CLEVELAND — Tampa Bay Rays first-base coach Rocky Baldelli taught his boys and their buddies how to play baseball in the backyard, using a hockey goal as a backstop so the ball wouldn’t roll to the street when one of them swung and missed.
John Forsythe instilled the fundamentals in his boys that carried Logan to the big leagues and Blake to Triple-A Lehigh Valley in the Phillies chain, where he is a catcher for the IronPigs.
They taught their boys the baseball fundamentals — how to get in front of a grounder, how to hit the cutoff man and the importance of running hard to first base every time, no matter what.