Bob McCarty Writes

Mark Tolbert shared a great story with me and a few hundred of my closest friends today, and I felt like sharing it with you.

As a 16-year-old growing up in Atlanta, Mark explained, he had held a dream job — bat boy during the 1967 season at Atlanta’s old Fulton County Stadium.  Instead of serving players on the Atlanta Braves side of the diamond, however, he worked in the visiting team’s dugout and served every other Major League Baseball team that came to play his Braves.  In other words, he rubbed elbows with all of the game’s greatest players of the day.  Surprisingly, he said the job wasn’t all sunshine and Cracker Jacks®.

After each home game, Mark said, he would return to the visitor’s clubhouse, shed his facsimile of a ballplayer’s uniform and don the all-white uniform befitting his less-glamorous post-game duties as a “clubby.”

Unlike a bat boy who deals in hats, bats, helmets and the other tools of the baseball trade, Mark said, a “clubby” — the name players gave guys like him –  was responsible for picking up the wet towels, sweaty underwear, stinky socks and other items 35 grown men could leave on the clubhouse floor.  After picking them up, he would wash and dry them and hang them back in the lockers, ready for the next game.

Why did Mark do the “clubby” duties without complaint?  Because, he said, he knew at least 10,000 other 16 year old boys were waiting in the wings, ready to fill his shoes at the drop of a hat.

Was the job worth it?  Ask him today, and he’ll say it was — and he’ll follow up by telling you the story of the day when he showed up at the ballpark without his cleats.  Hint:  This is where the story gets good!

Hoping to find a pair he could borrow, Mark said he walked through the tunnel to the home team’s clubhouse and asked his bat boy counterpart if he could borrow a pair.  Unfortunately, the spare shoes he had to loan were too small — size 8.

“I can’t possibly wear them,” Mark said he told his colleague.  “I’m a size 10.”

Just then, Mark recalled, he heard a voice from behind him say, “I have a pair you can borrow.”

Turning around, Mark found Hank Aaron — the man who, six years later, would set a new major league record for home runs in a career — standing there, holding out a pair of size 10 shoes for him to wear that day.

Now Dr. Mark Tolbert, he ended his story, injected into a sermon on servanthood he delivered at my church, saying, “At least for one day, I was able to fill Hank Aaron’s shoes.”