Raines’ hall entry comes with new book
Expos star did well for himself after giving up football
Tim Raines was born and raised in Sanford, Fla., but he really grew up in Montreal — both on and off the baseball diamond.
Raines was only 19 when he was first called up by the Expos after being selected in the fifth round of the 1977 amateur draft.
Football was Raines’ first love and he was a star running back at Seminole High School, nicknamed “Little Juice” after O.J. Simpson, who was starring with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills.
“When I closed my eyes at night, I didn’t picture myself on a major-league baseball field,” Raines writes in his new book, Rock Solid: My Life in Baseball’s Fast Lane. “No, I had gridiron dreams.”
While Raines already had a chiselled physique in high school, he only grew to five-foot-eight, which he wrote “put a serious dent in my future plans to dominate in the NFL.”
So baseball became his sport and on Sunday Raines will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Raines’ major-league journey started on Sept. 11, 1979, when the Expos called him up from the double-A Memphis Chicks only 12 days after he had become a first-time father with the birth of Tim Jr. Raines still remembers taking the flight from Memphis to Chicago, where the Expos were playing the Cubs at Wrigley Field.
“I just remember being so nervous, taking batting practice in the outfield, trying to shag down fly balls and I was unable to even judge fly balls from a big-league hitter,” Raines said Friday.
Dick Williams, the Expos’ manager at the time, used Raines exclusively as a pinch-runner that season. The next season, Raines played for the triple-A Denver Bears, hitting .354 with a .439 on-base percentage and 77 stolen bases. He was called up by the Expos at the end of the 1980 season and got his first major-league at-bat, striking out. Later in the game, Raines beat out an infield single against reliever Bert Roberge for his first major-league hit.
The next year, Raines figured out major-league pitching during a strike-shortened season and hit .304 in 88 games with 71 stolen bases. In Montreal, Raines was converted from a second baseman to an outfielder, won a battle with cocaine addiction and had a second child in July 1983 with the birth of Andre, named after teammate Andre Dawson.
On Sunday, Raines will join Dawson as a hall of famer.