Byron Buxton didn’t follow his first love.
“The first thing I ever wanted to be was a truck driver, because my dad did it,” the new center fielder of the Chattanooga Lookouts said Tuesday afternoon. “Every chance I had to go with him I would. He would do long hauls from Georgia to New York, and I remember being maybe 7 and going from Georgia over to Alabama and up to Tennessee and over to North Carolina.
“I loved every minute of it.”
Buxton didn’t even follow his first athletic love, which was basketball. His father had played basketball but suggested that his son try baseball, which has been a route to success in the years since.
The 6-foot-2, 190-pounder from Baxley, Ga., was offered a baseball scholarship at the University of Georgia, but the Minnesota Twins selected him second overall in the June 2012 draft. They gave him a $6 million signing bonus, and Buxton responded with a 2013 season that earned him the distincion of Baseball America’s minor league player of the year.