Every year on the WWE Hall of Fame stage, fans see the neon, the growl, the sunglasses. Almost none of them know that Randy Savage spent four seasons trying to make the major leagues first, and that a shoulder injury forced him to relearn how to throw a baseball from scratch.

A Catcher Signed Out of High School

Randall Poffo signed with the St. Louis Cardinals organization straight out of high school in Florida. He reported to the Gulf Coast League Cardinals in 1971 as an 18-year-old catcher.

His roommate that first summer in St. Petersburg was Larry Herndon, a 17-year-old outfielder who later won a World Series with the Detroit Tigers.

Herndon remembered Poffo as someone who kept the clubhouse loose. He was, in Herndon's words, a man who really loved life and loved people.

The two even trained together by swinging a bat into a hanging car tire, a drill Herndon says he still teaches players today.

A Collision That Wrecked His Arm

Poffo's path stalled in 1973. A violent collision at home plate damaged his right throwing shoulder so badly he could barely make a routine throw back to the mound.

For a catcher, a working arm is not optional. The Cardinals released him over it, and most players in that spot would have hung up their spikes for good.

Teaching His Body a New Trick

Poffo refused to quit. He set out to relearn the position from the other side of his body, retraining himself to throw left-handed instead of right.

By some accounts, he spent hours hurling a baseball against a wall, repeating the motion as many as a thousand times in a single day.

Pete Rose, a spring training teammate in 1974, later called him a super athlete. He described Poffo as very limber and flexible.

Released, Then Reinvented

The left-handed experiment kept Poffo in the game one more season. In 1974 he played 131 games for a Cincinnati Reds Class A affiliate in Tampa, but never advanced past that level.

Across four seasons with Cardinals and Reds organizations, he appeared in 289 games and hit .254 with 16 home runs.

He was released by the Reds after the 1974 season. He got one more look in spring training with the Chicago White Sox in 1975, but was cut again before the season started. This time, Poffo turned to the family business: professional wrestling, the sport his father had spent decades in.

He built a new identity as Randy Savage, and poured the same intensity he'd once thrown at a bare wall into one of wrestling's most legendary careers.

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