He says it, plain as day, and he means it.
It's a good thing, too, because it's all Howie Kendrick knows. When you hear him say, "It's what I love doing — competing," and even though you know he's talking about baseball and being on the field, you can't help but think that all this kid has done throughout his life is compete.
From growing up in a small Florida town where about the only thing to do was cause mischief, from never knowing his father, from walking out of his mother's house to live with his best friend, Kendrick defied the odds.
He could have been a statistic. Just another one to turn to drugs in Callahan, Fla., population 900-something. He could have given up on playing sports and no one would get to see one of the hottest prospects to hit the majors in recent memory.
But he couldn't give up because his grandmother never gave up on him. Not when he was causing trouble as a child in their two-stoplight town. Not when he went to live with the Coker family. Not then. Not ever.
See, it was his grandmother — a strong-willed, old-school woman named Ruth Woods — who led Kendrick to baseball. Who would rather her 5-year-old grandson hit baseballs with a bat instead of hitting rocks with a stick in her driveway. Who wouldn't let him play football for fear he would break a bone. It was Woods who steered Kendrick from trouble and helped instill a passion in him that has led him to be the future — and now the present — of the Angels.
Woods "was a strong enough woman that she took the place of both" his parents since Kendrick lived with his grandmother until he was 12.
Kendrick and his two sisters, Christina and Michelle, stayed with Woods while his mother, Belinda Kendrick, was in the Army.
And when his mother returned home to form what she hoped would be one big happy family, Kendrick acted up, said some things he shouldn't have, and left.
"As I got older, things with my mom, we didn't get along very well," he said. "Things happened, and I just moved in with (the Cokers). There's differences now where I look back, and it's like it was adolescent things. I was hard-headed and wanted to think I knew everything, and she was actually right in a lot of things she was trying to tell me. I guess I was just getting older and thinking I knew everything, and we didn't mesh well. I don't blame her for anything; a lot of it was me."
Things are better now. The two speak often.
He accelerated through the minors, going a full three levels in the past two years, from Class AA to the majors, where he excelled during his second call-up last year.
Kendrick is overflowing with pleases and thank-yous, respectful smiles and laughs. He acts and talks like someone well past 23. Maybe it's his recent marriage during a January day in Hawaii. Maybe it's the politeness of someone who is a superstar by Baseball America hype but not yet big-league standards. Yeah, and maybe the Devil Rays will win the World Series.
It's easily the influence of Woods.