Giving Thanks

Perhaps I’ve told this story before: This has to be more than 30 years ago … I was probably 25 years old, and was somehow the sports columnist for The Augusta Chronicle in Augusta, Ga. I say “somehow,” because as far as I know, the Chronicle had not had a sports columnist before, and I was not exactly hired to be the first. I was hired to cover University of Georgia football and local colleges and high school sports and, obviously, Masters golf year-round and whatever else happened to come up.

I just started writing columns, and nobody told me to stop.

In retrospect, I built up a bit of a name in and around town. It didn’t feel that way back then, but my picture was in the paper just about every day, and I was also the focus of one of the most absurd promotions in newspaper history, the infamous “I Pounded Poz” football prognostication game. In this game, I would select 20 college and pro games and then make my picks. People would send in their picks and if they got more right than I did, they won an “I Pounded Poz” T-shirt, complete with a cartoon drawing (done by my friend, decorated editorial cartoonist Rick McKee) of me getting booted through the goal-post uprights.

The trouble: I was (and remain) a legendarily terrible prognosticator. Truly terrible. As such, the paper gave away thousands and thousands and thousands of T-shirts*, to the point that the publisher of the Morris newspaper chain and prominent member of Augusta National, William S. Morris, suggested that it would probably benefit my career to get better at picking games.

*To this day, I STILL get photos from people wearing an “I Pounded Poz” T-shirt. Well, why not? The contest clothed all of Richmond County. We still own one, which my wife will occasionally wear when trying to make a point.

Yeah, the Chronicle gave away quite a few of these back in the day.

Anyway, the story: I was in the stands at an Augusta minor league baseball game — this was before they were called the Augusta GreenJackets — when a young boy, probably 8 or 9, came up to me and asked me to sign a baseball. The idea that anybody would want an autograph from me felt so absurd, I just knew it had to be either a mistake or a gag being pulled by one of my jerk friends. The kid’s innocence suggested it wasn’t a gag. So it had to be a mistake.

“Oh,” I said, “you don’t want my autograph. I’m not anybody.” I thought I said it gently, you know, as a way to prevent an awkward exchange with his father (who was waiting back at his seat) when he came back with a ball, and the Dad would say, “Oh, that’s not who I thought that was.”

But, in fact, I WAS the person he wanted an autograph from, and he started to cry, and I immediately tried to fix the situation, but there was no fixing it, and I felt like the biggest heel in the world, and all these years later, I still feel my stomach clench up thinking about that moment.

I tell you this at Thanksgiving because this year I have probably signed, I don’t know, 10,000 autographs. It might not be quite that many, but it’s close, thanks to the impossibly gratifying success of WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL (now entering its FIFTH printing) and the continued interest in THE BASEBALL 100 and this wild nationwide tour I’ve been on and all the amazing media hits and … it has been so much fun and so much happiness and just so much signing.

I’m at a point now where if there’s a book and a pen nearby, I’m signing my name, even if the book is Deepak Chopra’s The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, and even if the pen is actually a McDonald’s straw.

Of course, there’s still a part of me that lingers from Augusta, the part that feels unworthy of all this and wants to rise up and say, “Oh, you don’t want my autograph. I’m not anybody.” But I’ve learned that nobody really wants to see that part of me. All along the tour, I’ve been kidded about that moment on “CBS Mornings” when Tony Dokoupil called me the greatest living sportswriter, and I just nodded as if, in the words Tony’s co-host, Nate Burleson, I was thinking: “Yep, that me.”

At first, I was embarrassed by that, too — my initial instinct was to argue with Tony, list off the many, many sportswriters who are unquestionably greater than me, downplay myself. But I have come to believe that would have been the absolute wrong reaction (and not even possible in the blur of a morning talk show).

The right reaction, I think, is gratitude.

So many people have come up to me this year, nervous, anxious, and they say they don’t have the words to express how much my sportswriting has meant to them, how much my writing about family has meant to them, how much the PosCast with Mike has meant to them. They quote old lines that they have committed to memory. They share the most incredible stories about how my work has affected and, in some cases, altered their lives. It’s so humbling, so overwhelming, but I have come to believe that the last thing in the world they want is for me to even hint that I am unworthy of such adoration.

I think, now, what they want is for me to listen and understand and, even if it’s brief, connect. And I’m so grateful. As we come upon Thanksgiving, I’m just so grateful.

I think now of the three-generation family I met in St. Louis, a grandfather and a father and a son, all of them wearing Cardinals uniforms of some kind, and I asked the son who his favorite Cardinals player was, and do you know what he said? He was, like, 10 years old. He looked at me and said: “Stan Musial.”

I think now of the woman I met in Houston, who told me the story of her father taking her to a baseball game when she was just a little girl. When the game was over, they walked out and then there was a shift in pedestrian traffic and she looked up at her father and said hopefully, “Are we going back to see the baseball game again?” Many years later, when her father’s Alzheimer’s prevented him from remembering, he still remembered the time his daughter wanted to go back to see the baseball game again.

I think now of the young girl in Kansas City who in front of a huge crowd asked me to tell a story about a girl in baseball. And when she didn’t like the story I chose — not tough enough — she sent me a determined email demanding another one, which I sent.

I think now of the Twins fan in San Francisco, who broke down crying as he expressed the love he felt for his family, and I think of the woman in Philadelphia who proudly showed me her authentic 1969 World Series program, and I think of the many gifts people have showered on me along the way,* and I think of the moment in Dallas when All-Star reliever Jim Kern emerged from the crowd to hand me an autographed baseball to replace the autographed baseball chewed up by our dog, Westley, which replaced the first autograph he signed for me in pencil almost 50 years ago …

*A Brandon McCarthy rookie card! A Buck O’Neil baseball card! A John McDonald autographed baseball! A Greatest Yankees book (the author who gave it to me acknowledged that it might not bring me personally great joy). And so much more.

Mostly, I think of the countless interactions, hopefully with some of you, small moments, exchanges that did not last very long but mean so much to me … and I hope mean something to you. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

With Black Friday approaching and Hall of Fame season about to begin, we’re offering 20 percent off a yearlong subscription to JoeBlogs. This is good for yourself or if you would like to give JoeBlogs as a gift. Thank you so much for your support; you keep the lights on at JoeBlogs, and I’m beyond grateful..