Robert Redford's Baseball Mystery

Redford's early relationship to the game of baseball also had some mystery to it
in a different way than the fictional Roy Hobbs who he portrayed in The Natural. Redford graduated Van Nuys High School in the same class as Hall of Fame pitcher Don Drysdale who is quoted as saying that Redford was a great ballplayer. There is no record that Redford ever played on his high school baseball team. His biographies claim that he won a baseball scholarship to the University of Colorado as a pitcher. Without playing in high school this would seem highly unlikely. Robert Osborne repeated the claim that he played for Colorado in a recent TCM showing of The Natural. A sports urban legend site claims that this is plausible citing former major league player David Eckstein walked on to his college team and won a scholarship. The problem with this example was that Eckstein was a well known All Conference and All State player in high school. Did Redford ever play with Drysdale in sandlot games? Did he ever really win a baseball scholarship or even make the Colorado team with no documented organized youth or school baseball experience? Almost as mysterious as the origins of Roy Hobbs.