PEORIA — Zach Monroe’s major league baseball career was short but impressive.
On the other hand, the Peoria native’s advice to a young fan has lasted a lifetime as he watches the buzz.
His relationship with a young sandlot fan 60 years ago was chronicled this month in a reunion taped at Dozer Park in Peoria on CBS Morning.
Monroe, a Greater Peoria Sports Hall of Famer, pitched nine years in the minors and two seasons in the MLB.
Now 92, the right-handed pitcher appeared in 21 games for the New York Yankees during the 1958 season, and pitched one inning in Game 2 of the World Series, which the Yanks won in seven games against Milwaukee. In the year
Wildcats and Padres
It was with the San Diego Padres (then a minor league club in the Pacific Coast League) that Monroe found 10-year-old sandlot pitcher Merle Ledford throwing a lot of wild pitches with his control.
Monroe spent many lessons practicing with Lydford, offering great lessons and life lessons.
“He worked with me to help me control that wild outburst,” Ledford told CBS Morning.
Ledford, who grew up to be a husband, father and successful attorney, said Monroe spoke to him more than just pitching.
Ledford, now 71, recently retired and thought about Monroe, looked up his baseball career online and saw the Peoria native was still alive. He wrote to MLB to meet with him. He flew in from California, joined the CBS morning crew, and filmed that meeting at Dozer Park in Peoria, where the Peoria Chiefs were taking batting practice.
“What I said stuck with him, and (he) went farther than I did,” Monroe told CBS Morning. “He was a very good man.”
Ledford was grateful for the opportunity to thank the man he spent time with as a child and how he influenced his life. Monroe sent him on his way 61 years later on CBS’s Dawn with this advice:
“Be a good person to begin with, people will tell you things,” Monroe said. “Don’t walk around with your chin down and the world coming to an end. Just dust off your feet and live with it. It’ll work for you. It’s a strange, strange world, the way things are supposed to go…”
Dave Eminian is a Journal Star sports columnist, and covers Bradley men’s basketball, the Rivermen and the Chiefs. He writes the Cleve in the Heaven sports column for pjstar.com. He can be reached at 686-3206 or deminian@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @icetimecleve.
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