Gabe Kapler had already thrown away his first chance at college baseball when he grabbed the roof of his junior-college dugout and started doing pull-ups. Kapler, who morphed that season into a walking, talking fitness video, lowered himself against the dugout bench for a set of dips and then dropped to the ground and started counting push-ups.
Kapler was at Moorpark College, a junior college about 40 miles northwest of Los Angeles, in 1995 because he had gotten kicked out of Cal State Fullerton before the end of his first semester. He had no interest in attending class, which caused Fullerton’s legendary baseball coach to no longer have interest in him.