He stood 5 feet 7 inches tall and had an unforgettably French Canadian name — Pierre LePage — but his skill with a bat was what made a lasting impression. His hand-eye coordination beggared belief, and it was matched with his barrel control. In three seasons at the University of Connecticut, he batted .336. In his junior year, he took 248 trips to the plate and struck out only three times.
LePage never made it past Class A in the minor leagues, but a few guys in the majors still remember him fondly. Nick Ahmed, the shortstop of the Arizona Diamondbacks, and Pete Fatse, Boston’s hitting coach, were LePage’s teammates at UConn and both, from time to time, think back on the show that LePage would put on when he stepped into a batting cage.