chicken, and hamburger cookouts with fans, when he didn’t have to go,” Horshok said. “Derek bought completely into what the people around here were all about.”
Earl “Bubba” Clary was one of those people. A former placekicker at East Carolina and a sports nut newly divorced, Clary attended a businessman’s special at War Memorial and ultimately opened up his large three-bedroom home to any Hornet who needed a hot meal or a place to stay.
Matt Luke and the third baseman, Scott Romano, moved in, and Shane Spencer and catcher Tom Wilson followed. Minor leaguers strapped for money and living three or four to a small apartment suddenly had bigger and better accommodations free of charge.
Jeter and his roommate, Long, crashed at Clary’s for the final month of the season. At forty-five, Clary was a bachelor having the time of his life. He felt like the little boy he used to be, listening to Mantle play baseball on the radio. Jeter liked to call him Big Earl, and Clary would serve as the ballplayers’ middleman when they were trying to score female companionship for the night.
When attractive women asked the Hornets for autographs, some players would include Clary’s phone number with their signatures. “So after games we’re over here watching
SportsCenter
at eleven o’clock,” Clary said, “cooking some steaks on the grill, and the women would be ringing my phone. I was the players’ agent, and I’d take the scraps. When we had enough women over here, I’d take the phone off the hook.”
Only the 1993 Hornets were not exactly the 1986 Mets. They were a serious-minded lot hell-bent on winning the Sally League crown.
Ryan Karp, the lefty
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