If it weren’t for the rainy season in South Florida, Maurice Vaughn might be doing something very different right about now.
The former Major League Baseball first baseman made Boca Raton his home four years ago. The next year, his son, Lee, was playing recreational baseball in the area and the all-star team he was on was headed to the state championships. But practices kept getting rained out and the team was frustrated.
“I made the decision to turn my warehouse into a baseball facility for the team to practice,” says Vaughn, 54, also known as “The Hit Dog.”
That warehouse eventually turned into the Vaughn Sports Academy.
Today, the academy has seven coaches and more than 150 clients (ages 6 to adult), including his son, who is now 9 years old. The goal is to help students improve their game, while also learning about accountability to themselves and to their team.
“Baseball is unique,” he says. “It is an individual sport as much as it is a team sport.”
Vaughn is more than qualified to talk to young athletes about baseball, a sport he dominated in the 1990s. He played for the Boston Red Sox, the Anaheim Angels and the New York Mets, was a three-time All-Star selection and won the American League MVP award in 1995 with the Boston Red Sox. In 2003, at the age of 35, Vaughn was forced to retire due to knee injuries.
He calls baseball the essence of life because the sport requires both mental and physical toughness and he knows what it feels like to succeed having ended his career with 328 home runs over 12 seasons. But he also knows the feeling of failure, crediting those moments to help shape the person he is today.
“The lows taught me everything. The lows are the reason I coach."
"I want them to avoid the lows,” Vaughn says of his students. “Baseball helped me through life, and the highs gave me validation.”
“I love the game more now than I did when I was playing,” he adds. “Teaching the next generation baseball — it really does not get much better than that.”