In September of 1961, as a devastating Category 4 hurricane barreled toward the Texas coast, an entrepreneurial 14-year-old boy was desperate to save his backyard business. He managed to pull off a miracle in his family's garage, but it wasn't long before a new storm arrived: high school coaches demanding he trade his cowboy boots for cleats.

He had an ungodly, blistering velocity that hissed through the air, terrifying opposing batters and regularly breaking his own catchers' bones. Yet, major league scouts completely wrote him off as a wild thrower who would never see the Hall of Fame without a ticket.