15 Years Later

So now that our bartender Jake has landed a beer in front of us, let’s start with how this baseball stadium journey began.

It’s July 25^th,1997.  I’m in Atlanta, Georgia at a Braves/Marlins game.  I am neither a Braves fan nor a Marlins fan, but I am a baseball fan and so are my friends Roland and Dan.  Two years prior, while we were in our mid-twenties, an opportunity popped up and we bought a cheap timeshare in Nowhere, Tennessee so we could make a yearly thing out of golfing together.

Then just to try something different, we traded our Tennessee week in exchange for a week somewhere in the middle of Georgia.  Helen, Georgia as I recall.  The Bavarian center of the rural Southeast.

Before we went, though, one of us looked at a map for our trip and came up with the crazy idea of driving to Atlanta for one night.  We could see a Braves game and check out the bars in town (wow, the bars in Atlanta!). 

I don’t remember whose idea it was to skip golfing for a day to do that, but it turned out to be somewhat of a life-changer.  All of us jumped on the idea as something we would love doing.  And did we. 

The Chipper Joneses lost to the Marlins on a last inning Charles Johnson home run.  I can still see it land in the bleachers in left-center.  We were all Detroit Tigers’ fans, but we enjoyed experiencing a game in someone else’s stadium.  The scoreboard was different.  The fans had their own traditions.  Their own favorite players.  We loved watching the game and seeing the home fans cheer. 

I don’t remember exactly how the conversation went, but before we left the stadium that night, one of us came up with the following idea: we should keep exchanging our timeshare every year and go all over the country.  We could go golfing, hiking, rafting and sightseeing, but as a priority…we should see a baseball game in every stadium. 

On that July evening in 1997, without hesitation, we all agreed.  We smiled, shook hands and committed to visiting all 30 stadiums.  As of this writing, I have 5 stadiums left. 

But that’s not my only decades-long journey that started at that time.  Have another drink.

A jump backward in time to the Spring of 1991.  I’m 18 and driving home with my friend Matt after playing full court pick-up basketball near Detroit.  It was a known court in the area, so you needed to be pretty good to get into the game.  Guys were pretty serious about playing there.  Matt was 3^rd team all-state the year before.  I wasn’t.  But I was good enough to get on the court, so we’d go and play there on Saturday afternoons.  The competition and play were outstanding.

It was a concrete court behind a middle school.  No one actually plays there anymore incidentally, because someone got shot during an argument on the courts.  For the record, I was not there that afternoon.  I was very clear about that when the police asked.

But one day after a non-violent afternoon of basketball, Matt and I were talking in the car on the way home.  Somewhere in that conversation, I shared that from time to time I write songs on the piano.  It struck a chord with him (see what I did there?). 

He lit up and told me that his brother’s band was looking for a singer.  A few days later, Matt made the introduction and before too long I found myself singing in my first band.

I was terrible.  I mean, just awful.  I was so excited once we started playing that it was more like yelling than singing.  Couldn’t help myself.

But it was such a rush being on stage that I wanted to do it forever.  There’s really nothing like it.  You and your guys have practiced the songs so many times that when you get on stage you just go for it.  Adrenaline kicks in.  You know what to do.  You trust the rest of the guys in the band, so you just get after it.  And there’s such a different energy when there’s a crowd.  Playing music live in front of a crowd is an amazing feeling.

So I put my head down and got to work.  I never took any piano lessons and I can’t read music.  The dots on the page always just confused me.  I just hacked away at all of it.  We learned covers.  We wrote songs.  We played and played and played. 

I was 18 then.  I am now 48 years old.  I’d say I’ve gotten quite a lot better at singing, playing the piano, and interacting with a crowd over that time span.  Since that ride home from playing basketball, I’ve played in 5 bands and recorded on 8 albums.  I’ve had 21 regular bandmates and I’ve loved them all.  In fact, I’ve loved all of it.  I have another show in two weeks.  Stop by if you like live music.  And for god sake, have a beer or two.  Tip the bartenders.

One of my highlights involved a trip to Memphis with ten musicians.  We recorded an entire album on a Saturday night at the famous Sun Studios.  The same Sun Studios where Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis all recorded back in the day.  That was one hell of a night. 

Standing in the spot where Elvis stood while playing his guitar singing Hound Dog and where Johnny Cash stood while singing Folsom Prison Blues…that’ll give you chills.  I recorded one of my original songs, I’m a Boozer, on a piano that Jerry Lee Lewis played.  That song came out pretty good, I think.  Look it up. The Bare Hambones, “I’m a Boozer.”

On that subject, let’s take another drink.

None of this story really adds up to me being great at anything.  Not baseball, not basketball, and not playing the piano and singing.  I may be taking a short-story-long approach here, but my point in all of this is that when I enjoy doing something, I have no issue committing to it on a ridiculous level. 

I’ve always been this way.  I guess the best way to put it is that I would much rather say, “Why not?” in the moment than have to say “I wish I had done that” sometime later down the road.

You like watching baseball?  Let’s go see all of the stadiums.  Like basketball?  Find the secret places where serious players go to push each other and get in the game.  Enjoy playing music?  Let’s keep writing and recording until we’re 75 years old.  See what I mean?

Jump all the way forward to August 2001.  After teaching for three years in another district, I took my present job teaching high school math.  That move was what inevitably brought us together today.  Had I not made that move, I wouldn’t have taught Mike Whildin.  We wouldn’t have met to catch up 15 years later.  I wouldn’t be telling my part of this story.  I’ve now just finished my 20th year in that school.

By my math, I’ve been going to baseball games in all of these stadiums for 24 years, I’ve been teaching for 23 years and I’ve been playing music on stages for 30 years.  And I haven’t minded telling people stories about these and many other things the entire time.

So finally, let the calendar come around to March 31, 2021.  Former student Mike Whildin and I meet to catch up about life.  We discover that we’re both on the same life goal with the baseball stadium tour.  We discuss my teaching career and his run as a tutor at the college he attended.  We discover that we’ve both spent time on stage, me as a musician and him doing stand-up.  Then a couple of ideas present themselves for some time down the road.  Perhaps a blog…maybe even a podcast.

So you see, this conversation isn’t just about one day when two guys got together and had wings and beer.  It’s about the stories that we found.  Stories about the journeys that got us there.  Similarities that we noticed.  And how life came with a slightly different perspective as a result.

Mike and I shook hands that day and committed to writing this story about how much had happened up until that point.  What we found was that we had more to discover after.

For now, though, we should get Jake’s attention and pay the tab.