"You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time."        --Jim Bouton
"I started off as a very very bad baseball player at about seven years old.  I could barely throw, I could barely run.  I could not make the worst team in the league, but I thought I was great.

We were playing in a little league park in the middle of the day, and I actually hit a home run, and it dawned on me I had gotten better.
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 I became mesmerized by it, maybe because I wasn’t any good at it at first."          
Mark’s love of the game started as a kid on the West Side of Dayton, when he and his friends would spend their summers playing baseball from early morning until dark, pausing only for ‘a sandwich and a Coke’.

Mark continued to play and improve into adulthood, ultimately receiving an offer to try-out for the Phillies in the mid-1970s.

He went on to pitch at Reds Dream Week 1986; played FB and _____ in seven Men's Senior Baseball League Championship Tournaments 1990--2015, (five times taking the team to the Win and "The Ring").  He was named MVP three times (199__, 199__ and 199__.)

A turbulent return flight from the 20_____ Arizona MSBL tournament provided the inspiration for his novel Last at Bat.
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He is a life-long Reds fan; continues batting practice on a regular basis, and co-hosts the Ohio Baseball Weekly show on Monday nights during the season on ultimatesportstalk.com.

cincinnati reds dream team 1986

men's senior baseball league tournament teams