300 and Counting… Catching up with Billerica Native Tom Glavine:
Baseball fans will forever remember 2007 as a season of milestones. The Red Sox brought home their second World Series championship in four years. Barry Bonds made history—and infamy—by breaking Hank Aaron’s home run record. And A-Rod, the man Sox fans love to hate, belted his 500th career bomb.
Almost lost in the hype of that seven-month roller coaster ride was the 300th career win by Billerica’s favorite son, Tom Glavine—a feat only twenty-two other pitchers had accomplished before him. The former and current Atlanta Braves lefty notched his place in the record books without a lot of flash or embellishment, earning it the same way that the two-time Cy Young winner has handled the rest of his twenty-one seasons in pro baseball: with a go-about-your-business mindset he learned growing up here in the heart of the Merrimack Valley.
“When you get closer to something like that, you just want to put it to bed,” says Thomas Michael Glavine. Only days after the hard-won victory, the 42-year-old southpaw reflected on this accomplishment. “When you’re on the verge of attaining something that you’ve worked so hard to achieve, you get that crazy nervousness that comes along with being on the threshold of seeing it realized. You start to panic; the ‘Oh my God, I’m this close—I hope something doesn’t happen in terms of my arm getting hurt,’ or like the policeman who finds himself in the middle of a shootout a week away from retirement. All those things went through my mind. But in the end, it was for me about focusing on the task at hand and getting to the point where I was in the position to win my 300th game.”
On August 5, 2007, dressed in his road-gray New York Mets uniform, Glavine did just that at Wrigley Field against the Chicago Cubs. But a less-is-more approach has always served Glavine well, both in baseball and in life.
“When the opportunity came, I just tried to relax and treat it like any other game, knowing that if I did, the end result would be what I wanted. I’d finally achieve that goal I’d worked so hard toward.”
Raised in the Billerica of the late 1960s and ‘70s, Glavine describes his upbringing as typical of many Irish Catholic families.
Before his march to Cooperstown, Glavine made headlines on the ice at Billerica High. Photo courtesy of Billerica High School.
“It was a very blue collar, working class town. My dad owned a construction company. We grew up in a modest home. Basically, it was a normal household,” he recalls. “I have two brothers and a sister, and we were all playing sports and running around in different directions, doing a bunch of different things. We were always busy and our lives revolved around school and sports. I remember it for being a great time. Like so many kids, I knew early on that I wanted to be a professional athlete. In the third grade, I was writing stories about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was a huge Bobby Orr fan, and name any Red Sox player from that time, like Carl Yastrzemski. That’s who I wanted to be.”
Glavine played in Billerica’s little league program and got his first chance to pitch at Vining Field. The league’s all-star games meant a chance to take the mound at Lowell’s Shedd Park. But he also made an impression on the ice.
“I probably played in more hockey rinks across the state than on baseball diamonds,” Glavine says. “Especially after I got to high school. Then, it was the whole of the Merrimack Valley Conference. Some of my fondest memories are about being able to travel around to different rinks.”
Glavine also had the smarts to know the odds of a professional sports career weren’t in his favor, so he hit the books and studied just as hard as he played hockey and baseball. Glavine spent all four years at Billerica Memorial High on the honor roll, and was a member of the National Honor Society. During his junior year of high school, he began to catch the attention of both college and professional scouts. “That was probably the first time when I realized the dream I used to have as a kid might actually work out and become a reality.” In his senior year, Glavine was voted as the Merrimack Valley Conference’s most valuable player in hockey.
“I was probably a better hockey player coming out of high school than I was a baseball player,” he says. “I was a good baseball player, and obviously I got a lot of attention as a pitcher, but it was a very raw talent, whereas in hockey my talent was more refined. I ended up getting drafted in both sports, and I knew I had a decision to make. Going through the college process was difficult because I looked for a school where I could play both sports. I got recruited by a handful of big baseball schools and a whole bunch of big hockey schools, but I had a hard time because some of the big baseball schools—like Miami and Oklahoma—didn’t have hockey programs. And some of the big hockey programs didn’t offer much of a baseball program.
“So at that point in time, it was a tough decision to make. But once I got drafted and was looking at it from a livelihood or professional standpoint, I made a list of pros and cons in both sports. In the end, it was a couple of things that swayed me toward baseball. Number one, it was the health factor, the ability to have a longer career than in hockey. Also, I felt that being a left-handed pitcher playing baseball gave me an advantage that I didn’t possess in hockey. In this day and age, when so many teams are starving for left-handed pitching, I knew I couldn’t go wrong.”
In 1984—the same year he was chosen by the Los Angeles Kings in the fourth round of the NHL Entry Draft—Glavine got drafted by the Atlanta Braves. He made his Major League debut in a Braves uniform on August 17, 1987, and after a few less-than-stellar years, recorded the first of three consecutive 20-win seasons, beginning in 1991. Glavine spent the first sixteen seasons of his career with the Braves—time enough to win two Cy Young Awards, a World Series ring, and to establish himself as one of the most dominant pitchers in either league.
In 2003, Glavine signed with the Mets, but for the next four seasons, continued to maintain the home in Atlanta he shares with his wife of ten years, Chris, and their three boys. Early in 2008, Glavine re-signed with the Braves, where he hopes to finish out his career.
“Atlanta is a nice area, it’s not too crowded, it’s desirable to people. The weather for the most part is nice. We have four weeks in the summer when it’s too hot and two weeks in the winter when it’s actually cold, but the rest of it is pretty good and the cost of living can’t be beat.
“But there are a lot of things about the Valley I do miss. There are parts of the winters up there that we don’t get down in Atlanta, and my three boys are all hockey players and the hockey programs down here aren’t what they are in New England. There are pros and cons to everything; I live in Atlanta and I like it, but it’s still a different feeling when I go back to Billerica, whether it’s to play baseball against the Red Sox or going up there for the holidays. Being in the Merrimack Valley evokes feelings that are different from anywhere else.”
Catching Up with Tom Glavine – March / April 2008
300 and Counting… Catching up with Billerica Native Tom Glavine:
Baseball fans will forever remember 2007 as a season of milestones. The Red Sox brought home their second World Series championship in four years. Barry Bonds made history—and infamy—by breaking Hank Aaron’s home run record. And A-Rod, the man Sox fans love to hate, belted his 500th career bomb.
Almost lost in the hype of that seven-month roller coaster ride was the 300th career win by Billerica’s favorite son, Tom Glavine—a feat only twenty-two other pitchers had accomplished before him. The former and current Atlanta Braves lefty notched his place in the record books without a lot of flash or embellishment, earning it the same way that the two-time Cy Young winner has handled the rest of his twenty-one seasons in pro baseball: with a go-about-your-business mindset he learned growing up here in the heart of the Merrimack Valley.
“When you get closer to something like that, you just want to put it to bed,” says Thomas Michael Glavine. Only days after the hard-won victory, the 42-year-old southpaw reflected on this accomplishment. “When you’re on the verge of attaining something that you’ve worked so hard to achieve, you get that crazy nervousness that comes along with being on the threshold of seeing it realized. You start to panic; the ‘Oh my God, I’m this close—I hope something doesn’t happen in terms of my arm getting hurt,’ or like the policeman who finds himself in the middle of a shootout a week away from retirement. All those things went through my mind. But in the end, it was for me about focusing on the task at hand and getting to the point where I was in the position to win my 300th game.”
On August 5, 2007, dressed in his road-gray New York Mets uniform, Glavine did just that at Wrigley Field against the Chicago Cubs. But a less-is-more approach has always served Glavine well, both in baseball and in life.
“When the opportunity came, I just tried to relax and treat it like any other game, knowing that if I did, the end result would be what I wanted. I’d finally achieve that goal I’d worked so hard toward.”
Raised in the Billerica of the late 1960s and ‘70s, Glavine describes his upbringing as typical of many Irish Catholic families.
Before his march to Cooperstown, Glavine made headlines on the ice at Billerica High. Photo courtesy of Billerica High School.
“It was a very blue collar, working class town. My dad owned a construction company. We grew up in a modest home. Basically, it was a normal household,” he recalls. “I have two brothers and a sister, and we were all playing sports and running around in different directions, doing a bunch of different things. We were always busy and our lives revolved around school and sports. I remember it for being a great time. Like so many kids, I knew early on that I wanted to be a professional athlete. In the third grade, I was writing stories about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was a huge Bobby Orr fan, and name any Red Sox player from that time, like Carl Yastrzemski. That’s who I wanted to be.”
Glavine played in Billerica’s little league program and got his first chance to pitch at Vining Field. The league’s all-star games meant a chance to take the mound at Lowell’s Shedd Park. But he also made an impression on the ice.
“I probably played in more hockey rinks across the state than on baseball diamonds,” Glavine says. “Especially after I got to high school. Then, it was the whole of the Merrimack Valley Conference. Some of my fondest memories are about being able to travel around to different rinks.”
Glavine also had the smarts to know the odds of a professional sports career weren’t in his favor, so he hit the books and studied just as hard as he played hockey and baseball. Glavine spent all four years at Billerica Memorial High on the honor roll, and was a member of the National Honor Society. During his junior year of high school, he began to catch the attention of both college and professional scouts. “That was probably the first time when I realized the dream I used to have as a kid might actually work out and become a reality.” In his senior year, Glavine was voted as the Merrimack Valley Conference’s most valuable player in hockey.
“I was probably a better hockey player coming out of high school than I was a baseball player,” he says. “I was a good baseball player, and obviously I got a lot of attention as a pitcher, but it was a very raw talent, whereas in hockey my talent was more refined. I ended up getting drafted in both sports, and I knew I had a decision to make. Going through the college process was difficult because I looked for a school where I could play both sports. I got recruited by a handful of big baseball schools and a whole bunch of big hockey schools, but I had a hard time because some of the big baseball schools—like Miami and Oklahoma—didn’t have hockey programs. And some of the big hockey programs didn’t offer much of a baseball program.
“So at that point in time, it was a tough decision to make. But once I got drafted and was looking at it from a livelihood or professional standpoint, I made a list of pros and cons in both sports. In the end, it was a couple of things that swayed me toward baseball. Number one, it was the health factor, the ability to have a longer career than in hockey. Also, I felt that being a left-handed pitcher playing baseball gave me an advantage that I didn’t possess in hockey. In this day and age, when so many teams are starving for left-handed pitching, I knew I couldn’t go wrong.”
In 1984—the same year he was chosen by the Los Angeles Kings in the fourth round of the NHL Entry Draft—Glavine got drafted by the Atlanta Braves. He made his Major League debut in a Braves uniform on August 17, 1987, and after a few less-than-stellar years, recorded the first of three consecutive 20-win seasons, beginning in 1991. Glavine spent the first sixteen seasons of his career with the Braves—time enough to win two Cy Young Awards, a World Series ring, and to establish himself as one of the most dominant pitchers in either league.
In 2003, Glavine signed with the Mets, but for the next four seasons, continued to maintain the home in Atlanta he shares with his wife of ten years, Chris, and their three boys. Early in 2008, Glavine re-signed with the Braves, where he hopes to finish out his career.
“Atlanta is a nice area, it’s not too crowded, it’s desirable to people. The weather for the most part is nice. We have four weeks in the summer when it’s too hot and two weeks in the winter when it’s actually cold, but the rest of it is pretty good and the cost of living can’t be beat.
“But there are a lot of things about the Valley I do miss. There are parts of the winters up there that we don’t get down in Atlanta, and my three boys are all hockey players and the hockey programs down here aren’t what they are in New England. There are pros and cons to everything; I live in Atlanta and I like it, but it’s still a different feeling when I go back to Billerica, whether it’s to play baseball against the Red Sox or going up there for the holidays. Being in the Merrimack Valley evokes feelings that are different from anywhere else.”