George Lombard

Royce: You have world-class athletic talent, you were called "the next Herschel Walker." But, here you are riding buses to these small cities, and most baseball fans have never heard of you, and even a lot of Braves’ fans have never heard of you, and they may never hear of you. You might not make it.

So, how is it to know that you’re either George Lombard, Heisman Trophy candidate, or you’re George Lombard, struggling AA player. You’re having a fine season, but you’re still struggling to make it to the major leagues. What’s it like to be in that "in between" –

George: First of all, I don’t feel like that I’m struggling to make it to the major leagues. I feel like that I’m paying my dues as in any other job. For instance, you went to school for four years. That’s kind of like what minor league baseball has done. I’m paying my dues to get the job that I want later in life.

You know, there aren’t too many things in life that are just given to you. There are things you have to work at, and, believe me, I think that I work as hard or harder than anyone at what I want to accomplish.

Royce: And so you don’t pause to think a lot about the fact that you’re not known yet, and that you could be in another sport –

George: No, you can’t look at that.

I think my family and my brother and my sister and my dad are just a family that believes, no matter what they do, that they’re going to be successful at it. My brother’s going to law school at George Washington University, and he went to Colgate, and he was an intern for the defense in the Oklahoma City bombing case. And he can’t do anything but picture himself as a big lawyer later on. You know, it’s the same with my sister – she’s at NYU, New York University.

Royce: So, in your mind you are successful?

George: Yeah. That comes from my family – my mother, the way she and my dad raised me. And I think trying to represent my family as well.

I mean, I have had some times where I was struggling, but even at that time, I knew everything was going to work out.

George: I lost my mother the summer before I went into fourth grade. She taught at Georgia Tech and she taught art as a hobby. My brother – he’s a year and a month older – had to play a mother role.

My mother moved down south to work with civil rights. She knew Martin Luther King. She marched a lot in Atlanta and Alabama. She spent time in jail protesting. I thought it was kind of funny, because she was brought up from a well-off family from Massachusetts, and to make the sacrifices that she made, I think that’s pretty neat.

She did a lot of silk screening and a lot of the posters that people marched with. She designed them and made them, and they’re really neat, and we’re trying to get some of the art work put into The Smithsonian. And we had a lady from my high school that had a daughter in art school, and they asked if they could have them all professionally framed and mounted so that they would be saved instead of deteriorating.

I have a white mother and a black father. And, that’s just the way I was raised. Everyone’s like, "Was it strange being brought up like that?" I’ve never even looked at it like that because that’s not the way my mother raised me. My mother raised me as in, you aren’t any different than I am, and that’s the way I try and look at life. There’s no one any different than anyone or any better than anyone. That’s the way I look at it. That’s the way people feel about me. I think that’s a good way to look at it. My mother is somebody that believed there’s not one person that’s any better than anyone else.