Morris was 35 years old when he left his job as a science teacher to play Major League Baseball – all because his pupils won a bet
By Jonathan Drennan for the Guardian Sport Network
Twenty-one years ago, Jim Morris made a bet with his young baseball team that would change his life forever. Morris was 35 at the time and working as a high school science teacher in Texas. The baseball team he coached at the school had only won three games in three years but Morris promised them that, if they could clinch the district championship, he would try out for a Major League Baseball team. Improbably, his team pulled it off and he ended up swapping his teacher’s lab coat for a Major League Baseball uniform. “I got my shot because of a bunch of kids,” he says.
Morris had been drafted by the New York Yankees straight out of high school but he turned down that opportunity to help care for his beloved grandfather in Texas. He eventually went on to sign for the Milwaukee Brewers but retired from the sport at the age of 24 after a series of injuries. “I woke up with my arm at a 90-degree angle and my arm was purple,” he says. “My roommate was trying to straighten out my arm on the nightstand.”
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