The Kid Who Said "I'm Taking Him Deep"
Bob Spinks — Bobby, Bobby Bigz, Spinksie, to the Roxborough-Manayunk kids he grew up with — graduated from Roman Catholic High School in June 2005. He died on December 9, 2005. Between those two dates were six months that included a college season he never got to play, and before those two dates were four years during which he became the kind of high school athlete whose teammates are still quoting him years later.
He was a third baseman, primarily. He could hit a baseball a mile. He was a multi-sport athlete at Roman — football, basketball, baseball — who spent most weekends from grade school forward playing games at Ivy Ridge or the 21st Ward diamonds in Northwest Philly. He wore No. 24 at Roman. He wore No. 27 with the Ivy Ridge Panthers American Legion team in the summers. And the first sentence every friend wrote about him after he died was always some version of the same thing: Bob played 110 percent every single time.
Bob was fearless. He didn't have a fear in the world. Bob was one of the most confident kids you ever met. It was a rare occasion when the other team put a pitcher on the mound that Bobby didn't utter the words 'I'm taking him deep.'
The Championship Innings
The story that gets told the most is the championship game where Bobby took the ball on a bad elbow because there was no one else. Adam Seltzer, who pitched alongside him for the Panthers, remembered it in almost exactly those words: "Bobby had a bad elbow injury, so much so that he struggled to even throw on the side. However, we didn't have any other pitchers. He went out there and threw six great innings to lead us to a win. He didn't care how his elbow would feel after the game, he wanted the ball and he wanted the game on his shoulders."
Then, in the championship game itself, Bobby got a game-winning hit to advance the Panthers, and then a run-down play that later scored the insurance run in the title game. The Ivy Ridge Panthers won the Philadelphia County American Legion Championship that summer.
