Bobby Dews talks baseball and life at Pataula Charter Career Day
Terry Lewis
EDISON — After 53 years in baseball, Bobby Dews has enjoyed a good life. And like most good lives, it’s been filled with its ups and downs. He’s been a minor league player, manager, big league scout and coach.
After breaking into baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals, he joined the Atlanta Braves organization in 1974 where he remained until his retirement in 2012.
Dews, 76, sat on a stool at Pataula Charter Academy during the school’s annual career day earlier this week. It’s doubtful that any of the more than 40 seventh-graders gathered around him will ever have a career in baseball, but the sport was really secondary in the message he wanted to deliver.
“After all those years with the Braves I retired three years ago. Now there are only two players on the team I worked with — the first baseman (Freddie Freeman) and shortstop (Andrelton Simmons). I miss the game, but I feel very lucky God blessed me early in my career when I stopped drinking or I would have never stayed with the organization as long as I did.”
Dews, Andrew College’s writer-in-residence, urged the students to avoid drinking and drugs and to read every chance they get.
“Read all you can, become computer literate,” Dews said. “Growing up I always wanted to be a lawyer, I had no intention of being a ball player. Always remember sometimes your primary goals in life get knocked down for various reasons, and when one door closed usually a window opens somewhere, you just have to find it.”
Dews knows about windows. He has always had a passion for writing and he has penned more than six novels and a book of poetry. He spends most of his time now at a Calhoun County cabin, writing at a desk in front of a large window that overlooks the aptly named Sanctuary Pond.
“I miss the people in baseball, but I love retirement. Get to fish a lot and talk to kids about staying away from drugs and alcohol,” Dews said. “It’s allowed me to really to pursue my secondary career of writing. I’m writing a baseball book right now.”
As he arose from his stool, Dews looked around at the room full of students, then spoke.
“Get into something you love and really interests you, because that is how you can help other people,” he said. “Find something to read about. Read a lot. Be a part of the world and get the message out to other people.”
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