Page 20 - Florida Sentinel 2-2-18

The History Of Baseball
2008, he hit .327 with 29 home runs and 100 RBI in 115 games. He remained with the Ducks for the 2008 season.
On May 11, 2009, Everett agreed to a contract with the Newark Bears of the Atlantic League of Professional Base- ball to be their designated hit- ter.
DEREK BELL
Born December 11, 1968, Derek Nathaniel Bell pri- marily played right field and center field.
Bell was a member of the Belmont Heights Little League and played in the Little League World Series and the Major League World Series.
In 1980 and 1981, Bell was a member of the team who won the U. S. Championship. The team lost to Taiwan in the
both years.
Bell is the only player who
played in the Little League World Series twice and later in the World Series.
A graduate of King High School, his skills attracted the attention of the Toronto Blue Jays. Toronto selected him in the second round of the 1987 draft in June. He was the 49th overall pick.
Bell signed with Toronto, and made his debut that same year in the New York-Penn League.
He emerged as a top prospect with the Myrtle Beach Jays the next year, when he was named to the South Atlantic All-Star team.
Bell’s .344 batting aver- age earned him the league bat- ting title, and he also displayed substantial power, hitting 29 doubles, five triples, and 12 homeruns in only 352 at bats. His success helped him earn a late-season promotion to class AA.
Bell struggled for the next two seasons, batting .242 at AA in 1989 and .261 at AAA the next year, but drawing walks at an extremely low rate. Despite being younger than
most players in those leagues, he re-emerged as a top prospect in 1991 by repeating AAA with the Syracuse Chiefs. That year, Bell batted .346 with 22 doubles, 12 triples, 13 home runs, 57 walks, and stole 29 bases. He was selected for the International League All- Star team and won the Inter- national League’s ‘Most Valuable Player’ Award, and was named the ‘Minor League Player of the Year’ by Base- ball America Magazine.
He was released from the Pittsburgh Pirates in March 2002, and never played again.
FLOYD YOUMANS
A Tampa native, Floyd Everett Youmans was born on May 11, 1964. He attended the public schools of the Hills- borough Public School Dis-
trict.
Youmans was a friend
and teammate of Dwight Gooden at Hillsborough High School before his family relocated to Fontana, Califor- nia.
He was drafted by the New York Mets in the second round of the 1982 Major League Baseball Draft, one round after the club selected Gooden. He and Gooden were once again teammates on the Kingsport Mets that year.
The following year, Youmans played with the South Atlantic League’s Co- lumbia Mets and went 12-3 with a 3.42 ERA.
In 1984, after splitting the season between the Lynchburg and Jackson Mets, Youmans was traded on December 10, to the Montreal Expos along with Hubie Brooks, Mike Fitzgerald, and Herm Win- ningham, for Hall of Fame catcher Gary Carter.
Youmans made his major league debut in the middle of the following season, starting on July 1, 1985, against the St. Louis Cardinals. For the sea- son, Youmans went 4-3 with a team best 2.45 ERA. One of those wins came on the second
to last day of the season against Ron Darling and the New York Mets in front of 45,404 fans at Shea Stadium.
On June 18, 1986, Youmans out played Gooden the first time the two faced off against each other, holding the Mets to only one earned run in 5.1 innings, and drawing a walk in his first at- bat against Gooden. But, the tables were turned when they met again on August 1st. Gooden was victorious.
In the hard-throwing right-hander’s first full season as a member of the rotation full-time, Youmans threw five double-digit strikeout games and finished third in the National League with 202 strikeouts. He also led the league with 118 bases on balls, however, limiting his effective- ness and contributing to a 13- 12 win-loss record.
Youmans’ 1987 season was plagued with injuries, as he visited the disabled list three times.
However, he still managed to make 23 starts for the Expos, and went 4-1 with a 1.13 ERA and three shutouts in July to earn National League Pitcher of the Month honors.
PAGE 8-B FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2018