#5 In My Program, #1 in My Heart

If I think really, really hard, I can remember a time in my life before I was a Johnny Bench fangirl, but it’s so hard to do that I don’t bother anymore. I’m not sure when it started, probably sometime during the heyday of The Big Red Machine in the '70s. I feel certain I was the only girl on my fifth-grade softball team in suburban Houston who could name the starting lineup for the Cincinnati Reds. 

I lived for Johnny Bench. I checked the box scores to see when he hit homers. I would race home from school to watch the World Series day games. When the Reds came to town to play the Astros, I begged my dad to take me. When #5 fired down to second base to cut off a runner, it was like a religious experience. Those arms! That smile. Even now, I’m a sucker for a cute catcher. Johnny Bench’s personal life was not really discussed in our house – for good reasons. Let’s just say…. it’s checkered. 

But I was hooked. I hung a Johnny Bench poster in my bedroom closet, where, I might add, it stayed for 40-something years until last fall when I finally had to take it down when we sold the house. I started the Johnny Bench fan club of my besties on the street. They all had to agree on certain inalienable truths: Johnny Bench was the greatest ball player of all time, 5 was our favorite number and red was our favorite color. I think my dad even took the three of us to a baseball game to see him play, which frankly (haha) probably qualifies my dad for martyrdom.

My worlds collided when Johnny Bench appeared on an episode of The Partridge Family (not as momentous as the Bobby Sherman guest spot, but darn close). It was season 3, when they all go to a theme park in Cincinnati. Johnny Bench plays a waiter, and while he only has one line, “Can I get you something to drink?”, he knocks it out of the park so to speak. (haha #baseballjokes)

I’m telling you all this so that you will understand how I came to be shrieking in the mail room of the NCIDQ offices in the late '90s. By shrieking, I mean making noises that had my coworkers running back to see if I was okay, only to find me shaking, unable to speak and holding a postcard from the Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau. I was registered for a big event-planners’ meeting, and the Cincinnati CVB was bringing Johnny Bench to work their booth! My postcard listed a time for me to show up (lest Johnny Bench be mobbed by fans?), and believe me, from that moment on, I was lasered in to the schedule.

My mom was a rabid Pete Rose fan (a topic for another post), and she actually mailed Charlie Hustle birthday cards pre-scandal. She made me swear I’d ask Johnny Bench if Pete Rose ever got her cards. Admittedly, this was going to be awkward since by this time, Pete was long since disgraced. But I promised her I would.

When my time approached, I purposefully made my way to their booth, and there he was. The man of my childhood dreams. My heart was pounding. I was this close to the greatest catcher of all time. Part of the attraction in the booth was that the CVB people would take a Polaroid photo of you with Johnny Bench, and he’d autograph the photo holder. I think he might have put his arm around me; that part’s a bit of a blur. He was kind enough to tell me to take off my name tag so the picture would look better. What a nice boy, as my mom would say.

Anyway, I’m certain I babbled and said stupid things about the Johnny Bench fan club. I do recall asking about Pete Rose’s birthday cards, and I think that’s when Johnny Bench decided he needed to talk to someone else. 

I took my autograph and went to find a quiet spot in the convention hall where I could call my mom and tell her what had happened. I realized as I was talking to her that I’d left my name tag in the Cincinnati booth. I backtracked to get it and I could see it on the counter right by where Johnny Bench was standing. As I walked up, he called out, “Hey Kathleen! You left your name tag!”

In that moment, all I could think of was JOHNNY BENCH KNOWS MY NAME! It was the greatest moment of my life. Me and Johnny Bench – on a first-name basis! He clearly remembered me, probably because I was the only person in the entire convention hall who was such a super fan and such a sparkly conversationalist. 

It was probably 10 or 15 euphoric minutes later when it hit me: It was a name tag. With KATHLEEN printed on it in big black letters.

Out by a mile.

One Picture, 1000 Words*

Twenty years ago last weekend, I was in Miami running Christmas in April’s Kickoff to Rebuild event. Christmas in April partners with the NFL to rehab houses in the host city each year. (Christmas in April is now called Rebuilding Together, btw, and they’ll be in Atlanta on Saturday working.) The year I did it, it was the hardest job I’ve ever had. It was pretty much five months of non-stop work. By non-stop, I mean, phone calls on Christmas Eve about Coke sponsorship kind of non-stop work. It was the only time I ever heard someone say to me, “Miss America is on the phone for you.”

I knew the work Christmas in April did; I’d been a local volunteer and house captain for several years in DC. But what I saw in Miami was altogether different. These houses were in terrible shape. I could write many stories about that day, but I’m focusing (haha) this one photo.

Pretty unremarkable, right? Twenty years ago, this ceiling fan made me cry. The picture can still move me to tears. 

Twenty years ago, I was walking through the house, taking “after” photos, and I saw this ceiling fan. I remembered what I’d seen a few weeks earlier when we’d first met the homeowners and started to outline the work to do. There was a hole in the ceiling that opened up to the outside. Three little girls slept in one bed, and when it rained, they covered up with a piece of plastic. The mom said that yes, it was hot in the room, but if they turned on the fan, they got shocked. The girls thought they’d be electrocuted if they turned it on in the rain. The only other place they might have slept was on the floor in the living room, but the cinderblock walls were painted black for some inexplicable reason, and they didn’t want to sleep in a dark room.

So they slept in the rain, in the heat, hoping for the best. 

When I asked them what they wanted for their room, they said they wanted a roof and a fan. They could have said a new bed, or a coat of paint or some new furniture. But all they wanted was literally a roof over their head. (We got them the other stuff, too.)

That afternoon, when I stood there in their doorway and saw that fan, I cried. One of the Sears guys who’d been working in the house, came up behind me and said, “You know it’s just a fan, Kathleen.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said to him. “It’s so much more than that.” I didn’t tell him the whole story, and he walked off, probably nervous about the girl crying over a fan. 

I think about that weekend from time to time, and certain things stand out. The Christmas Eve Coke sponsorship, Kathie Lee Gifford’s insistence that she not be recognized in any way and then complaining when her name wasn’t on a chair on stage, some football players who, when I needed some appliances moved down the street to a house, just picked them up and walked up the street with them. Kevin James showing up in a limo and no one knew who Kevin James was, including me. 

But it’s the fan moment that brings me back to the purpose of why we were there. If you get the chance to make a difference in someone’s life, you should do it. 

*Really, 582 words