WHEN BASEBALL CALLED, WALKER GAVE IT A TRY
From hockey wannabe to baseball Hall of Famer
Perhaps Larry Walker was destined to be a baseball player. Why else would the baseball gods have blessed the kid from Canada with a thunderous bat, speed on the bases, instincts, and an arm that unleashed lightning bolts from right field?
On Wednesday, Walker will be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. But before he became Larry Legend and the first Rockies player elected to the Hall of Fame, all Walker wanted to do was play hockey.
“Being Canadian, you’re born into this world with a stick in your hand and skates on your feet,” said Walker, a native of Maple Ridge, British Columbia. “So that’s how I was as a kid.
You played hockey, and that’s all that really mattered.”
At age 16, with dreams of being an NHL goaltender, he was invited to training camp by the Regina Pats of the Junior A Western Hockey League. If he made the team, scouts would take notice. But he got cut. He was invited back the next year and failed again.
“When I was cut for the second year in a row I had the opportunity to go to Swift Current,” he recalled. “I drove into the town and I stopped at the rink and I looked around, and I don’t know why, but I said, ‘You know what? This isn’t for me.’ And I decided I wasn’t going to pursue hockey.
“We turned around and drove back home to Maple Ridge, British
Columbia, and that’s when it ended. And that’s when baseball kind of came knocking on my door. I didn’t knock on its door.”
Walker’s father, Larry Sr., played semi-pro baseball. Walker, his dad and his brothers — Barry, Carey, and Gary — often played together in a fast-pitch softball league. Walker never played baseball at Maple Ridge Senior Secondary because it didn’t have a team. He played volleyball and hockey in high school.
He learned his rudimentary baseball skills in a Canadian amateur league in Vancouver, roughly the equivalent of the Senior Babe Ruth Leagues in the United States.
During the summer of 1984, Walker played with the Coquitlam Reds in Vancouver, made Canada’s national team and played in the 1984 World Youth Championships in Kindersley, Saskatchewan.
That November, Walker got a call from Bob Rogers, an Expos scout who signed Walker to a minor league contract for a $1,500 signing bonus.
He spent 1985 through most of 1989 in the minors, batting .274 with 73 homers and 258 RBIS in 437 games.
In his first season in pro ball, in 1985, he hit only .223 with two home runs in 62 games while on loan to the unaffiliated Utica Blue Sox of the New York-penn League.
“I’d never seen a forkball, never seen a slider,” Walker recalled. “I didn’t know they existed. I had never really seen a good curveball. In Canada, as a kid, we’d play 10, maybe 15 baseball games a year.”
Jeff Huson played with Walker in Class-a ball in 1986 in Burlington, Iowa. Then the two were teammates in Triple-a Indianapolis in 1989 and for a short time together with the Expos later that season. Huson was blown away by Walker’s raw talent and his ability to pick up the game.
“Larry was raw, but you could see what a great athlete he was,” said Huson, now a Rockies analyst for AT&T Sportsnet Rocky Mountain. “I remember they tried him out at third base but his arm was so strong that he kept throwing the ball over the first baseman’s head. Sometimes it would end up in the stands. So they put him in the outfield.”
Walker credits Ralph Rowe with helping turn him into a major-league hitter. Rowe was a hitting coach in the Expos organization and after the 1985 season, and a number of winters to follow, Walker honed his skills under Rowe while playing in the Florida Instructional League.
Once Walker began to learn the nuances of the game, his athleticism began to shine through.
“When I talk about Larry, I say he is the best athlete I ever played with,” said former Rockies first baseman Todd Helton. “I played (college) football too and played with some great athletes, but the guy could do everything.
“Of course, he was a Gold Glove outfielder with a cannon of an arm, but the thing he did best was run bases. That’s not going to help you get into the Hall of Fame, but you throw that on to everything else the guy did and he was amazing.”