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At least you got to the minors! ;) I could pitch a bit and hit a good bit when I was growing up.

As a pitcher, I had a rather weird palm ball - I used to hold mine right in the palm with my thumb resting on a seam and the fingertips off the ball, so I could let the ball kind of bound off my fingertips when I threw it. The way I threw it, it spun like a fast ball but it had nothing on it. Kids in camp games used to scream bloody murder and their counselors would scream at me to knock it off with the fancy pitches, and I used to scream back that when you're the pitcher, your job is to get their asses out any way you could think to do it. They'd get a little testier, and then I'd knock one of their guys down, and I'd tell them, "Now, get in there and hit. Just watch the ball and take your best shot, and if you get your hit, pat yourself on the back because you earned that hit, and let's play this game the way it's supposed to be played, everyone even up, and everyone does his job, you're the hitter and your job is to try to hit what I throw, and my job is to get you out." And they learned something, I hope. Just because we're kids, it doesn't mean there's not a right way to play baseball. And you enjoy the game more when you're playing it the right way. I guess it was pretty brash, but hey, I played the game to get the best out of it. And you got my respect if you stepped in there and gave me your best shot at bat. Even if you took me downtown.

I had a wee bit of a sinkerball, actually a fast ball which tended to drop down because of the way it left my hand - I didn't have a very strong grip, and the way I was holding it, the rotation took the ball down, even though it wasn't a proper sinkerball. And I'd actually figured out how to throw an odd little knuckleball - I used a fingertip grip but, instead of holding the ball with the fingers over the top, I'd hold mine sideways, the way your hand ends up after you snap it out to throw a curve ball, and I used to get some decent movement on the ball even if I threw it a little harder than you'd normally throw a knuckleball.

As a hitter, I was pretty much something between a pure power hitter and a line driver, and I was pretty decent at going the other way - I batted right handed and I got a lot of my hits going to right field. I had long enough legs that even running at not such great speed I could take the extra base. Alas, at age 15, I made a pair of revelations: I could no longer hit a fair ball unless they moved the foul lines over degrees enough to make a straight line behind the plate, and I could no longer throw strikes unless the zone was on a batter's ass.