Godspeed, Mike Shildt

Back in June of 2018, my son graduated high school on a Thursday. He wasn’t feeling well, but he played his final high school baseball games two days later on Saturday. Two days after that he was in the hospital, and two days later, he was diagnosed and began treatment for acute lymphoblastic leukemia. 

The next month, Mike Shildt took over as manager of the Cardinals. That September when they visited Detroit, we got the opportunity to meet him before a game. He couldn’t have been more kind, not just talking with Jack, but really listening to him. Just a few hours before his team was to take the field, battling for a wildcard spot, it was clear that he truly cared about the 18-year old Cardinals fan he had just met.

What Shildt did next amazed me. He gave Jack his personal phone number and told him that if Jack ever was having a particularly tough day, or if he was having a great day he wanted to celebrate with someone, he should give Mike a call. Then, to underscore the fact that he really meant it, and that Jack shouldn’t worry about bothering him, he said, “The only way I’ll be upset with you is if you don’t call.” Then, when Jack hadn’t called him for a week, Mike called Jack to check on him. He has since remained in touch with Jack, calling on occasion and texting back and forth with him as recently as yesterday. 

Today, the news broke that the Cardinals fired Shildt. In two days, this Saturday, Jack will take his final dose of chemotherapy, his three-plus years of treatment almost perfectly overlapping with Mike’s tenure as the Redbirds’ manager. I am of course thrilled to see Jack’s treatment come to a conclusion. At the same time, I am saddened to see Mike’s time with the Cardinals end. I am sad because my favorite team is parting ways with a manager who won a National League Manager of the Year Award, overcame numerous obstacles to lead his team to the playoffs in three straight seasons, and just weeks ago led them to a franchise-record 17-game winning streak (the longest such streak in the NL in 85 years).

Even more than that though, I am sad for him. Having spent his entire eighteen years in professional baseball with the Cardinals organization, he must now look for a new employer, after holding the job he considered himself so blessed to have. I wish him the best. He’s a good manager. He’s an even better man. I will forever be a Cardinals fan, but I will definitely also root for any team that he leads. Godspeed, Mike Shildt.

The Kindest of Random Acts

Facebook, Twitter, and other such platforms have unquestionably had a number of negative impacts on our culture. I don’t need to outline them here. But one of the great things about social media (when used well) is that it can actually foster community. I have countless people who I have never met in person, but have come to know through social media, and have been greatly blessed by those friendships.

Perhaps nowhere is this so true as it is with the baseball card collecting community that I have become a part of through Twitter. I have had a blast trading cards through the mail with these people all around the country. Two things in particular have been amazing about the experience.

First of all, many of these people have collections that are breathtaking! I am especially awed at the vintage cards that some of these collectors have! Up until recently, I had only a small handful of cards from before my childhood in the late 70s. People building complete sets from the 1950s and 60s abound in this community, and many of them have cards much older than that. It’s a thrill to simply see cards from these collections!

The second thing that has been a wonderful joy is the generosity of people in this community. Unlike when I traded cards with buddies as a kid, and we all wanted to get the best end of every deal, the common practice in this community is to generously trade cards or even simply give them to one another. Almost daily, my Twitter feed includes notices of such Random Acts of Kindness (“RAK”s) that my fellow collectors have benefited from.

I have never seen a RAK quite as large or generous though as the one that was recently done for me. A few months ago, I undertook my first project building an older set, working on the classic (and beautiful!) 1956 Topps set. I fully realized that there were likely a number of cards in the set that I would never get, but I figured I’d try to collect as many as I could.

Well, I came home from work on Monday to see an unexpected box in my mail. I opened it to find a note on top of a stack of baseball cards. The note said that a group of people got together in the Twitter collecting community and wanted to do something for me and my son (who is undergoing treatment for leukemia), and they had included a bunch of '56 Topps cards to make us smile and realize that people all over the country were rooting for our family. 

I was humbled as there were over 100 cards in the package. Dinner was just about ready as I walked in the door, so I had to wait until afterward to look through the cards. After dinner, as our family was watching TV together, I started to unwrap and flip through the cards. My entire family noticed as I gasped, seeing a Hank Aaron card on top of the pile. They asked what it was, and I didn’t want to interrupt the show we were watching, so I told them to just go on watching it, figuring that I could tell them about it at a commercial. As I began to look through the pile though, I gasped once more: Kaline, Berra, Clemente, Mays and a number of other Hall of Famers, including finally a beautiful Ted Williams card.

My wife could see that I was almost in shock, and she insisted that I tell them what was affecting me. I handed the cards to my son as he paused the TV show and he showed them to my wife and daughter. I initially choked back tears but eventually conceded to them, as I considered the kindness that had been shown to me by this wonderful group of people. A few of the cards included were the kind of “holy grail” cards that I honestly thought I’d never own, and now here they were as part of my collection!

These 20 people (none of whom have I ever met in person, and only perhaps half of whom have I even interacted with) truly took my breath away with this act. I wish there were words that could adequately express how grateful I am. If there are such words, they are certainly beyond me. This much I can say: I count myself incredibly blessed not just to have been on the receiving end of such generosity, but simply to be part of such a community. I look forward to future opportunities to show similar kindness as I am able--both to them and to others, and I invite you to consider how your acts of kindness can help make someone else's day (or week, or month, or year)!

Some of the amazing RAK Hall of Famers