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Blackberries
IT WAS A FASTBALL, about belt high. I say “fast” meaning it was a straight pitch, not a curveball or a slider. Dads whose sons were in a league of eight- and soon-to-be nine-year-olds in the mid-1960s didn’t let their sons throw breaking stuff.
Anyway, I had a good look at this belt-high fastball from my position at shortstop in a game that we, the Vees (don’t ask, I don’t know), were leading by a couple runs. That lead was in jeopardy because this belt-high fastball, which I had such a good look at, was lined over my head before I had a chance to take my glove off my knee. It bounced once in left center field and cleared the chain-link fence, which no player in our league had ever cleared on a hop, much less on the fly, so this ground-rule double was pretty impressive in my book.
The hit scored the runners from second and third and tied the game. This necessitated a meeting on the mound so our coach could tell us, the infielders, what we should do if the next ball was hit to us now that the go-ahead runner stood at second, still grinning about his display of eight-year-old power. The coach had his say. We nodded as if we understood the defensive strategy he had outlined, though I’m pretty sure our first baseman was thinking more about how good a snow cone would taste when this game was over. So was I. It may have been an early Saturday morning, but it was Georgia, and it was hot. It was “try not to think about snow cones in the middle of the game” hot. And so we, the Vees (look, maybe the league was just using the alphabet to name teams; I don’t know, so stop asking), trotted back to our positions, and that’s when this story, for me, became worth telling.
You see, before another pitch could be thrown, we had to find two of our outfielders. When that belt-high fastball had been sent screaming, or at least speaking in more than an indoor voice, over my head and into the gap, our left fielder and center fielder had converged and had had the best seats in the house to watch the ball hit the grass and disappear into the trees and bushes and underbrush that adorned this part of the ballpark where no ball had ever gone before. And during our meeting of the minds on the mound, they apparently had taken it upon themselves to climb the chain-link fence and retrieve the “Official League” baseball. This was not necessary because, while the league may have been strapped when it came to naming its teams, I am certain the umpiring crew was equipped with more than one baseball for a game of this magnitude. Perhaps they had wanted to find that ball and award it to the peewee power hitter, who was now flexing his biceps at second base while waiting for play to resume. Whatever their motives, the search was under way, and the rest of us Vees (don’t even . . . ) sprinted toward the fence to provide encouragement, or point to where we thought the ball had gone, or simply ask, “Why are you on that side of the fence?”
As it turns out, this was not a search that would require a compass or bloodhounds or even twenty-twenty eyesight. The ball had come to rest in plain sight about ten feet past the fence. Our two missing outfielders had seen it. But they had also discovered a blackberry bramble, and it was filled with a mother lode of ripe and apparently delicious blackberries. While the infielders were getting chapter and verse from the coach on what to do if the ball was hit in our direction, our left fielder and center fielder were stretching their skinny arms through the bramble, deftly avoiding the menacing thorns, rejoicing in their discovery, and testifying to another reason this game is indeed our national pastime.
I’ll be the first to admit this may not be a thigh-slapping, gut-busting story. It is unlikely anyone who hears it will immediately jump on their Twitter account and give it an LOL. It probably falls more into the “Oh, isn’t that amusing?” category. But a game that features a blackberry delay struck a chord with my dad. And oh, by the way, I have no memory of how the rest of that game turned out. From that point on, it simply became “the blackberry moment.”
It would be years before that story became, for me, more than the tale of a Little League game delayed. We would tell and retell that story in our family and laugh each time as if we’d just gotten back from the ballpark. My father was a major league pitcher in the 1950s, most notably as a reliever for those great Milwaukee Braves teams, and he delighted in the innocence of that story. As he transitioned from the playing field to the broadcast booth, as the Braves moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta, he was a regular on the banquet and luncheon circuits. If you were a member of the Kiwanis Club, the Optimist Club, the Jaycees, the Rotary Club, or the Salvation Army, you heard Ernie Johnson Sr. deliver a speech.
I loved to tag along. I loved to hear again what the members of those clubs were hearing for the first time. What it was like to play alongside the likes of Hank Aaron and Eddie Mathews and Warren Spahn and Lou Burdette. What it was like to pitch to Stan Musial and Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson. And what was even better than hearing my dad tell those stories was hearing and seeing the reaction. Belly laughs . . . palms hitting tables, making silverware clink against plates and drinking glasses . . . middle-aged men trying to catch their breath before the old right-hander uncorked another gem from the memory bank.
Every once in a while he’d throw this one in: “And then there was that morning when little Ernie, and he’s seated right down here in front, was playing a peewee game over at Murphey Candler Park. . . .” And the story of the blackberry moment would be told by the greatest storyteller I ever knew.
In many ways that story has become central to my perspective on you name it: work, relaxation—shoot, life. It’s a kind of parable about not being afraid to step away from the game (translated the job, the meeting, the conference call, the list of emails, the seemingly pressing matter at hand) to appreciate the unexpected, unscripted moments. When I stop to think about it, it’s always the blackberry moments that stand out when I think about the wide variety of sports I’ve had the chance to be a part of in the winding course of my career.
In 1998, I was doing track and field play-by-play at the World Cup finals in Johannesburg, South Africa. Know what I remember most about that trip? Not the 100- and 200-meter golds won by Marion Jones, remarkable as they were. No, it was a visit to Soweto a day or two before the runners ran, the pole-vaulters vaulted, the high jumpers jumped, and the steeplechasers did whatever steeplechasers do. I’d heard about Soweto. It was a focal point in the fight against apartheid. It was there in June of 1976 that thousands of high school students staged a protest march—the Soweto Uprising—that turned deadly as South African authorities opened fire.
Now, twenty-two years later, I was riding in a van with a producer and a video crew following a busload of US athletes to the township where a new sports center for kids had been built. I looked out the window of the van at the rows upon rows of what were basically tiny huts with tin roofs, thinking at times it appeared a neighborhood had been built on a landfill. And I saw this brand-new facility and this sea of kids and parents waiting outside for this busload of athletes to arrive. And I remember the smiles. I still have photos of that day on the shelves of my home office, and every time I look at those snapshots I see something new and the feeling of that day returns and I feel lucky. USA Track and Field gave us T-shirts to give out to the kids, and I have pictures of tiny kids wearing extra-large T-shirts that nearly touched the ground. There’s a picture of me reaching to shake hands with a group of kids, and they’re laughing, and so are the moms and a grandmother. There are looks on faces that say, “Who’s this guy with the receding hairline and the plastic credential hanging around his neck?” or “What’s with this hand extended . . . Do you want me to slap it or shake it?” Oh, that day was marvelous. And I remember, as we drove back to our Johannesburg hotel that evening, we saw the sun setting in our rearview mirror so brilliantly that we had to pull over so we could take pictures. The Creator had his paintbrush out again, and it was a spectacular finish to an unforgettable day.
I’ll tell you the truth. I had to look up on the internet the highlights of that 1998 track meet, but I will never forget those Soweto images or that sunset. That’s what unscripted blackberry moments do. I think God has placed blackberry brambles along the paths we walk every day. We just need the eyes to see them, the ears to hear them, and the hearts to detect them. All that stands in the way is the busyness of life. We’re all so focused on sticking to the script from one day to the next, one meeting to the next, one sales call to the next, that we blow right by the unscripted moments that can profoundly impact not just our lives but also the lives of those with whom we share the planet, the workplace, or a home. If there’s one thing life has taught me, it’s not to fear the unscripted but to embrace it.
On August 16, 2011, the story of the blackberry moment at that Little League park and all it has meant occupied my every thought. Soon it would come spilling from my own lips as I delivered my father’s eulogy.