Lanny Wadkins - "Steve Carlton" SHORT TRACK

Intro Music 0:07

Straight down the middle. It went straight down the middle. Then it started to hook just as well.

Mike Gonzalez 0:16

This is a question I asked uh of Steve Carlton about four years ago at a bar in uh Steve Carlton baseball, by the way. And do you really? Yes, I do. And of course, Steve was a was a pitcher with the Cardinals before he went to the Phillies. Uh Hall of Famer, 4,000 plus strikeouts, you know the record, didn't you? Yeah. He was there to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the World Series win against Boston in 1967. And we found a friend of mine and I found he and Tim McCarver sitting alone at the hotel bar. So we just went up and started talking. Right? And we were talking with him for an hour and a half, just the four of us, before other people started showing up. But I asked him the question among others. I said and I'll ask you the same question. And I'll tell you, tell you his answer. He I said, if you knew at age 20 what you know now, what would you do different? And while you think about that, Steve Carleton's qu uh answer sort of amazed me because I had a lot of things running through my head about what he could have come with. Now here's a guy that pitched till he was what 45 or so yeah.

Lanny Wadkins 1:13

Yeah, early 40s anyway, and very successful.

Mike Gonzalez 1:15

Yeah, very successful. He says, Okay, uh I'm thinking to myself, he had a fastball, he had a curveball, and he had a slider. Okay. He says, you know, he didn't think this long. He says, I would have done uh I I would have done this. I would have learned a four-seam fastball and I would have learned how to throw in a circle change. So he wanted to add a fourth and fifth pitch, thinking he could play another three or four years.

Lanny Wadkins 1:39

Well, and and plus it would have made his other stuff harder to hit.

Mike Gonzalez 1:42

Right. I just found that fascinating.

Lanny Wadkins 1:44

Uh you know, uh I was doing an outing in Philadelphia and they had, you know, how you do you have things for that you can bid on out there. Yeah. They had three baseballs together that I walked up and bid on them, and nobody else is like fifty bucks. Steve Carlton, Stan Musual, Sandy Koufax. I got all three.

Intro Music 2:04

How about that? Yeah, that's crazy. So answering it. There you go.

Mike Gonzalez 2:08

So you gotta answer the question. You're 20 years old, but you know what you know now. What would you do different?

Lanny Wadkins 2:15

I would have had better instruction because I did it all myself. I I think the the the one regret that I c I keep coming back to is is the Phil Rogers thing. Had I spent more time there and been a better putter, my ball striking I can't remember when my ball striking let me down in like at an opener or something. Uh Masters. I don't think it was ever the ball striking, it was the putting. I would I would have been a better putter, chipper, pitcher, bunker player. We didn't have the facilities then that they have today with the practice areas and short game areas. We didn't have that. When I grew up and I went to work on my bunker game, I took a shag bag to the excess sand that my club had stored, it was flat. It was just a pile of sand. I smoothed it out and hit bunker shots to my shag bag. That was the way I practiced. That was all I had back then. I didn't have what my boys have grown up with or what we have here at Preston Trail today. I didn't have any of that. I would love to have had that. You know, or at least I would have spent I would have made myself a better pitcher, bunker player, chipper of the balls. I was a decent chipper and I had good imagination chipping. I don't I don't think I ever lacked that. But uh putter for sure.

Mike Gonzalez 3:30

We hope you've enjoyed this short track of For the Good of the Game. And please, wherever you listen to your podcast on Apple and Spotify, if you like what you hear, please subscribe, spread the word, straight down the middle, and tell your friends until we tee it up again for the good of the game. So long, everybody.

Intro Music 3:51

It went smack down the fairway. And it started to slice just smidge off line. It headed for two, but it bounced off nine. My candy says long as you're still in the state, you're okay.