He played 11 seasons in the majors and for six teams, including the Cincinnati Reds from 1993-996. For his career, he hit .264, 44 homers and drove in 264 runs. The 46-year-old earned $4.7 million for his career.
After the first day of the camp, while standing between baseball fields, Howard talked about a variety of topics:
Q: “What’s your favorite childhood memory?”
A: “Just playing all the sports in the park. That’s what I don’t see. The memory of playing basketball at Douglass Park. There were only 10 players on the court at a time, and if you got out there, you were like a neighborhood celebrity.”
Q: “What was the worst part about playing baseball for a living?”
A: “What really hurt was being away from my family. Everybody grew up. I played 15 years...that’s 15 years you don’t get to see your kids. I got to see them three months (a year). When 15 years go by, it’s like five years. I’m sitting there at my oldest daughter’s graduation, and I just finished playing. It was like, ‘Is she graduating?’ She moved on and I missed those years. I don’t even know the name of my kids’ middle school. A lot of the players talked about that. Everybody sees the glamour, but the downfall is you got to get to know your family, you got to get to know your kids, your friends.”
Q: “How did you get from Douglass Park to the Major Leagues? What was the one thing?”
A: “Competition. When I was coming through, you had Todd Bell, He was already in the NFL. You had Butch Carter. You got my cousin, Jimmy Calhoun. You had Cris Carter. You had Sonny Gordon. We all competed against each other.”
Q: “Baseball is talking about realignment. What are your thoughts?”
A: “That’s business. That has nothing to do with the game of baseball.”
Q: “Now that you have retired, do you follow the Reds much?”
A: “I don’t watch baseball that much. I follow Dusty (Baker). I talk to Dusty a lot.”
Q: “Why him?”
A: “I always talked to him when I played. As a player, I always wanted to talk to players I watched. I used to always see him battle against the ‘Big Red Machine.’ I knew all the Reds and all the Dodgers. They were the teams that were going to be playing.” He rattled off the starters, by positions, of the Reds and Dodgers of the 1970s.
Q: “Did you ever dream about playing in the Majors?”
A: “It was something that you’d shoot for. You didn’t want to make millions. You wanted to make that team. I wanted to play against the best competition.”
Q: “As far as your career, do you have any regrets?”
A: “Nothing. You don’t have any regrets because you have to keep moving forward.”
Q: “If you were baseball commissioner for one day, what would you do?”
A: “Get it back to baseball. It’s hard to take big business out of it. I wouldn’t want that job.”
About the Author
