Who's your homeboys (or homegirls)?

Baseball: Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, Adam Dunn, Scott Kazmir, Andy Pettitte, Woody Williams, Josh Barfield, Philip Humber, Chris Snyder, to name a few

 

Current job but played before my time here: Don Beebe
Old job and I actually covered some of his games: Dominnic James, Marquette point guard, Big East Freshman of the Year last season

 

Basically I can only go NHL and up coming NHL, because nobody will know our university products up here in Canada.

NHL: Wade Redden, Jeff Freisen, Mike Rathje, Sheldon Souray, Scott Hartnell
Former NHL: Lance Ward, Cory Cross, Ace Bailey, Cody Rudkowski
Upcoming NHL: Tyler Weiman (Colorado goalie), Clark McArthur (Buffalo Forward), Kyle Brodziak (Edmonton forward)

Olympic Speed skater: Chrissy Myers

 

Biggest name from my small hometown is Tommy Aaron, 1973 Masters champion.

We've only had three players (soon to be four) make it to MLB (although, coincidentally, two of them were on the same field in 1988):

Jody Davis, still-popular ex-Cubs catcher
Cris Carpenter (a Cardinals RHP, but not the Cy Young winner)

(The third was Ivy Wingo, a catcher for the Reds/Cardinals for many years and who played in the 1919 World Series for Cincy)

Had one or two hometown NFL guys in the '60s, Mike "Moonpie" Wilson (who made it to the Super Bowl with the Bengals in the '80s), and one or two reserve guys in the league recently.

Lot of college footballers, but no big, big names. Chan Gailey was born in my town, but not raised there. Covered Darius Walker when he was in high school, and played against Tim Wansley (baseball, not football) when he was in high school.

 

Eric Bergoust (sp) -- Olympic Aerialist and former world record holder

Ryan Leaf (he's from Montana, dammit!)

 

MLB -- Jimmy Gobble, Billy Wagner
NFL -- Mike Compton, Thomas Jones, Julius Jones, Jason Witten, Heath Miller, Steve Spurrier

 

Small list from my hometown. I know there are more but the two since I was in high school are:

NFL: Justin Smith and Justin Gage.

Like I said, I know there are more, but I don't want to try to remember who they are right now.

 

NFL: Steve Tasker
MLB: none
NCAA: Eddie Sutton was born and raised about 1 hour from here.
NHL: Muahahahaha

 

From my present shop
Currently in NFL: Roy Williams (Lions), Shaud Williams (Bills)
Former NFL: Britt Hager, et al
Track and Field: Toby Stevenson (silver medalist in pole vault at Athens Olympics)
Baseball: A handful of minor leaguers

Also, the local junior college has seen a boatload of pros (NBAers Larry Johnson and Craig Ehlo, two many rodeoers to count)

At a former stop, I covered wrestler Brandon Slay while he was still in high school and Alex O'Brien had a pretty good run on the men's tennis tour.

My hometown produced a fellow named Jerry Tubbs, a two-time All-American at Oklahoma who went on to play and coach with the Cowboys during the Tom Landry era. Another little town about 40 miles away produced Bob Lilly. Yes, there was a little bit of pressure to be a Dallas fan in that area.

 

My hometown's never actually produced a major-league athlete ... but we did win the 1990 U.S. Little League championship.

Followed, of course, by the inevitable 11-0 beatdown at the hands of the Taiwanese infidels.

 

NFL: Yancey Thigpen, Don Stallings, Julius Peppers, J.J. Arrington, T.J. Williams
College basketball: Phil Ford
NBA: Buck Williams
WNBA: Tynesha Lewis
MLB: Guys many years ago whose names I forget. Nobody major.

 

Nada in my circ area. My hometown is a different story, but they all are NASCAR drivers.