“Salvy was the first player to remember my name,” Alec said.
I think I threw the ball over his head after he said that. Not on purpose. Just a holy-cow-what-an-incredible-experience-oops-there-goes-the-ball kind of throw.
“And the day Whit got the walk-off, that was the first time I interviewed Gordo.”
Alec left me speechless after that sentence.
For the summer of 2017, Alec worked at the KC Star writing stories of my favorite team and players alongside several of my favorite sportswriters. The same sportswriters I follow on Twitter and actually click their links.
Currently a student at MSU studying journalism, Alec’s heading to Tulsa this summer to continue writing stories and hopefully work his way up to one of the big coastal newspapers. But I was still in awe of his stories from 2017.
We talked about trades and all the what ifs involved in sports fandom. He taught me about the joys and frustrations of writing for a newspaper in a digital age. I laughed at imagining having to scrap a story and headline because of a miracle 9th inning comeback. And he awed me with his stories of the history and massive newspaper archives at the Star.
We played catch for a full thirty minutes, I spent the majority of the time amazed at Alec’s incredible stories. During that time, we also discovered something we have in common — surgically repaired ACLs. I only had to endure one massively horrible surgery; Alec’s been through three.
The winds started picking up, signs that a storm’s on its way, confirmed by both of our knees.
Had I not played catch with Jeff (Day #24), I probably wouldn’t have met Alec.
I love the serendipitous encounters already taking place simply from tossing a ball.
