Andrew McCutchen was 10 years old, living in small-town Fort Meade, Fla., surrounded by orange groves, cow pastures and phosphate mines, when he hit his first home run out of the park.

The older kids kept telling him he needed to see just one clear the fence. After that, they said, everything clicks. McCutchen has 332 homers in his big-league career, but he’ll always remember that swing in 1996. He can still picture the trajectory of the ball, admiring it as it flew over a small billboard in left field and directly into the windshield of a car.

“Hopefully they had insurance,” McCutchen told the Post-Gazette.

Then there were those Friday night football games when McCutchen and his friends — in between races under the bleachers — scrounged up foil from concession-stand hot dogs, balled th

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