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Frank Tepedino
He'll be the first to say that he's not your typical alumni game participant. His career numbers total just 507 at-bats in parts of 8 seasons. He has earned an invitation though for what happened in his life in addition to his career in Major League Baseball. Firefighting and the danger associated with it is nothing new to former Major League player Frank Tepedino. He is joined by his son, Frank Jr., and brother as members of New York's Fire Patrol, an investigative and salvage unit that joins the regular firefighting crews in times of emergency. Another son, Johnny, is also a member of the FDNY. His Fire Patrol unit is headquartered at a station in Greenwich Village, just 5 minutes from the site now referred to as "Ground Zero". On September 11, 2001, Tepedino was at his home in Long Island when he learned, as the rest of the nation did, that the towers had been hit by planes. Tepedino, his son and two other firefighters immediately got into a car and made a four-hour trek to Ground Zero to assist fellow firefighters in any way they could. "Most of us were doing 24-hour shifts," he recalls. "After the fact, we all went in and we tried to see if we could recover anyone." In the end though, the day represented a great deal of loss -- from police officers to port authority officers to firefighters to those who worked in the World Trade Center and those who were just passing through. "I lost 20 years of friends," he said. "Not a lot by first name basis. Some you had just seen at a fire and you acknowledged each other." "Everything has changed since the 11th and where we are right now is a country trying to adjust to a different way of life," he said. "The rest of the world is used to this. We aren't." AN OPPORTUNITY He recently participated in a Baseball Alumni game in St.Petersburg, Florida, joining other players such as Graig Nettles, Dave Parker, Wade Boggs, Ron LeFlore, Brooks Robinson and others. He says he knows the reason he is now invited to legends games -- his days in the game and his work in New York. "The situation came in where I am a fireman and I am a former ballplayer," he said. "I will take that and I will use it positively." It has also afforded him other opportunities, including throwing out the first pitch in a game at Yankee Stadium. A PART OF HISTORY Raised in Brooklyn in the 1950s and early 1960s, Tepedino had the same idol that many New York youth of his time immortalized -- Mickey Mantle. As a 19 year-old-rookie, he was sitting on the New York bench the night his hero hit his 500th home run. "Mickey Mantle, he was my idol," he said. "It was very hard to play baseball at 19 when you're sitting next to your idol." Later, as a member of the Atlanta Braves, he was on the bench the night that Hank Aaron hit his historic 715th home run. Tepedino says he can be seen on the film of the game, congratulating Aaron after the HR. He points out that he is the one with the long sideburns. "I had a short career," Tepedino says, calling witnessing the two historic home runs as his "only claim to fame." With his 122 career hits, he jokes that he only fell 2,800 hits short of a Hall of Fame career. As he recalls, in his first game, he pinch hit for Whitey Ford, a Hall of Famer. "I faced Jim Palmer, another Hall of Famer, and I hit the ball to Luis Aparacio," he says. Brooks Robinson, also in the Hall of Fame, was playing third base that night for the opposing Orioles. Tepedino's first hit in the majors came off Jim Mudcat Grant and his first home run came off Catfish Hunter. FRIENDS AND TEAMMATES He was a roommate of Bobby Cox, the current manager of Atlanta, during his playing days. Cox later served as his manager at the Yankees' AAA club in Syracuse. Cox was the one who told Tepedino that he had been traded to the Braves and Cox was the one who drove him to the airport so he could catch up with his new team. For 20 years, Tepedino didn't go to the ballparks, but, when the Braves faced the Yankees in the 1996 World Series, he and his sons attended. Ever since, Bobby Cox leaves him tickets every time the Braves are in New York. He is still active in baseball in New York and has participated in leagues with his sons. His time away from work is also spent helping a program he believes in, Winning Beyond Winning, an effort designed to teach youth the truth about drug and alcohol abuse.
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