“Excuse me,” the sandy-haired man in the t-shirt, khaki shorts and sandals said. “My name is David Herman. Do you remember me?”
I put my thoughts on pause and glanced up from my restaurant table. My right hand was deep within a basket of parmesan chicken wings; my left hand was pecking away on my laptop. Hiding behind him was a tow-headed boy, not more than nine, who couldn’t hide an ear-to-ear grin.
“We live here in St. Petersburg,” Mr. Herman said. “We bought several copies of the Hawaii book you wrote last year with June Jones. This season, my son and I are taking a special trip to see the Warriors play in person, at Boise State.”
I suggested he seek out new Hawaii head coach Greg McMackin for an autograph, because anyone who leaves sunny Florida in October to go sit outside in Boise, Idaho, definitely deserves one.
“You have no idea how much that would mean to my son,” Mr. Herman said. “Do you think Coach Mack would actually do that?”
I told him a quick story about how Coach Mack, as a boy, grew up cracking walnuts with his dad at their kitchen table, while they listened in awe to their Oregon football heroes through the static of a transistor radio.
If anybody understands what an autograph can mean to a boy, it’s Coach Mack.
******
I often remind myself that Stephen King played guitar in coffee houses in Orono, Maine. Or that Ernest Hemingway scribbled brilliance in the midst of the hardwood floors and dark paneling of the infamous Sloppy Joe’s in Key West.
I’ve made my haven in booth #74 at Beef ‘O’ Brady’s, a little St. Petersburg hideaway and my self-ordained ‘inspiration station,’ where I go each day to gather my thoughts, ponder, work and write. Here, amid the scuffed tile and chipped faux veneer tables, is where I penned much of my last two books. Truthfully, I find solace and discover hope from a never-ending cast of characters, and their equally eclectic stories.
Each day is a new parade of people. As I write, they plop in my booth, one beat cop, one insurance adjustor, one real-estate agent, one retiree at a time. We talk briefly about baseball’s pennant races (…can the Rays’ pitching make it down the stretch?), preseason football (…do you think Favre should have picked the Bucs?) or curse the simmering Florida heat (…can you believe this humidity?).
You must realize that my recent undertakings – Hawaii Football, now Carolina Baseball – aren’t exactly regarded as earth-shattering literature in this South Florida sports hotbed, where Urban Meyer, Tim Tebow, Jon Gruden, the Bucs, Evan Longoria and the Rays are all the rage. In fact, friends and editors of the St. Petersburg Times told me once that nobody here “cares” about Hawaii football, or for that matter, Carolina baseball.
I disagree. I’ve discovered that when you get right down to it, sports, from anywhere, are a common thread connecting everyone, whether the stories castigate, motivate or instigate. When you get to know the locals, you find that most Florida people aren’t actually from here; they are transplants cut from a patchwork quilt of places and cultures.
Here at Beef’s, they attach themselves vicariously to any good story, much like the regulars at Punchey’s Diner in Concord, North Carolina, a greasy spoon where Dale Earnhardt used to regale his faithful with stories of rubbin’ and racin’ long before he became famous.
I’m amazed every day at how many people “check in” for an update on former Hawaii and now Redskins’ quarterback Colt Brennan, or June Jones’ efforts over at SMU, or how Greg McMackin is faring out in Hawaii. They ask for updates on my latest collaboration about the University of South Carolina baseball program and its great head coach, Ray Tanner.
And sometimes, their children even ask for an autograph from one of these characters I tell them about.
******
Now who’s Coach Tanner again? Day after day, I patiently explain to the uninitiated that Coach Tanner is college baseball’s Tommy Lasorda. Only in the relative anonymity of college baseball could somebody notch 951 Division I victories and still have people not know who you are. But when they find out, boy are they mesmerized.
I tell anybody who will listen that Coach Tanner’s only motivation for the book I’m writing is that he wants the proceeds – roughly $350,000 -- to build a Miracle Field for handicapped children. The more they learn, the more they ask and follow the story, peppering me with the strangest questions and insight.
Without fail, a codger will emerge with a personal connection to the story.
“That Tanner fella was at N.C. State before he went to Columbia,” says one old-timer. He is painfully thin, like his white hair and double-knit sansabelt slacks. I count to 10, fully aware of what he’s about to say next.
“You know that Yankee Bobby Richardson used to coach there at South Carolina, right? That Richardson boy was the only MVP of the World Series whose team didn’t win.”
The man’s hacking cough interrupts him. Patiently, I smile. Lord willing – “if the creek don’t rise” -- he’ll be back at Beef’s next week to remind me again, just in case I forget.
******
Another thing I won’t forget anytime soon are the eyes of that little boy, which sparkled like Christmas lights when his father told him that Coach Greg McMackin of the mighty Hawaii Warriors might just take the time to meet him, shake his hand and sign his book.
I know how much that means, for I was once that boy. In fact, I credit Hall-of-Fame quarterback Bob Griese for my first girlfriend. This happened when I was seven, and the Miami Dolphins were en route to the NFL’s only undefeated season.
I wrote Griese a letter inviting him to dinner in exchange for his autograph. I even enclosed two sticks of Double-Mint gum for good measure. Imagine my surprise when a few weeks later, I opened the mailbox and saw a brown envelope addressed to me, with the Miami Dolphins logo clearly visible on the outside. My heart aflutter, I ripped open the package to find a pair of wrist bands and an autographed picture of … holy crap … Bob Griese.
When you’re seven, connecting to a sports hero through their autograph is like unearthing the Shroud of Turin. Junie Bass, the finest thing the second grade has ever known, even held my hand while I told her the amazing story of how I happened to procure a pair of sweatbands from Bob Griese.
This would fuel my passion for writing and a career that would always find itself, somehow, rooted in sports journalism. After 11 books and more than 1,000 articles; eight Super Bowls and nine world title fights; I think back to Bob Griese, and I wonder.
How many lives have been changed by a coach or a player who took two seconds of their time to scribble an otherwise worthless smudge of ink on a page, which then becomes a priceless memory seared within the heart of a kid?
******
Back in the ‘90s, while writing a cover story on Joe Montana for SPORT magazine, I found myself in a car with the greatest quarterback on earth and his family when he stopped for gas. After a lengthy delay and small talk with his wife, she eventually wondered aloud what could be taking so long.
Montana’s three-year-old son (now a starting high-school quarterback) clambered to the car window. “Mom,” sighed Nick innocently, “dad’s in there signing again.”
It’s nearly laughable today to think of a Bob Griese sifting through mounds of letters from kids during an undefeated season, or Joe Montana signing an autograph at a gas station.
This is thanks in part to enterprising kids who think John Madden is a computer-game programmer, and who now stand in line to get autographs to sell on e-Bay or to launder through enterprising entrepreneurs. Collectors pay these hustlers exorbitant prices to hang signature photos like priceless art in their untouchable museums of sport.
My, where have the good times gone?
******
Have we seen the last of the days of the dog-eared baseball card, signed at the park by Mickey Mantle? Or when a tattered, yellow cover of The Ring Magazine, signed by the likes of a Cassius Clay, wasn’t put in a frame, but kept under your bed?
Some of us still refuse to throw out the baby with the bathwater. There are still those of us for whom iconic sports legends paved the way through our adolescence, and whose autographs and performances will forever stand the test of time.
I’m not ashamed -- professional etiquette be damned! – for having asked Montana, John Elway, Jim Kelly and Dan Marino to sign the covers of SPORT that adorned the stories I wrote about each of them. To this day, almost instinctively, I continue to ask my sporting friends and compatriots to sign little pieces of memorabilia, and I sell nary a one.
This all adds up now to a personal trove of treasures, with some of them meaning absolutely nothing to anyone but me. In addition to my own helmet and a ball signed by my teammates from a brief stint in arena football back in the ’80s, I have dozens more footballs, hockey sticks, baseballs, jerseys, caps and everything in between.
I have a football with original signatures by Johnny Unitas, Charley Johnson, Joe Namath, Earl Morrall, Billy Kilmer, Kenny Anderson … the ball has been valued at $38,000, but I’ll never sell it, not in a million years. It was a gift to me from my friend Craig Morton, the former Cowboys and Broncos quarterback.
“You should open a sports bar,” my wife says.
“No way,” I say, “Someone might steal them.”
“Like whom?” she smirks. Ignoring the Johnny Unitas ball, she picks up one of my lesser-known, game-used Arena footballs; this one signed by veteran AFL quarterback Clint Dolezel after he threw a perfect spiral to wide receiver Terrill Shaw for his 700th career touchdown.
She stares at his autograph.
“Seriously,” she asks, “who’s Cliff Doolittle?”
******
So this past spring, I’m sitting in the Sumter, South Carolina, beach-house living room of arguably the best second baseman to ever don New York pinstripes. Bobby Richardson, yes, that “yankee fella,” who really did win the World Series MVP with a losing New York team in 1960.
Ahem, he also played in a total of seven World Series for the Bronx Bombers, winning three.
The discussion, of course, isn’t so much about his five-time, Golden-Glove career for the Yankees, but the book on Carolina baseball with Coach Tanner. See, when Bobby (gee, should I call him Mr. Richardson?) stopped playing, he became the coach at South Carolina, where he won 51 games in a single season en route to the College Baseball World Series. He would later dabble in politics before becoming a motivational speaker with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
We talked about faith, hope and redemption for a while, and he repeatedly reinforced his lifelong commitment to shaping young men and building Gamecock baseball. I asked him if he’d write a foreword for the book, and he agreed to do so just as quickly as he used to turn double-plays with Yankees’ shortstop Tony Kubek, his old roommate.
While we were talking, my wife Laurie stepped out to make a quick call to Ed, her dad. Ed lives in New York, so she asked her dad if he had ever heard of Bobby Richardson, because (Lord, please forgive her) she didn’t know who Bobby Richardson was. Posing that question to any baby-boomer New Yorker is akin to asking the Lone Ranger if he’s ever heard of Tonto.
Her dad, she learned, had “met” Richardson and Mantle at the same time – like most fans who “met” the Yankees … sitting four seats from the field on the first-base line at Yankee Stadium. On that day, Ed and his brothers Bob and Joe had their frigid hands wrapped in jackets – they refused to wear gloves, in hopes of catching a screaming foul ball. They squealed with delight when Richardson and Mantle came over and warmed up right before their very eyes.
“I was 11,” Ed said, “and I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. Why are you asking about Bobby Richardson?”
“Well,” she told him, “You’re not going to believe this, but I’m sitting with Bobby Richardson in his living room right now.”
“I’m sure you are, honey,” replied Ed, as if his daughter had just called to report she had seen the Easter Bunny, and he was riding on the back of Santa’s sleigh.
“Seriously, dad, do you want to talk to him?” Laurie asked. Ed, astonished, hung up, not knowing what, after all these years, he would say to his boyhood hero.
So as we were finishing up our iced-tea and incredible afternoon with the same man who batted .302 during his best season in 1962, my wife – you guessed it – cleared her throat and asked Bobby Richardson for an autograph, for her dad.
In a manner that only could be described as greatness, Bobby Richardson, with all the understanding and patience of a true and legendary hero, reached inside his desk. Out came a few glossy photos from his playing days, and a brand-new baseball that smelled like leather.
“To Ed …” he wrote, “My Best Wishes. Bobby Richardson #1,’60 W.S. MVP.”
Then he signed another one, and a baseball, too.
When we got in the car to leave, Laurie was clutching that baseball the same way Richardson had clutched a line drive in the ’62 World Series, when he robbed Willie Mays and Matty Alou from scoring the runs that would have beaten the Yankees and given the Series to the San Francisco Giants.
“I can’t believe I just met Bobby Richardson,” she gushed.
Laughing, I couldn’t resist.
“You should open your own sports bar with that ball,” I said.
******
With a single, simple signature, Bobby Richardson swept into our home like a coastal Carolina squall. Apparently, when you’re my wife’s age, connecting to a sports legend is like unearthing the Shroud of Turin. My wife can now tell you Richardson’s career batting average, for gosh-sakes (it’s .251; .305 in World Series play), in spite of the fact that he retired before she was born.
That photo Bobby signed for her dad, meanwhile, isn’t available on e-Bay or hanging in a collector’s sports shop. It’s sitting right where it should be, on a dusty enclave in her dad’s house in Mecklenberg, New York, right next to an autographed picture of Yogi Berra’s infamous play when Jackie Robinson successfully and controversially stole home in Game One of the ’55 World Series (Yogi signed the picture, “You’re Out!”).
“When Laurie gave me the picture of Bobby,” said a speechless Ed, “I had goose-bumps just holding it. I felt like I was 11 years old, all over again.”
Ed, for the record, is now 53, but little boys never grow up when it comes to the autographs of the greats they once adored, and how important these moments are in the big scheme of life itself.
So if one little boy from St. Petersburg, Florida, read the Hawaii book and actually cares about the Warriors and Coach McMackin, then it was worth every ounce of sweat and tears memorialized within its pages.
On October 17 at Boise State, on the blue field of Bronco Stadium, Coach Greg McMackin and the Warriors will embrace David and Chris Herman, a father and a son who paid for their own tickets and are making a cross-country trek from St. Petersburg, Florida, to meet their heroes.
Yes, Coach Mack and some players will sign his book. Coach Mack might even tell him how he followed in the footsteps of his own boyhood heroes to become a Division I head coach. From there, only God knows how that memory and those autographs will come into play in the life of little Chris, but somehow, you know they will.
In fact, had Mr. Herman and his son just glanced up at the wall that night at Beef ‘O’ Brady’s, they quickly would have realized the importance I place on a simple autograph.
There, to the right of the football jersey on the far wall, is an old SPORT magazine cover of Dan Marino, on which Dan has scrawled the following:
“J. David, enjoyed the article. Thanks for everything. Dan Marino.”
I can only imagine how much my kids will get for that on e-Bay when I die.
Currently working on Carolina Baseball: Pressure Makes Diamonds, with Gamecock head coach Ray Tanner, author J. David Miller keeps a baseball signed by Tanner and modern South Carolina legends Justin Smoak, James Darnell and Reese Havens next to his keyboard for motivation. If you haven’t heard of Smoak, Darnell or Havens, Miller suggests you keep an eye on the Rangers, Padres and Mets.
It will be Miller’s 11th book. For more information about the Miracle Field, go to www.MyCarolinaBaseball.com.
