Sparky Anderson lived my boyhood dream. His career was baseball. He surrounded himself with friends, and he just had a joy about himself that I am envious of.
Quick story(obvious lie). I lived in Florida from 1993-1999. From 93-96 I had a job that allowed me to sneak over to practices at Joker Marchant in Lakeland. I used to put my quarter in that egg-yolk yellow box get my Free Press, park my carcass amongst the Detroit retirees and just breathe baseball. I loved it. I went in one day and decided to sit behind home plate. I was enjoying Trixie's(Dick Tracewski) banter as he harasses the half asleep infielders into taking some ground balls, when up pops that white hair right in front of me. He starts talking to me about "the boys" and says "Hey, little feller" to a boy who has walked up to see the field up close. Sparky then says it was nice talking to me, winks, points over the boys shoulder and then drops a ball at the boys feet and tells him to get it quick. I am not sure who had the bigger smile, the boy, me or Sparky. That's what made him great. He enjoyed that moment as much as I did, maybe more. I need to find that joy. We all do.
1 comment:
I think there is a lesson there for us both. We need to spend less time stressing what those "above" us think and spend more time caring about those "around" us and understand that we work for those "below" us. Those "above" us are those who put demands on us that sometimes become obstacles for us spending time with those "around" us and teaching those "below" us. In your anecdote, Sparky took time for the people "below" him even though it really wasn't part of his job as dictated by those "above" him. He stressed about the right things...the things that brought joy to others. (Really, is that stressful though?)
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