Winter Garden Heritage Foundation debuts new exhibition

The Winter Garden Heritage Foundation had a full house at the opening of its latest exhibition that celebrates the athletes of West Orange County. “Champions of West Orange County: A Legacy of Athletic Excellence” chronicles the evolution of sports in the area, going back as far as the early 20th century when Lakeview High School — and, later, Lakeview junior high and middle schools and West Orange High School — provided decades of opportunities for athletes. 

The exhibition also covers the 1950s spring training teams that spent months training at Walker Field, the current Winter Garden Squeeze program and other sports programs in the area.

At the Oct. 1 opening reception for the exhibition, former Major League Baseball player Brad Miller and racing professional Kyle Masson — both of whom grew up in Windermere — spoke to the crowd in attendance.

Both men attended Windermere Elementary School and played Windermere Little League, but their careers took different paths.

Masson, who said he had a huge passion for motorsports, studied mechanical engineering at the University of Central Florida. But the love of racing fueled his desire to participate in racing circuits through the International Motor Sports Association. 

He said playing video games was a huge inspiration and gave him a sense of direction. He took part in about 24 races each year.

“My motorsports background wasn’t necessarily about my drive for success,” he said. 

What it did was combine his passion for racing with his mechanical engineering education — allowing him to apply these experiences to other opportunities. After his racing career, he and his family started a medical technology company by applying many of the motorsport aspects into this new venture.

“We apply a lot of racing philosophy,” Masson said.

He hopes to get back into racing and, in the future, manage his own team.

Miller’s passion for baseball only increased as he got older. He played on the Olympia High School team and attended Clemson University to play on the diamond. Now retired and living in Tampa with his wife and 2-year-old son, Miller played for seven Major League Baseball teams, including the Tampa Bay Rays, Seattle Mariners, St. Louis Cardinals and Philadelphia Phillies.

“Everything I got to experience and see in my 20s and 30s was because of baseball,” he said. “It was better than I dreamed of.”

He recently worked on several pre- and post-game television shows for the Texas Rangers, another of his teams, and he said he would like to join a front office at some point.

He shared many stories of his time in the Major Leagues, but the one that has stuck with him is the story of Bamboo Brad.

When he was first traded to the Phillies, the team was on a seven-game losing streak, so he and his wife went to Philly’s Chinatown and bought a Lucky Bamboo plant, and he took it to the baseball field the next day.

“That night, we didn’t just win, we won in dramatic (fashion),” he said. “The next night we brought a bigger bamboo plant, and we won again on a walk-off homer.”

The same thing happened the third night of play, too. The local media went crazy, and the name stuck.