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Miles Tellermay be known as a beloved actor with hit movies likeWhiplashandTop Gun: Maverick, but he once toyed with the idea of going a different route entirely and becoming a professional baseball player.
The actor, 35, recently spoke to PEOPLE about his love of sports, namely baseball, and what his career path could’ve been.
“I played [baseball] in high school, but I was pretty small,” Teller, who partnered witheBayfor the launch of its neweBay vault, tells PEOPLE with a laugh. " I didn’t hit my growth spurt till my senior year, and then after high school."
“So I say I went D1 acting instead, because I went to [NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts],” adds theSpectacular Nowstar.
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“It’s something that my dad passed on to me and my grandma, my dad’s [mom],” the Pennsylvania native explains. “She was the biggest Phillies fan that there was, so I inherited that gene from her.”
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Teller says that his fondness for baseball offered him a way to connect with his loved ones, and is something that remains important to him to this day.
“I think for a lot of kids, especially when you’re at a young age, you pick the things where you can really bond with an adult over. When I was a young kid, I wasn’t sharing stories of philosophy and this and that, it was baseball. It seems like a simple game, but it’s endless,” he says. “And my fandom for it, as far as collecting things associated with the game, has remained a part of it for me.”
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Over the weekend, Teller brought his love of baseball and sports trading cards to the forefront when he checked out the new eBay vault ahead of the MLB’s All-Star Weekend in Los Angeles.

Teller’s picks include rookie cards fromMike Trout,Ken Griffey Jr.andWillie Mays, among others.
“It’s very exciting to attach myself and to be a part of this with eBay and the eBay Vault,” Teller says. “Buying and selling and collecting and trading cards is something that I grew up doing — it was something that my dad and I bonded over — and I’ve certainly made a fair amount of purchases on eBay.”
source: people.com