Ron "Clank" King tries to distance himself from his nickname to no avail.

[Trendsetters]

When Ron King was a little boy in Singleton, New South Wales, Australia, all that he wanted to do was swing a bat. Swing a stick. Swing a broom. Swing anything. His father says that young Ron loved going to work with his father who was a groundskeeper for the Sydney Blue Sox of the Australian Baseball League. “Ronnie would swing that bat from dusk to dawn. No bludger, was our Ronnie.”, said his father, Jacob “Big Jake” King. “From the time he was just a lil’ ankle biter Ron worked hard on his swing. I just wish he’d worked on the bloody glove a bit too.” Continued Jake.

King’s prowess with the bat became legendary in high school circles and thanks to a local traveling team coach, King was recruited to play for Guantanamo High School where continued to show progress. His only struggles were in the field. King’s talents with the bat were matched only by his lack of talent with the glove. According to old copies of the school newspaper, King garnered the nickname from his coaches who complained that whenever the ball would hit King’s glove it made a “clank” sound. “Man could he hit”, recalled then coach, now manager, Andres Medina, “But if he broke the webbing on his glove, we called a welder.”

King worked hard to improve in the field and his work paid off when the New Orleans Trendsetters picked King in the 3rd round of the 2029 PEBA draft. As then manager Aramis Hermijo told the Trendsetter’s Scouting Department, “I’ve hit him my million ground balls. It’s your turn now.

King has never shed the moniker he earned in high school and though his results in the field have been fairly steady, he is still known around the clubhouse as “Clank”.