Johncyna McRae: Like baseball, life’s championships bring everyone together – Bradenton Herald (blog)

This time of year has always had a special meaning for me. The baseball playoffs are going on now and the Kansas City Royals are making a run for the World Series. “Back in the day,” I would be getting my playoff/World Series outfits together for another October run. For a Florida girl, that meant buying a coat that I would never wear once the season was over.

My husband, Hal, was a professional baseball player for 42 seasons — counting minor leagues, major leagues, managing and coaching. I don’t want to brag, but he was very good at his job!

He managed to accomplish a lot of milestones most players do not get to do in his profession: two World Series wins: one with the Kansas City Royals as a player in 1985 — in fact, that was the last time the Royals won a World Series; and one with the St. Louis Cardinals as a hitting coach in 2006. He managed our oldest son, Brian, at Kansas City. Brian was a rookie with the Royals in 1991 when his dad was manager — it was not ideal, like being a Little League parent 10 times over — but that’s story for another time! He also managed close to home with the then-Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2001.

My job was to keep the “home fires burning” while he did his thing. Our family traveled from Bradenton to Kansas City from April to October for 14 baseball seasons. Our three kids went to school in Florida and Missouri. Brian could have gotten two high school diplomas, as Missouri and Florida had the same requirements for graduation at that time. We owned a home in Blue Springs, Mo., and we still keep in touch with friends and neighbors we made there. We thought about moving to Kansas City, but the cold winters just did not sit well with us native Floridians.

My husband has been retired now since 2009 — no more moving twice a year, time to play golf and enjoy (spoil) the grandkids — we have six of them. What will we do with all this time on our hands? I keep busy by doing community volunteer work with some local non-profits. Until Hal had some health issues, he was playing golf all day every day. He is doing better now and hopes to get back on the links.

We don’t go to profession

al baseball games much any more — we have watched a lot of baseball in 42 years — but Hal keeps up with what’s going on when he logs online. We keep in touch with friends from baseball, but had started to think of that time in our lives as being in the past.

Then something comes along that draws you back to that one moment in time for us — like watching the Royals make their run this October, and another occasion that happened in August.

Hal was invited back to Kansas City by the Greater Kansas City Baseball Historical Society to a celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Kansas City Royals winning the World Series in 1985. We have been to baseball banquet celebrations before, but this was different from any occasion I had been to. The society not only invited every member of that 1985 team to the affair that night, but also honored the “little people”: the bat boys, the team trainer, the grounds keeper, security guards, bull pen catcher, even the umpire that made the famous “call” at first base that gave the Royals the win in Game 6 of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals (if you are not a baseball fan, you can “google” that call).

The society made an effort to locate every one of them to let them have their moment in time. When you watch a game, you only see what is going on the field at the time. These behind the scene people are what make what you see on the field happen. This was everybody working together for a common goal — to win a championship.

This happens in “the real world.” When there is a common goal: winning championships, making your community better, making your schools better, helping the homeless, there are people working to make special moments in time for everyone.

Johncyna McRae, a retired educator and long-time community volunteer, can be reached at jambton@aol.com.