Early Life
Randy Mario Poffo was born in Columbus, Ohio, the elder son of Judy and Angelo Poffo. His father was Italian American and his mother was Jewish. Angelo was a well-known wrestler in the 1950s and 1960s, who was featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not! for his ability to do sit-ups for hours on end. His younger brother is professional wrestler Lanny Poffo, better known by his ring names "The Genius" and "Leaping Lanny Poffo." Randy also lived in Zanesville, Ohio where he attended Grover Cleveland Middle School. He graduated from Downers Grove North High School in a suburb near Chicago, Illinois. He later moved to Lexington, Kentucky and lived there for many years.
Savage was signed by the St. Louis Cardinals organization as a catcher out of high school. He was placed in the minor leagues to develop, where he mostly played as an outfielder in the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds, and Chicago White Sox farm systems. Savage was 18 when he began playing minor league baseball; one of his teammates on the 1971 Gulf Coast League Cardinals was Larry Herndon who was also his roommate. Savage would swing a bat into a hanging car tire as a regular training exercise in order to strengthen his hands and make sure he utilized his legs during swings, the technique was so effective that Herndon adopted it and used it during his own career as a baseball coach. Savage injured his natural (right) throwing shoulder after a collision at home plate, and he learned to throw with his left arm instead. The team was managed by Jimmy Piersall. Savage's last season was 1974, when he played for the Tampa Tarpons. He played 289 games in four minor league seasons, batting .254 with 16 home runs and 66 RBIs.
Read more about this topic: Randy Savage
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man’s subordination.... The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life; society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence—that, is, the individual—pure and strong.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)