so long, and thanks for all the bad hops


listen, there's no way we would have or could have ever predicted we would be playing this long. in the beginning, we weren't doing it to establish any sort of legacy or foundation for a recreation ministry. it just sort of worked out that both very naturally happened.

eleven years ago, chris perry and i were shooting the breeze as was custom for us during the early years of my ministry experience. i leaned on his time served as a sounding board in a lot of ways, throwing ideas off and around him to see if they made sense outside of my head. most of the time they didn't, but he was gentle with his guidance and direction, and he was invaluable as an asset and a resource and an encourager when it came to pointing me in a direction and saying, "just go for it", "what's the worst that can happen?", or "there's a really good chance the youth are going to like you even if the idea is stupid". and so it went. day after day. week after week. we'd spend a ton of time together during our respective weeks. i'd spend a little less time (but no less important) with john rutland and we planned for the future of huffman united methodist church.

but softball didn't have much to do with any of that. softball, as an idea, was really nothing more than an excuse to hang out with each other and some of our friends. i don't know that we really thought we'd be any good, but we knew for certain that we were going to have a good time. the year before, we had started playing pick-up basketball and had developed enough relationships through that group and men/youth already in and around the church that we could field a team.

the founding fathers of humc softball were:

kevin o'kelley
chris perry
chris hicks ("chicks", "salty", the giver of most of our nicknames)
brian kiker ("kiker", "kike")
mike gibbs ("gibby")
nate beverly
brad henson ("chipper", "chip", "sock arm")
michael putman ("put")
mark mccollister ("marky", "marcus",)
doug foote ("big doug", "belch")
paul sutton  ("paulie", "geez")

over the years, i've instituted an unspoken "founding fathers" policy for the team. if one of the above had to/chooses to leave for a time and want to come back, we make a spot. when mike gibbs went away to become a superhero (then to go work in tampa for a bit), he had a spot waiting for him upon his return back to earth. when mike putman and mark had to left to pursue a higher education, they were welcomed back with open arms after the humc softball sirens sang them back to us. if kiker ever leaves to go coach some other kid's little league baseball team, he doesn't have to fret about his rightful seat being taken out from under him. the founding fathers policy prevents that from happening. it's a somewhat selfish and self-serving policy. i will own that. whatareyougonnado? eleven years later, five of those eleven men still remain active on the team. how ya like them apples??? i can say, without a shadow of a doubt, that no team that existed at new covenant in our first year can make that claim. not that i am proud of it or anything.

so, the founding fathers played softball together eleven years ago. we practiced at huffman ballpark on sunday afternoons, chris hicks and i singing the theme song to "the greatest american hero" to each other in the outfield, brad henson being renamed "chipper" then "chip", doug foote and paul sutton sharing time both at pitcher and first base, gibbs owning shortstop and nate beverly constantly wowing the rest of us with his natural athletic ability, rocket arm and perfect swing, doing it all with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. we practiced because that's what we thought we were supposed to do, that and we didn't want to make assholes of ourselves when we made our unprofessional debut as a team. and, what do you know? we didn't. we didn't win the league that first season, but we were okay from what i remember. a .500 team with enough good moments and good times to know we'd play again in the fall. we got a little better in the fall, so we'd play again the next spring. and so it went for several years. as guys burned out or guys went off to school or pastors got moved to other cities, our cast changed. the more it changed, the more it seemed to stay the same. the proverbial names on the back of the jerseys (t-shirt in the early days) were different, but the feeling always familial and familiar. softball became a once (or twice) a week excuse to feel like kids again, to forget what shitty shit was going on at work or at church or in life in general, to escape back to that feeling when your neighbors would knock on your door when we were ten so we could go out and play. we went out and played alright. we played softball at new covenant fellowship church in pinson. and we've been playing ever since.

i've been thinking for a week now about all the guys that have worn some version of "the green" over the last eleven years. not counting guys that we had to pick up at the field, here are the names i can come up with:

adam mcclendon
jason lynn
jason white ("rookie", "rook")
clint argo ("big nasty", "nasty")
kevin williams
taylor preston ("the wall")
tim bowman
cody berguson
heath argo
donald richards
melvin eatmon
robert williams
philip gibson
ken sransky
kevin allard
bo martin
mike's brother in law, brett
bryan pool
ken tittle
caleb martin
keith carpenter
aaron clark
mark usry
reagan denson
jason mccleney
mike williams
mark alfano
(sarah o'kelley and melanie (sransky) williams also deserve shout-outs for being our unofficial team moms)

38 guys! there's no way i haven't forgotten somebody. and i am going to feel really bad when i remember or am reminded of those names. 38 guys in 11 years. thinking about that number over what has now been 21 completed seasons, it feels like a lot of moving parts. i guess it was. i guess it is. obviously, not every one of those guys played full seasons (only three of the 38 have been ever-present souls, participants in each of the 21 seasons...me, kike, and paul) with the team. maybe circumstances prevented it from happening. maybe we only needed a fill-in for a few weeks. whatever the case was or has been, though, i have fond memories of my experiences with every single one.

i've been tripping down memory lane for a week for one specific reason. last monday night, june 20th, humc men played their last game at new covenant fellowship church. the park and the fields were never the best in birmingham, but they are both now shells of their former selves. i won't trash either too hard in this post. that's not what this is for.

this post is for revisiting some history. this post is for revisioning some of the same. it's for the good times that we had. it's for all the games we won. it's for the two titles that we claimed. it's for every frustrating monday, tuesday or thursday when the line-up cards were harder than usual to fill out. it's for the bad times when we weren't nearly as good as we thought we should be and it's for the worse times when we were just plain bad.

this post is for all the loved ones that came out to see us play. it's for all the weddings that have brought us together in better clothes. it's for all the babies that have been born into our unofficial family. it's for divorce. it's for busted down trucks. it's for cancer. it's for lost friends and found friends. it's for the years before the concession stand and the years after.

we moved to a new address last night. i won't bet on another post like this in ten years. given what's now in our rear-view mirror, i won't bet against it.

i've been alive working on 35 years. 11 of them...ELEVEN (really how many things in your life have you done for 11 years that don't include your job? i don't have another example)...have been framed by one team and one place, one place with three fields and 37 guys i didn't know at the time that i couldn't live without.

softball, as an idea, was really nothing more than an excuse to hang out with our friends.

to that end, it's the best idea i've ever had.  

to be continued...

why mike gibbs might save the world


one mike gibbs has been in and around my life for over ten freaking years now. that, in and of itself, is hard enough to wrap my head around. looking back over the history of my 33 years on this planet, there are very, very few characters in my play with such staying power. for those that have, each and every one of them have brought something magical, something...mystical, something...should i say, spiritual to my journey that for whatever reason i haven't been able to, better yet, don't want to let go.

this is richard alpert's mike gibbs' story.

for ten years (really, all, how hard is that for any of us to believe), i've been doing something that hasn't really been named and hasn't really always been promoted as a men's recreation "ministry". here's the rub. this "ministry" has been anything but in the conventional sense of the word. there have been no bible studies. there are very few prayers. unless we've been "damning" his name, there's been very few overt references to the big guy in the sky, the creator, the benevolent force, the queen mother earth, the man behind the curtain, whatever it is that you choose to call that something outside of yourself that may or may not, given the time of day, influence your decision making. there has been basketball. there has been even more softball (in terms of games played). there has been a very weak-ass attempt at flag-football (we were way too old and slow and not that great at football.). there have been friendships forged, some of them that will span the rest of our respective lives. there have been children born. there have been trucks stolen. there have been surprise birthday parties. there has been joy. pain. sorrow. grief. celebration. sadness. above it all, there has been progress.

mike gibbs came to us because i knew a guy named josh corwin. josh is the oldest son of a couple in our church. back in the day, chris perry, john rutland and i started playing basketball on monday nights. josh got word from his parents through chris, if i remember correctly. one of the first nights we played, josh brought two of his buddies, mike gibbs and nate beverly. josh was in and out of the picture for a number of reasons, but mike and nate stuck around a while. moreso than any other factor, this was mainly due to the softball season being a lot longer (josh didn't play softball). basketball lasted 8 games over two winter months. as any significant other of humc softball can attest, softball never ends. opening night is sometime in late march or early, early april. we play through the spring, through the summer, and far enough into the fall 'til the weather reminds us that it's time to play basketball again. mike and nate were part of the group that i still refer to, to this day, as the "founding fathers" of humc softball. me, chris perry, chris hicks, kiker, chip, mike, nate, paul sutton, doug foote, mark mccollister, and michael putman (chris, mark, kiker...am i forgetting anyone???). these players, as far as i am concerned, have lifetime contracts with humc softball. if they want to play, they get to play. if the fates brought us all back together for one final season, the new guys that we've collected and held onto for the last however many years would have to humor our effort and splinter off into a second humc team which i would beg of them to play on as well. the founding fathers practiced across the street from the church on the rocky huffman senior high recreation field. we sang the "greatest american hero" theme song in the outfield and cracked jokes about what a sock-arm our third baseman, chip henson had. we were terrible our first year on the field. as a collective, most of us had played ball, some at decently high levels, but we had never played church league softball. needless to say, we went through some growing pains. we did, however, get better. and to this day, we play well enough to justify playing again every time a new march rolls around.

one of the things that sticks out to me about that first season was what a wild card and wild man mike gibbs was. his friend, nate beverly, carried some baggage along with him too, but he went about his business in a more quiet manner. with very little ado, nate was our best player. a cannon of an arm, a great church league bat. natural athlete. he manned centerfield for us for our first three years. mike was our second best player and our shortstop, but his attitude on and off the field was different and familiar all at the same time.

playing with mike could be frustrating at times because he never could, er, never would take his foot off the gas. he was always looking to take second, even on a simple single. he would take a few steps off of any bag, teasing the opponents into hopefully making a mistake that would allow him to advance further along the basepaths. he would occasionally lazy-ass a swing and "bunt" a ball down the third baseline just so he could get on base and do his little song and dance. every time he fielded a ball at short, he tried to throw it through the first baseman (still does, evidently). when he did swing, he swung for the fence. every time. sometimes, it would work. sometimes, it wouldn't. i was telling a buddy earlier today that mike was a case study in the kind of guy that you love to have on your team but would absolutely loathe if you were playing against. you got the feeling that mike knew this. that he owned it. that he loved playing that role.

it wasn't for a couple years that i learned more of what made mike tick. and it was at that time that i realized what felt so familiar about this guy that i had known for a very short amount of time. once i was privy to some of the personal demons that had, indirectly, led mike into the humc gym, i was able to place it. mike gibbs played basketball and softball like my brother, brian, lived his life. balls to the wall. no turning back. no respect for his body. no real respect for his opponent, whether, by opponent, that meant the other team or authority. no regard for consequences. everything was in front of him. context was loss. live in the moment. live in the now. light a match. watch the city burn behind you kind of mentality. it was that moment or those moments that led to my "mike as brian" realization that i knew we'd be connected somehow for a long time.

i can't begin to analyze the depths of who it was that mike gibbs was when i met him. i can't begin to analyze the depths of who he was over the course of our early relationship, because, frankly, i don't know. we didn't hang out off the field or outside of the gym. we'd catch up while we were together. he'd let me know a little bit about himself here. i'd do the same for him with me there. we weren't the best of friends. i can't claim that. but, there was some sort of connection. one that the both of us have maintained for a long, long time now.

at some point a few years back, after reconciling himself with whatever personal hell he had been through and put himself through, something clicked. what the catalyst was i don't really know. was it his sweet wife? the birth of his first child? something else? probably the combination of a lot of different things. at some point a few years back, though, mike made a surprising decision. he was going back to school. he decided to take control of his life for himself and for his family in a way that he wasn't ready to do when we first met ten long years ago. mike went to school. graduated. has continued school. and in august will receive another degree. over this past weekend, mike was offered a job in tampa with one of the "big four" accounting firms in this country. in ten years, his life turned somehow. for the better. not that his life was bad. not that he was in serious need of being reclaimed. looking back, though, i bet he would tell you, himself, that his life wasn't on the path that he, ultimately, wanted it. now, it seems to be.

of all the freaking places, i found mike gibbs in a tangible way again on facebook. we had e-mailed back and forth a few times over the last few years. played with each other in march madness fantasy pools. but it wasn't until i found him and his wife on facebook that we would eventually find a way to reconnect in the same arena that we found each other a decade ago. last night, for the first time in years, i played softball with mike gibbs again. it felt like old times. it felt familiar. but there was something new and improved about this mike gibbs. it had nothing to do with how he was playing softball. he still seemed as active as ever. he was still the only one of us to hit one out during batting practice. there was a new look in his eyes. one that felt calm. cool. collected. a look i had never seen before in mike. a look that had probably been there a while, but i haven't seen mike in a while.

driving home last night, ten years worth of memories rushed through my mind all at the same time. from those first practices at huffman to winning seasons to winning leagues to going winless in basketball two seasons ago to jumping back to respectability this year. it wasn't the wins or losses or scores that i thought of. it was the stories. the cast that has changed, evolved and written the story that i've been lucky to be a part of for almost a third of my life. it's really quite unbelievable.

the redemption of mike gibbs is as powerful as any character that i obsess about on LOST. we all have differing degrees of ingredients that hold us captive in our lives. history, experiences and pain that make us feel like we are very minor pieces in someone else's game. and at either some point or maybe many points we are faced with a decision. stay captive, stay a pawn or look unflinchingly into our pain and into our past and take control of our lives again. last night, i saw in his eyes the fulfilfment of one person that i hold dear to my heart looking into his past, owning it and taking it with him in a different and more positive direction. the mike gibbs of ten years ago was not ever going to be a big shot accountant at a big four firm. the mike gibbs of last night will attack that job in the fall with the same ferocity i've always known him to attack a softball, only this time his focus will be true. his eyes will be looking forward and not over his shoulders.

i told mike a few months ago that, in spite of his grace, i had nothing to do with his redemption. i told him it was all him. that it was always in him. and it makes me so happy to see him happy with where his life is leading him and his family.

just to be around someone like mike gibbs, though. just to be around something like his story is why i will play softball 'til the queen mother earth sees fit to take my other kidney...

it's why i will never throw caroline through a plate glass door after she repeatedly hits me in the face...

it's why i am in "limbo". and it has NOTHING to do with reconciling who in that group, currently, believes this shit or who in that group may now or may ever believe that shit. and to those of you that share that group or that idea with me now that have had that worry..., drop it. or choose to use it as an excuse. either way, it's on you. there is nothing to reconcile. there is nothing to worry about. because no matter at whose face i have to throw a doughnut, limbo will be about the journey and our journey together. it will be about finding hope in a shitty, shitty world that's made up of people not inclined to sin but looking for a way to do good. if it's the bible that compels them, so be it. if it's the force and you can use that shit to move rocks out of the way when we need you to, so be it. if it's the troll talking to you from your closet that we can call on to help us out of a sticky situation, so be it. if, as in my case, it's an invisible creator that i seem to feel a spiritual connection with, so be it. but don't let reconciliation get in the way. because reconciling is what we do. it's the fuel in our tank, not the sugar. it's mike gibbs. it's "mike freaking gibbs".

this is his story, but dammit. it's also mine. and yours.

this isn't a redemption story as much as it is a progress story. a hope story. the story of one man that makes me feel more optimistic about my own.

dammit, i love softball. i love that i was playing softball again with mike gibbs last night. and i love every single man that has worn that green or white jersey with me at some point in time like he was my brother, because they have all helped write this story.

i am undeserving of ever having touched your lives. but i can promise you this. you have made mine a better place.

thank you.

100 percent isn't what it used to be


"tell me about it."

the timing of something like what i went through (and continue to "go through") this summer would never be good, per se. such is any unexpected and/or scary news. you never want it. you tell yourself you're never gone get it. then, you get it. you deal with it. we all deal with it in our own individual ways.

before the mass was found, though, i was already at a time of physical transition in my life. don't get me wrong. i don't want to be shallow and play the "i am getting old" card as an excuse, but i will say that i've been coming to terms with "i am not what i used to be" for a couple of years. of course, i am not old. 32 sounds young to me. 32 has always sounded young to me. i hope i get the chance to look back in thirty years and understand how young 32 really was and is. but, 32 is older than 27, and it is definitely older than 23, which is how young i was when i started playing softball and basketball full-time with and for the church. it was nine years ago that i felt like i could and should start something sports-y for myself and the men in and around my church. for those that were already there, we could have another excuse to fraternize with one another. for our friends and those that may not have already been "there", it would serve as a ministry of our church. not one whose sole intention was to grow the church, necessarily, but one that might fill a need in our lives and those we could invite to "come out and play".

when i was 23 through about 29 or 30, i felt no shame in inserting myself in the heart of our softball line-up. i was never the biggest, but i could swing a pretty good bat, know where it was going most of the time and get on base 4 out of every 5 at-bats, if not more. in the field, i was equally confident. i had enough athletic wherewithal that i felt like i was a strength in the field, no matter what position i wrote myself into. the same went for the basketball court. no one would mistake me for being really good. i didn't play high school ball, but i was better than your average church-league guard. could probably shoot a lot better than most. dribble with both hands. see the court in ways that made me happy and proud at times. i wanted to start every game, but chose not to. selfishly, i knew that would give me the credit i needed to finish every game, which is what's important.

the last couple years have been different, though. what little power i had has, more or less, gone away. i am no longer a homerun threat. and thus, probably a poor choice for third in our line-up. my shoulder has something wrong with it. i haven't gotten it checked out, because it doesn't keep me up at night or prevent me from doing anything, but there is discomfort every time i throw. the last couple of basketball seasons have shown similar drop-off. what little lateral quickness i did have is fading. i am having to find open spaces on the court by wheeling around screens that provide room that i can't make on my own. my confidence on the ball is waning. i don't want to run our point, because "kids" much younger than i can potentially make me a turnover liability.

losing what i once had was going to be hard enough. the glimpse of losing what was still to come this summer was, as i suggested, just poor timing i guess.

i am fragile, yet proud. neither of which has provided much ammunition against my fears and anxiety.

coming to terms with my physical limitations as i get "older" has never sounded so nice. if i could only get back to a place where things like that seemed important again.

off to therapy.