MLB Hall of Famer returns to his true love

You would think that your first passion would be baseball if you were a Major League Baseball Hall of Famer, if you held the record for playing the most Major League Baseball games while still a teenager, and if you forever altered what people expected from the shortstop position to include hitting for average and power, not just fielding.

“Little league, I started that at 9 (years old), but started racing motorcycles at 12 (years old), and did the two of those seriously through high school,” said Robin Yount, the legend of the Milwaukee Brewers, the team he played for across his entire 20-year, 3,142-hit career. “I’d probably be lying though if I said I liked baseball more than I liked motocross.”

Today you’ll find 'The Kid', as he was called in baseball circles, two-wheeling it at Apex Motor Club near Phoenix on his Ducati Panigale or ripping lap times in his Radical SR3, proving you can take the boy out of baseball … but you can’t take the love of motorsports out of the boy.

“When I went out there (to Apex) the first time, I knew that I was going to be a member immediately. It was love at first sight. This is the greatest thing at this time in my life. It allows me to go out there and keep exploring my passion,” added 69-year-old Yount.

Early in his baseball career, Yount was known to forego showering after an afternoon game at County Stadium and hightail it to the Milwaukee Mile to watch the Indy cars run.

He drove Sports 2000 cars and was co-owner of P-1 Racing that won the Formula Atlantic title in 1990 (Mark Dismore) and 1991 (Jovy Marcelo). An avid karter, Yount also was instrumental in the career development of Buddy Rice, who went on to win the 2000 Atlantics championship and 2004 Indianapolis 500.

“Robin loved to race too, and he and I were racing go-karts together in 1996 (in the Phoenix area) when he helped me with some better equipment, and then later he got me acquainted with (Indy car team owner and 1986 Indianapolis 500 winner) Bobby Rahal,” Rice said.

If he’s not at Apex, you’ll likely find Yount in his garage restoring old dirt bikes. “It’s not the exact bikes. But it's the same model and year of the bikes I had in the 1960s," he said. "That was the beginning of it all where my addiction to motorcycles started. And to this day I haven’t lost it.”