Baseball Hall of Famer Tim Raines is infusing his love of the game into his twin daughters.
Raines is currently managing his daughters, Ava and Amelie, on Arizona’s softball team in the Junior League World Series.
“It’s an awesome feeling,” Raines said last week, when his Goodyear, Ariz. team made it out of the West to qualify for the World Series.
“As a kid myself, I never participated in Little League. So to get this opportunity to give my daughters the opportunity to go there, it’s an awesome feeling.”
Raines, who was enshrined into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017, was a seven-time All-Star and a member of the Yankees’ World Series championship teams in 1996 and 1998.
He was also the first base coach for the White Sox when they won their World Series in 2005.
Asked what he can pass onto the girls, Raines said, “Well, you know, they’re young. The experience that I learned, it’s tough to teach 12 and 13-year-olds. I’ll just tell you, they came to play. We haven’t lost a game since Day One. Now we’re going to play against some fierce competition.”
His daughters are going into eighth grade.
Raines played for the Expos, White Sox and Yankees, plus brief stops with the A’s, Orioles and Marlins during an MLB career that spanned from 1979-2002.