Favorite baseball players growing up

[MikeThierry]

I am wondering who was everyone's favorite baseball players when they were kids.

When I was growing up, I used to live in Kansas City so I was a Royals fan at one point in my youth. I can still remember how fun it was to see George Brett take the field. When I was young, he was entering the twilight of his career but Brett could still get it done. Even when he was older, he played with that hard nose attitude.

The other player on those Royals teams that was amazing to watch was Bo Jackson. I will still say to this very day he is the most athletic person I have ever seen on a playing field.

[RichRed]

George Foster. I was 12 years old when the Reds traded him to the Mets and it broke my heart. I just loved watching him swing the bat.

[cumberlandreds]

Grew up during the Big Red Machine era. Johnny Bench was favorite at first. Pete Rose eventually overtook him. But I liked all those guys from that team.
I also liked a lot of those Pirates from that time period. Willie Stargell may be my favorite non Red of all time. I used to love the way he twirled his bat while in the batters box.
The Royals were probably my favorite AL team. I liked George Brett,Amos Otis. Freddie Patek etc.. They usually came up short against the Yankees in the playoffs but they always had fun teams to watch.

[RedsManRick]

Barry Larkin -- and nobody else was even close. I started playing little league in Columbus in 1987 - played SS & wore #11. Barry was just so cool.

And on the flip-side, I had an unnatural distaste for Scott Scudder. I was like 7 or 8 and had no clue about stats beyond reading the box scores every morning at breakfast.

[HokieRed]

Robinson and Pinson for the Reds. Mays and Clemente for non-Reds.

[CySeymour]

Bench, by a mile. Once he retired, I took a liking to Ron Oester, just due to his style of play.

[Reds/Flyers Fan]

Will Clark (circa San Francisco Giants early in his career). He threw me a ball once at Riverfront Stadium and I got his autograph on a baseball card the next year. I absolutely loved his batting stance and swing so much that I tried to emulate it while playing baseball growing up. Obviously, I was ridiculously unsuccessful with that. When he left the Giants, I stopped following him religiously.

Eric Davis was another player I adored. I will never forget being able to be at Game 1 of the 1990 World Series and what he did in the first inning of that game. That cemented his place as a legend in my mind. I was also at a game sitting in the left field yellow seats at Riverfront when he hit a line drive HR directly at us. I didn't get the ball but I can still remember it vividly. Those yellow seats weren't the easiest seats to hit HRs into. I was also at the game he hit for the cycle against the Padres (the last Red to accomplish that, I believe).

[RedRoser]

1. Pete Rose (my childhood/baseball idol)
2. Barry Larkin
3. Ken Griffey, Jr.

[wolfboy]

Eric Davis. A glass swan of sorts. Absolutely graceful and magnificent to watch, but so brittle. His '87 campaign gave us a glimpse of what could have been, and his World Series heroics helped cement his legacy here, but we just got too little of his true ability.

Rickey Henderson. My favorite player growing up. As a quick kid, his game appealed to me. Just get on base and make 'em pay. The 80's were his prime years, and he was a disruptive force. His '85 and '90 seasons were just something else. Coincidentally, Eric Davis and Henderson are the only players in MLB history to have a 20 homer/80 stolen base season.

Don Mattingly. He wasn't the best hitter of the 80's, but he was darn good in his prime. It stinks that a nagging back ended his career before it should have.

[_Sir_Charles_]

I grew up following the Reds just prior to the BRM, so mine are pretty obvious. Rose, Bench, Concepcion are the big 3 for me. Of non-Reds, Brooks Robinson was far and away my favorite non-reds player. I could watch him play defense all day long. Later on it became Mario Soto, Gary Redus, Eric Davis. Once Junior burst onto the scene, he jumped up the charts immediately. That infections smile of his and the way he played the game with such childlike enthusiasm just resonated with me.

[BCubb2003]

Vada Pinson. What a talented, underrated player.

[Guacarock]

Vada Pinson. What a talented, underrated player.

I'm with BCubb. Vada is the Red I grew up admiring the most. No one else came close to matching his speed, power and defense, not to mention those dashingly good looks that made his baseball cards so highly coveted by every kid I knew back in the day.

[Always Red]

Other than the BRM guys, I also really liked Frank and Brooks Robinson, Roberto Clemente, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, Willie Stargell, Carl Yastremski, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Fergie Jenkins.

And I agree with the board about Vada Pinson (I have used him as my avatar from time to time). What a great player; if you're not that familiar with him, check out his stats on Baseball Reference.com, he was a great player, and a favorite of my dads.

[Roy Tucker]

I was a big Leo Cardenas and Deron Johnson fan as a kid in the 60's.

Bobby Tolan in the early 70's. Imitated his stance.

early-era Johnny Bench for a while and then I was a big Joe Morgan fan. He was the perfect ballplayer there for a few years.

Tom Seaver was probably the last ballplayer that I had a boy-style liking of. After that, I grew up some more, became aware of the world, and ceased really liking ballplayers.

[George Anderson]

Johnny Lee Bench was my favorite as a kid. One regret I have is I was to young to enjoy his big years of 70' and 72'.

Davey Concepcion was also a big favorite of mine as was Tony Perez though again I caught Perez towards the very end of his first go around with the Reds.

A player I was really fond of later in his career was Carlton Fisk. I read about the intense off season training he did to further his career and really respected him for that and just how he played the game.