Any fan of baseball — or television, for that matter — is probably familiar with Tom Emanski and his baseball fundamentals videos that produced “back-to-back-to-back AAU Championships.” Heck, they were endorsed by The Crime Dog himself, Fred McGriff.
Well, Bill Reiter of the Kansas City Star did us all a favor this spring and attempted to track down the suddenly elusive Emanski. Reiter failed, but gathered this priceless quote from Royals right-hander Zack Greinke, who actually attended Emanski’s camp in Florida as a youngster.
“There were some good parts,” Greinke says. “But we spent two hours in a
room talking about technique. We were 10 years old, and we had no idea
what he was talking about — no idea.”
Something must have clicked. Greinke, 26, won the American League Cy Young Award last season with a dominant 2.16 ERA, 1.07 WHIP and 242 strikeouts. He threw six complete games and logged 26 total quality starts. The phantom Emanski lives on!