Rod Carew

Rodney Cline "Rod" Carew (born October 1, 1945) is a former Major League Baseball (MLB) first baseman, second baseman and coach of Panamanian descent. He played from 1967 to 1985 for the Minnesota Twins and the California Angels and was elected to the All-Star game every season except his last. While Carew was never a home run threat (only 92 of his 3,053 hits were home runs), he made a career out of being a consistent contact hitter. He threw right-handed and batted left-handed. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame and the Caribbean Baseball Hall of Fame. Carew served as an MLB coach for several years after retiring as a player.

Early life

Carew is the son of Olga Teoma, a domestic, and Eric Carew, Sr. a painter. Carew is a Zonian and was born to a Panamanian mother on a train in the town of Gatún, which, at that time, was in the Panama Canal Zone. The train was racially segregated; white passengers were given the better forward cars, while non-whites, like Carew's mother, were forced to ride in the rearward cars. When she went into labor, the conductor Charles Williams stopped the train to find a physician. Traveling on the train was Dr. Rodney Cline, who delivered the baby. In appreciation for this, Mrs. Carew named the boy Rodney Cline Carew.