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My advice to young people is go for it. You don't know how you're going to develop, so don't over think it while you're younger.
Rick Horton
2019 Semoball Awards keynote speaker and former St. Louis Cardinal
Semoball Awards speaker, former Cardinals pitcher Rick Horton talks ahead of visit to Cape Girardeau
Rick Horton autographs a newspaper clipping for Patty Lascher in January 2012 at the Cardinals Caravan at the Osage Centre in Cape Girardeau. Horton is the keynote speaker at the 2019 Semoball Awards.
Southeast Missourian file photo
For information on the 2019 Semoball Awards or to purchase tickets to the event, go to semoball.com/awards.
In less than a month, Rick Horton will be in Cape Girardeau, spreading his own unique message to student-athletes and others across Southeast Missouri.
A former St. Louis Cardinal pitcher and current broadcaster for the team, Horton is the keynote speaker for the 2019 Semoball Awards, which will be held July 13 at Southeast Missouri State's River Campus. Horton was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, and later played at the University of Virginia before the Cardinals drafted him in 1980. He made his Major League Baseball debut in 1984 and played seven seasons, winning a World Series with the Dodgers in 1988.
Rick Horton
He's now in his 14th year as a radio and TV broadcaster for the Cardinals.
Before Horton's appearance at the Sixth Annual Semoball Awards, Southeast Missourian sports reporter Phillip Suitts caught up with Horton on the phone and asked him a few questions.
PHILLIP SUITTS: I'd thought I'd start with your major league career and how you got there. I saw you grew up in New York. As a kid and teenager, did you ever dream and plan on playing in the majors, and when you actually got the call up in 1984 and played in your first game, what was that like?
RICK HORTON: I guess in the back of my mind, I dreamed it, yes, but my first dream was to get to college. That was not a typical thing for people in my family to get that opportunity. Baseball was a means to get a scholarship. That was almost the end game for me when I was 14, 15, 16, but like every kid that loved baseball, when I was little I just imagined myself being in the big leagues and playing along with my favorite players.
So, yeah, in some way, it was in the back of my mind, but realistically, I thought the end game might be just getting me to college, which it did. But then things kind of flourished from there. Ended up getting drafted by the Cardinals, and that first big league experience was surreal to me, being able to compete at the highest level and realizing very few people get that opportunity. I was very thankful for it.
PS: You mentioned wanting to earn a college scholarship. When you talk to young athletes, high school athletes or maybe even middle school or younger, what is your advice as people look to get scholarships and play at the next level?
RH: The advice, generally, is go for it. If you at all over think or are hesitant about it -- if I would have over thought it when I was 17 and I had several people say, 'Look, you're wasting your time thinking you're ever going to be a big leaguer.' A couple of teachers told me that and they said, 'You've got to be focusing on studies because that's never going to happen.' I look back at that, and I'm not going to say I was discouraged by that, but if that was the only voice I was listening to, I think I would have had a very different approach to it.
Lucas Presson, assistant publisher of the Southeast Missourian, gives closing remarks after the unveiling of Rick Horton as the keynote Semoball Awards speaker Wednesday, March 6, 2019, at HealthPoint Fitness in Cape Girardeau.
Kassi Jackson ~ Southeast Missourian
My advice to young people is go for it. You don't know how you're going to develop, so don't over think it while you're younger. Play it out, and when you play it out, if that ends up being a good high school player, then you played it out and that's where you were. If you play it out, and it means sitting on the bench in college, that's what it is. If it means you're playing along with the women in the World Cup, then that's what that is. You just don't know where you're going to end up. So the idea is to not limit yourself by over thinking it and then work at it. Obviously work is part of this whole deal. Achievement doesn't come without work. There are just too many great athletes around. You're going to have to find a way to distinguish yourself.
PS: Staying on the college topic for a second, I saw that you played at the University of Virginia. I think when you went there they had been to maybe one NCAA Tournament and about four years ago now, 2015, they won a national title. Have you been following their recent rise and what's it been like for you as an alumni?
RH: I follow it for sure and certainly followed the basketball team this past year, winning the NCAA (tournament). Actually, the team that went to the (NCAA) Regionals that was the year I was out. My brother was on that team. That was kind of a new thing to get to play in the regionals, and I was kind of proud of him and that team. But then of course the success that came later with Ryan Zimmerman ... so many other big league players now. Connor Jones, most recently, was in the Cardinals' minor league system, and I chat with him about UVA. Very thankful for my time at UVA. We weren't very good. We were competing in a tough conference, but all those people that I played with, we have ongoing connections. We've been to several reunions back in Charlottesville, (Virginia). It's meaningful to me, there's no doubt.
PS: Going on to your major league experience, in just your second season you're pitching in the postseason, participating in the postseason, how did that help you and what was it like as such a young player getting used to the major league level?
RH: That's a great point, looking back at it. I was young, 25, 26. One of the things you forget about when you watch professional athletes playing on the big stage is just how young they are. We kind of realize how talented they may be to be at that level, but the assumption may be they're experienced and middle-aged men or women and they're not. They're still growing. It was almost a heady experience. I would say it's easy in baseball because you're around so many other guys going through it. That's why the team bonding thing is so important. I'm going through my first World Series, but so is Danny Cox and so is Ken Dayley and so is Todd Worrell and so is Andy Van Slyke. Guys who are lifelong friends of mine. So I think going through it with them helped and also having coaches that lead you.
That's another thing I tell young people every chance I can. You have to be teachable. You have to be coachable. Somebody's been there and knows some things that you don't know. They're not you. They're not going to tell you everything you need to know, but they're going to tell you something. We had really good coaching and of course Whitey Herzog as our leader put us all in the right spots to succeed, but it was definitely a heady thing to be going through at the age of 25.
PS: That leads right into was I was going to ask next, which is about Whitey Herzog, a manager that's beloved by a lot of Cardinals fans. What was it like to play under him and then how does he compare to more recent Cardinals managers?
RH: He's a non-meeting guy. With all the stuff that goes on now with meetings and analytics and saber-metrics, there's no way he could handle that. He would have that stuff in his head and he would have it intuitively. Whitey thought a five-minute meeting was too long. He wanted you to play and the theory was if you didn't play, he would get someone else who could, but he was very low-key about that. It wasn't like there was pressure, but you know it was about being professional and it was about performance. The expectations were high. He wasn't a rah-rah guy, but he was very smart in how he used his players. He would put you in positions to succeed. You'd get that time and time again in a unique way. I would say as good a leader as I've ever been around.
PS: Looking at your statistics, you kind of straddled that role between a spot starter at times and a reliever. What's different between starting the game and coming in as a relief pitcher?
Teaser
RH: Reliever, you feel more like a member of the team on a daily basis. You could feel like you could impact it every day. The impact might be small, but it's impact. You get a couple guys out in the seventh inning and you win, then you participated, you were part of it. As a starter, you are the big deal, but it's just once a week. Mentally, it's a very different preparation. Much more pressure, I would say, on the starter to be the guy that day. Some people just kind of don't like one or the other, and I embraced both because I realized that was my value to do both. The whole question of roles, I always defined my role as pitch when they told me to and to always be ready. That was kind of my deal. Just be ready, and you never know when they might need you. So be ready. So that was my mantra and I'd say it'd served me pretty well.
PS: Baseball in St. Louis and Southeast Missouri is very popular, and the Cardinals are a big deal. I was thinking you could speak on this as someone who grew up in the Northeast, a different part of the country, why do you think baseball is so popular even now when people's short attention spans is affecting viewership and interest?
RH: Those are great questions. Being a Northeastern, different understanding of what community is. I had a wonderful family, and family is certainly important to a lot of people. But the Midwest has a different kind of 'us' component, which I think really works well with baseball, works well at baseball games. It works well watching a baseball team. You're not so frenetic. Being a New Yorker, didn't grow up in the city but when I got into the city, my blood pressure goes up just walking through the city, but it doesn't walking through the Midwest. It's a little less frenetic, which I think fits with baseball.
I think when we try to make baseball something it's not, baseball is never going to the NBA, and I don't want it to be the NBA. I like the NBA. We don't have to be a different sport. It's like soccer or golf saying let's get full-contact golf to make it more interesting. No, if you love the game of golf, you love it as it is, and I think that's true with the game of baseball. It's just a matter of educating people, generationally-speaking, that the action is in the thinking and analyzing. If you're willing to join us in that, we've got a lot to teach you about what's cool about this game. I just imagine it's a lot easier than trying to explain to somebody why a week-long cricket game is worth watching? At least baseball's only three hours. We should be able to do that.
PS: A lot of the attendees at the Semoball Awards, especially the athletes, may know you more as a broadcaster because you've been doing that for so long. What interested you about broadcasting? Did you think about doing it as player and how did you get into it?
The 2017 Semoball Awards Saturday, July 8, 2017 at Southeast Missouri State University's River Campus in Cape Girardeau.
Andrew J. Whitaker ~ Southeast Missourian
RH: My first thought was to get into coaching, which I actually did for a year. I coached with the Cleveland Indians for a year in the minor leagues and then realized I wanted to be closer to home. I wanted to coach in college, so my next dream was to coach for Washington University in St. Louis because I like the academics and the college scene. I didn't get that job. Other things happened. I got involved with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and then broadcasting came as a secondary career. Jack Buck told me, 'You really should do this.' When somebody who you respect tells you here's something you should think about that, I think that's another good piece of advice for young people to take notice of that. If just anybody says something, that's one thing. Your friends, maybe your friends will say it because they care about you, but when somebody in a position to know and that you respect in that profession, gives you that kind of encouragement, it's worth listening to.
PS: You've been involved with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and chapels with the Cardinals and the Rams, back when they were in St. Louis. How did that came about and how important is faith in your life?
RH: FCA really served me while I was playing, really helped me stay grounded and helped me stay connected to what it means to compete and coach in a Godly way. FCA has been so good at that for so many people across the country. The message is very simply the Christian understanding of how to compete and what lines we should draw and what lines we should. Not that they're exact lines, but we should at least consider how God would have us play. It was a natural thing for me to move into and then the opportunity there to be a chaplain for both the Rams and the Cardinals and lead Bible studies. Both my wife and I followed that, and we could use our experiences to talk about things to watch out for and be careful of for the pro athletes. We had a voice to have something to say to the athletes we were working with.
PS: Wrapping up here, going back to what we were talking about in the beginning, advice to current high school athletes, when it comes to the Semoball Awards, what conversations interest you when you're talking to a community of high school athletes?
RH: The conversation I love is where people get their drive. One of the things I love to talk about with athletes, and it doesn't matter, I can connect with athletes. I feel like that's one of the great things about sports. You can play pickup basketball with somebody for five minutes, and they could be tall, short, black, white, male or female, you're going to get to know them. You just do.
There's something about competing together that crosses a lot of socioeconomic, gender boundaries. I love that about sports, so one of the things I like to connect with athletes is 'What's driving you? What's your passion?' If your passion is just proving somebody wrong or trying to be better than somebody else, maybe there's a higher way to compete and that competition needs to be more internal for you to find out just how good you can be. Regardless of what anybody else says. That kind of conversation intrigues me, and that's been a lifelong pursuit of mine because I'm glad I've had people speak in my life that way to not make me so bitter about not being as good as somebody else or somebody not liking me. Not everybody is going to like you. The goal is to compete to the highest level of what you have in you, and it's always more than you think. How do you keep that passion? How do you develop that passion and drive? I think that's what energizes me.