Major League Baseball kicks off today (3/30) with the season’s first games. As we mark the start of a new season, we look at country singers who have also played baseball either through high school, semi-professional, or as a country superstar with baseball dreams to fulfill.
Let’s count down five country stars who have also spent a reasonable amount of time in the batter’s box.
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5 - Eric Church
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Eric played many sports in high school. He played baseball, basketball, football, and golf until a knee injury during his sophomore year in high school derailed his dreams of going pro. He told Greensboro.com a few years back, “I even played golf because, in my junior and senior years of high school, I realized that if you were a golfer, you got to leave at 10 a.m. to go to matches. You didn’t have to be at school all day, and, well, that’s me right there (laughs). So I picked up golf real quick when I realized you got to get out of class.”
4 - Kenny Chesney
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Kenny played baseball at Corryton, Tennessee’s Gibbs High School. He told ESPN several years ago why he was a die-hard Red Sox fan. He said, “It’s a product of, oddly enough, where I grew up. I didn’t grow up in the Northeast or New England at all. But when I was a kid, growing up, we didn’t have cable.The only access to baseball I had was ‘This Week in Baseball,’ and I looked forward to that as a kid. The only games they had on Saturdays always seemed like the Red Sox or Cincinnati Reds.” He added, “I loved those two teams growing up. Even playing Little League, I wanted to be on either the Reds or the Sox as a kid, so that’s where it started.”
3 - Scotty McCreery
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Scotty was his high school’s baseball team pitcher. Scotty was still pitching for his Garner Magnet high school in North Carolina while be competed on Americal Idol in 2011. At the time, the right-handed junior compiled a 6-1 record with a superb 1.07 earned run average.
2 - Brett Young
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Young played baseball in College. Brett was a pitcher on his high school baseball team and led the squad to a CIF championship. He went to Ole Miss on a baseball scholarship in 1999 after turning down the pre-draft selection by both Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Minnesota Twins. His pursuit of a professional baseball career was cut short by an elbow injury while at Fresno in 2003.
1 - Garth Brooks
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Garth played in the spring training camps of two MLB teams in the late 1990s. In 1998, Brooks launched his Touch ’em All Foundation with Major League Baseball. He also began with a short career in baseball when he signed with the San Diego Padres for spring training in 1998 and 1999. The following season, Garth signed with the New York Mets. In 2004, Brooks returned to baseball with the Kansas City Royals. He got his first and only hit off Mike Myers during his final spring training game with the Royals.
