"There was a point in David Freese's high school years that he had enough of baseball and quit the team at Lafayette High School in Wildwood, Mo. But unbeknownst to Freese, his coach asked a former Lafayette High baseball player to hook up with him at the school for some batting practice.

That's how Ryan Howard saved David Freese's baseball career.

"One moment we had together was when I decided to quit baseball in high school, [coach Darren Spink] had Ryan come talk to me," Freese said. "We went to hit together at Lafayette and he set it up so that Ryan would talk to me and it ended up being about a half-hour conversation.""