Some baseball lessons survive because somebody remembers them.
This one survived in a newspaper, a photograph, and decades later, a book about the man who taught it.
In 1966, my father, Mike Link, was a young pitcher at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks when his baseball path crossed with Don Drysdale.
Drysdale and Sandy Koufax were in the middle of their famous contract holdout with the Los Angeles Dodgers. During that period, Drysdale began working out at Pierce College.
One morning, several Notre Dame High baseball players were brought there.
Mike was one of them.
And Drysdale took time out of his workout to help him with his curveball.
The Newspaper
The original newspaper clipping has been preserved in our family scrapbook for decades.
It reports that Drysdale worked out at Pierce College in front of more than 100 Little Leaguers and television crews.
Then it records the moment that matters most to our family history:
Drysdale helped Notre Dame High pitcher Mike Link with his curveball before Mike threw batting practice for him.
It was a small moment in Drysdale’s remarkable baseball career.
For Mike, it became part of a lifetime in the game.
The Photograph
Preserved alongside the story is an old black-and-white photograph.
Mike is pitching from the mound.
A hitter waits in the foreground.
Behind the mound stands the man our family has always identified as Don Drysdale.
The photograph captures something that has become central to what Link Baseball means to me.
One generation of baseball standing behind another.
A major-league pitcher taking a few minutes to pass along something he knew to a young pitcher still learning his craft.
No elaborate clinic.
No analytics screen.
No instructional video.
Just a pitcher, a baseball, a curveball, and someone willing to teach.
Then We Found It Again
Years later, another piece of evidence surfaced.
A published biography of Don Drysdale describes his Pierce College workouts during the 1966 holdout.
And there, in the middle of Drysdale’s story, appears my father’s name.
The book records that Drysdale worked with Notre Dame High in Sherman Oaks and helped pitcher Mike Link with his curveball.
Decades after the newspaper clipping was placed in our family scrapbook, the same lesson appeared again in a published account of Drysdale’s life.
For me, that changes the way the artifact feels.
This isn’t simply a family story that grew larger with time.
The story was documented when it happened.
It was preserved by our family.
And it was recorded again years later as part of Drysdale’s own baseball history.
The Small Lessons That Stay
Baseball is full of moments like this.
A grip.
A seam.
A different finger position.
A change in the way you finish a pitch.
Sometimes a lesson takes only a few minutes to teach.
But the player receiving it may carry it for years.
Mike went on to become part of USC’s 1968 national championship team.
Later, he became my father.
And baseball continued moving forward.
Through stories.
Through standards.
Through experiences.
Through things he taught me that had first been taught to him.
I wasn’t standing at Pierce College that morning.
But in a very real way, the lesson still reached me.
That is how baseball works.
Knowledge moves.
Stories move.
Relationships move.
One generation teaches the next.
Why We Preserve It
The newspaper clipping could have disappeared.
So could the photograph.
The book passage could have remained something we never discovered.
Instead, all three pieces now sit together.
A contemporary account.
A family photograph.
A later published biography.
Together they preserve a small moment in baseball history and an important moment in our family’s history.
That is why the Link Baseball Archive exists.
Not every artifact will involve a Hall of Famer.
Not every lesson will make a newspaper.
Most of baseball is passed down much more quietly.
But when the evidence survives, we should preserve it.
Because experiences become lessons.
Lessons become stories.
Stories become part of what one generation gives the next.
Sometimes preserving baseball means preserving a championship.
Sometimes it means preserving an old glove.
And sometimes it means preserving the morning Don Drysdale stopped his workout and helped a young pitcher named Mike Link with his curveball.
Preserve the experiences.
Preserve the teachings.
Preserve the relationships.
Pass them to the next generation.
Built on Generations of Baseball.