STEVENSON RANCH, Calif. _ The Greene home is located in a suburb of Los Angeles, in a neighborhood with streets named after such literary giants as Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Allan Poe.
Take a right out of the driveway and a left down Kavenaugh and you'll run into a community park that overlooks the Santa Clarita Valley _ words can't describe the view.
It was at this park in 2002 where three words came to Russell Greene as he played whiffle ball with his 3-year-old son, Hunter.
He can hit.
"His hand-eye coordination was ridiculous," Russell Greene said while seated at his home early in June. "I wasn't throwing strikes. I was throwing to his swing path. He was swinging where I was throwing."
Russell saw the joy Hunter had in hitting a ball, so he did all he could to help his son develop.
Papa Greene ended up with more than just a hitter.
Hunter Greene has grown into a top prospect as a shortstop, but he has teams drooling over his right arm. His fastball regularly hits 98 miles per hour and can touch 102.
He also plays the violin. He likes to paint. He learned Korean. He organized a sock drive for the homeless. He wrote a paper on the dwindling number of black baseball players.
And he would like to pitch and play shortstop as a professional.
He has become the most interesting young man in baseball. And he wouldn't mind playing for the Twins, who are eyeing a franchise-altering decision Monday with the No. 1 choice in the Major League Baseball draft.
A high school right-handed pitcher has never gone No. 1 since the draft started in 1965. And the Twins have not tipped their hand, with five or six players still in the mix for their top selection.
But there's no doubt whom Hunter Greene thinks they should take.
"Every team I've been on, I've been able to win for them," Greene said. "I'm not saying I have singlehandedly beat everyone, but I have been on winning teams. The last time the Minnesota Twins won a World Series was 1991, which was a long time ago. I feel like if they select me, I could be one to help them with another World Series."
Young and ready
At 3? Really?
"That was my initial reaction," said Hunter's mother, Senta, who owns an international educational consulting firm.
Russell Greene called his skeptical wife and urged her to come down to the park to watch little Hunter bash the whiffle balls. There wasn't much more they could do with a 3-year-old who showed a glimmer of athletic prowess. But Russell Greene, who played football in high school and college, did not want his son in pads.
The Greenes lived in a baseball-playing community, so Hunter joined in with his friends. He began organized baseball at age 6 but would not get his uniform dirty.
"He would just stand there," Russell Greene said. "The ball is hit to him and he would just freeze. He had to be told, 'You have to pick up the ball and throw it over there.'
"He got really good, like, really fast."
Russell Greene, a private investigator whose clients have included the Kardashians, Kanye West and Harrison Ford, once bankrolled a traveling team to get Hunter, then 7, off a team with a negative atmosphere. And that year the Greenes started going to the Urban Youth Academy in Compton, Calif.
