Riverside, California may just be another city in California that gives it´s 2 cents in helping the estimated 39,14 million of the Golden State keep it´s growth, but when you have 319,514 people living there, you are bound to produce more than just a handful of very talented athletes. When looking at the who´s who of well known sports figures that come from Riverside, one quickly notices that the city that is 57 miles from Los Angeles has had a fancy of producing baseball players more than basketball players. If one were to make a poll asking Riverside natives which player Barry Bonds or Reggie Miller is that places most famous athlete, the responses may be mixed, but stats don´t lie that baseball players own that region. For the old school baseball fans just mentioning the father and son duo of Bobby and Barry Bonds and Dusty Baker would make one or the other reminisce back to four decades as they owned the baseball landscape of the 70´s, 80´s, 90´s and into the millennium. Other notable players were guys like Alvin Davis, 2002 World Series champion and save master Troy Percival, Eric Show and 2002 World Series champion Adam Kennedy just to name a few. Basketball players just don´t match baseball players in number from Riverside, but it has produced some very well known players besides Miller like his sister Cheryl  current NBA shooting star Kawhi Leonard, Tony Snell and Euroleague winner with Real Madrid Marcus Slaughter. Another guy that belongs to the short list of professional basketball players that come from Riverside is Mason Biddle. He may not ring a bell for most, but he recently finished his rookie season in Germany and despite all the baseball talent coming from Riverside, in the end he decided to focus on basketball and his talent brought him a professional contract in 2016. Like so many guys before him, he chose against baseball for a reason I chose Tennis after spending my last game in ninth grade at short stop, the usually most exciting position on the diamond getting one ground ball the whole game and just lost in thoughts about what I am doing wasting my time with this sport. It wasn´t so much difference for Biddle as boredom can be a nagging difficulty for a teenager when all you really want is some fun and excitement. Biddle couldn´t come up with so many famous basketball players from Riverside either. “Yea the only other two I can think from Riverside California besides Reggie Miller would be Kawhi Leonard and a good friend of mine Malcolm Lee. Obviously, everyone knows Kawhi and Malcolm played 3 years in the NBA and was in the top league in Turkey this past season. I played baseball growing up and I wish I would have stuck with it but it was too slow paced for me so I stopped playing at a young age”, warned Mason Biddle.

Who knows what may have happened to the baseball career of Mason Biddle had he stayed with it, but he was able to turn professional after his college career at Western State(NCAA2) and now is on a fun and exciting roller coaster ride where he will see if he can be another one of many talented players form America in Europe that can slowly move up the basketball ladder up levels.

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