Celebrating the legend of Frank Thomas

I remember the summer of 1989.  I was spending my time being overpaid to teach swim lessons.For the second year straight, I was following the baseball draft.  The previous year, the White Sox drafted Robin Ventura as the third baseman of the future after the experiment in turning Kenny Williams into a third baseman failed.  That failure gave the Sox another top 10 pick in 1989.  Frank was far and away the best hitter coming out of college, and by some miraculous means, he fell to the White Sox with the seventh pick.

Rather than repeat all the statistics, you'll be seeing all weekend, I've got a couple of stories I remember from Frank's early days.  None of these are verified, so could be completely false.  They are, however, part of the legend of Frank to me.

My favorite Frank Thomas story goes back to his college years.  The opposing pitcher, instead of giving up a crushing home run, he gave up a line drive.  Straight back at him.  To Frank with an aluminum bat.

The pitcher caught the ball.  Unfortunately, the glove was ripped off his hand and landed close to the outfield grass.  The pitcher never played a game again.

The next story comes from the 1990 spring training.  This was Frank's first spring training with the White Sox down in Sarasota.  After the first couple of days of spring training, a section of the parking lot near the outfield where Frank was taking BP was roped off because of the cars that were taking damage from the balls he was hitting out of the park.

So, those are my stories from the early days.  What will you be thinking about when he's being inducted?  Tell us your stories you have about Frank.