Best athlete you played with or against

Slight threadjack, but I think it applies.

A few weeks back in an email to the members of my fantasy baseball league, I made a sarcastic comment about F.P. Santangelo admitting the use of PED's in the wake of the Mitchell Report. I got a response from one of the league members. Turns out he played high school baseball with Santangelo and told us in great detail what a great guy and tremendous high school player he was.

He was mostly doing it in the spirit of ball-busting, but still....

 

Played hoops against some Xavier Nady guy who went to my rival high school twice a year. He's much better at baseball.
Played with Kassim Osgood (SD Chargers) as my PF in HS. Never thought he'd be a fringe NFL player.
Ran with Calvin and Alvin Harrison - Olympic gold medal sprinters who got caught up in BALCO - one year in HS. They'd finish the 400 when I still had another 100 to go.
Played 18 holes with Kip Henley - Big Break II winner. Golf took a back seat to having fun that afternoon.

 

Yeah. So is David Wright.

 

I believe that's a certain Diamondback.

 

An outfielder? Or is he just trying to be one because he's a freak of nature like Steve Nebraska?

 

I played HS football against Dewayne White (Lions DL). He was a sophomore fullback when I was a senior. He didn't play on a very good team, and we had a good team that year, so we beat the shit out of them. He had a couple hundred yards. We were so far ahead of them, I got to run the ball (second string, bitches!) and scored a few touchdowns ... one of them right over him. You could see the athleticism. He was a man among boys.

Played a pickup game against Gerald Wallace a couple years later. He dunked on me on one play and I fouled him VERY hard the next time he tried (on a fast break). I REALLY didn't like being dunked on.

 

Went head-to-head, literally, with Eric Barton of the Jets when he was in high school. Guess who won that matchup?

 

A friend of mine who plays lots of pick-up ice hockey because he's a goalie, once played a game in Orange County and NHL forward Jeff Friesen, then with the Ducks, played against him. My friend said he stopped one or two shots of Friesen's but one shot left a bigtime bruise.

 

Being dunked on is truly the moment of Zen when you're a shitsucking high school basketball player like I was.

When he started raising the roof afterward with his left hand, I could no longer pretend to be pissed.

 

I used to rake against Matt Guerrier (who just signed an almost $1 million deal with the Twins) during BP when I was 15 and he was 12. I was in the same class as his brother and he and my brother were the same age. We used to go out and hit BP, grounders and some sort of sandlot game for hours back in the early 1990s. Does anyone do that anymore? Can't hurt to throw BP all summer...he's in the bigs and had a 2-point-something ERA last year.

 

Travis Lee tore us up in football, setting the school passing record (with me at free safety)...

Richie Sexson dunked on the opening tip (me in the stands), hit a few long doubles (no fence, me in center field) and caught some fade routes (and also left the game after taking a hit on a crossing route from yours truly; I was knocked unconcsious).

David Ritchie never crack-back blocked me (Thank God) but could have if I was on the field more.

Jason Schmidt struck me out four times.