Early Life
Hornsby was born in Winters, Texas, the last of Ed and Mary (Rogers) Hornsby's six children. When Hornsby was two years old, his father died of unknown causes. Four years later, the surviving Hornsbys moved to Fort Worth, Texas, so Hornsby's brothers could get jobs in the meat packing industry to support the family.
Hornsby started playing baseball at a very young age; he once said, "I can't remember anything that happened before I had a baseball in my hand." He took a job with the Swift and Company meat industry plant as a messenger boy when he was 10 years old, and he also served as a substitute infielder on its baseball team. By the age of 15, Hornsby was already playing for several semi-professional teams. He also played baseball for North Side High School until 10th grade, when he dropped out to take a full-time job at Swift and Company. While he was in high school, Hornsby also played on the football team, alongside future College Football Hall of Famer Bo McMillin.
Read more about this topic: Rogers Hornsby
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.”
—Henry Reed (1914–1986)
“We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels’ food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)