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During a trip to Cuba for a documentary called “Cuban Boys of Summer” (focusing on baseball), CNN traveled extensively around the island to follow the paths of young players.

We started with kids just beginning the sport and progressed through each training phase, as the players sought the ultimate prize – becoming part of the National Team.

During our travels, I carried boxes of Major League baseball bats that Hank Aaron had brought to the island. He had picked up about two dozen of them from the Atlanta Braves locker room after their 1995 World Series victory. Along with a supply of new baseballs, Aaron would hand out a few bats at each interview location to kids who had very little equipment to play the game. The kids idolized Aaron, but he would not sign the balls. He was afraid if he did, they wouldn’t play with them. He really wanted to make sure they used the items.

As we went along, we found out that they didn’t like the bats . . . the World Series used bats! Well, it turned out that they use aluminum bats in Cuba and the kids probably didn’t know the bats had a history. Since they liked aluminum bats so much, I asked Hank Aaron if I could hold on to two of the bats for my daughters and send a couple of aluminum bats back to Cuba. We had a couple left over, and he graciously said I could just keep them. Somehow, I ended up with two that belonged to Chipper Jones! They both have ball marks on them from use. My daughters really have a memento they treasure.

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