Shane Warne would have been a BASEBALL pitcher if his grandparents had got on the right boat when they emigrated.
The legendary Aussie spin bowler tormented English cricketers for two decades.
But the late Ashes hero once joked it could have been very different if his granddad Joey and grandma Lotte had gone to America as planned.
He said he would have ended up playing baseball instead of cricket.
They met working on a CABBAGE farm on the outskirts of Wesselburen, near Hamburg, Germany.
After the end of WW2, they had Warne’s mum Brigitte and her sister Regina.
But they had enough of post-war Europe so planned to head to the US to start a new life.
However, they got on the wrong ship and headed Down Under instead as there was a three month wait to go Stateside.
Warne – who died last March aged 52 – recalled the life-changing moment in his autobiography No Spin released before his death.
He said: “It wasn’t long before my grandfather Joey, my grandmother Lotte, mum and her sister, Regina had enough of living as cabbage-farm refugees and did a runner all the way to Rome, where they hoped to find a ship to America.
“Instead, they had to go further south to Naples.
“They found a ship there alright but the wrong one and they all ended up coming to Australia.
Apparently, the ships to the States were full, so rather than wait for months they bought into Australia’s land of opportunity.
“None of us are complaining. Australia has been a wonderful place for our family and I’d have been a pretty ordinary baseballer.”
Recalling more of his family’s cabbage growing heritage, he added: “She (mum) was born right after the war in 1946 in Germany.
“Her father was a Polish refugee who, when he was still a teenager, ended up in Germany on her grandparents’ cabbage farm.
“His name was Joey and he worked his nuts off on their property just outside Wesselburen. It was there he met Lotte.
“They were married and had their first child – my mum, Brigitte.”
Pom basher Warne – who took 195 of his 708 Test wickets against England, the most against any country – added: “A couple of years back, mum and dad went to find Wesselburen.
“And would you believe, they discovered that not only does it produce the most cabbages in Europe.
“It also has a cabbage museum, a cabbage festival and every year somebody is crowned Miss Cabbage – fact”
“Hence, mum says she was born under a cabbage.”
Warne burst onto the scene in 1993 with his ‘Ball of the Century’ to dismiss Mike Gatting in his first Ashes Test.
He was voted one of top five cricketers of the century.
