Next Time I’ll Be Ready

Recently, I took on a new position with a company that has its headquarters in Melbourne, Florida. Since my boss is in Florida and I live in Maryland, I travel to the Sunshine State about once a month.

Last month on my return from my regularly scheduled trip to the home office, I was waiting to board a plane in the Melbourne International Airport. I see a very large man nod at the ticket taker and board the plane.

Wait a second, I say…that’s someone famous. A sports figure….

Hey, I know I know that guy!

Football…no, I wouldn’t recognize a lineman.

Basketball? Nah, too wide a body.

Baseball – yeah, that’s…that’s…that’s Cecil Fielder. The guy who went to Japan after five mediocre major league seasons to hone up on his baseball skills. The guy who returned to the States after a couple of years and signed with the only team that would have him – the Detroit Tigers. And then in his first season back became the first guy to hit 50 dingers in about 20 years. He led the league in taters and ribbies a time or two and became one of the most feared power hitters of the 1990′s.

So, now what do I do? Yeah, I am a sports fan and especially a fan of baseball. I am in the midst of greatness. I want to yell at him. I want to ask him for his autograph. I want to sit down and talk baseball with him. I know – I’ll tell him I am a writer of some renown for quarterly magazine called “Baseball Ink.” No, that would only turn him off. I want to ask him how many homers he’d be hitting now that the ball is juiced and everyone seems to be able to hit 50 (or 60 or 70). I want to ask him a bazillion questions….

I also want to be a “cool” baseball fan. Not like the others. I want to show him that not only do I know who he is, but I respect him and his privacy.

I want to leave him alone.

No, I don’t – I want to talk with someone who REALLY knows baseball. He’s been a STAR in THE SHOW! The closest I got to greatness previously was when I saw Lou Brock outside the Homer-Dome in Minneapolis at the ’87 World Series. All I could muster then was a “Hi, Lou.”

“Hi, Lou”??? From the biggest Cardinal fan outside the state of Missouri? What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell was I thinking?

So, what do I do? I’m in a dilemma. I’m in a dilemma in an enigma in a puzzle in a Rubik’s cube. My eight-year-old inner-self is screaming at me like the proverbial angel on my shoulder. My 43-year-old outer-self is trying to calm me down like the proverbial devil on my other shoulder.

I board the plane – me a coach-rider and weary business traveler. I know Cecil is in first-class – the way I know George Washington was the first president. As I walk through the first-class cabin I look for him, find him and hope he looks at me, so I can….

WHAT? So, I can WHAT? Prove to him then and there that I am a baseball fan??? Talk about his philosophy of hitting? Ask him what it was like to hit off Nolan Ryan? WHAT? WHAT CAN I DO IN THE SPLIT SECOND THAT HE AND I MAKE EYE CONTACT????

He’s looking pensively out the window. He doesn’t look up. My “problem” is solved.

I walk by – saying and doing nothing. I tell myself that I did the right thing by leaving him alone. I go to my seat and sit there. I don’t pull out the six-month-old airline monthly. I don’t read USA Today. I don’t read the latest best-selling novel. I don’t listen to my CDs. I don’t even eat my peanuts.

I think.

I think of what I should have said, should have done; what I should say and do the next time I brush against greatness….

I still don’t know precisely what that is…but at that time, THE NEXT TIME…I’ll be ready!

(originally published in Baseball Ink Vol. 1, No. 3 – December 2000)