By Gary Lloyd A book on a dog may sound far-fetched, but Sonny has been hounding me. OK, so those puns are enough to maybe earn pity laughs, but I’m … Continue reading ‘Dogs are love, plain and simple’
Tag: books
Scenes from SEC Baseball Tournament
Some views from the 2018 SEC Baseball Tournament in Hoover, Alabama.
Blood drive potentially saves 225 lives
Local blood donors saved as many as 225 lives by giving blood during Baldwin EMC’s Spring Into Action drive March 15 in Orange Beach and April 26 in Bay Minette.
The staff from LifeSouth Community Blood Center collected a total of 75 pints of blood, each of which can benefit as many as three people.
The co-op elected to divide the drive between two dates and their two district offices this year in an effort to reach members from the southern and northern parts of their service territory.
“We traditionally host Spring Into Action at our headquarters in Summerdale, which is our most centrally located office,” says Mark Ingram, Baldwin EMC’s vice president of corporate services and public relations. “However, Summerdale is still a bit of a drive from Bay Minette or the beach. Hosting it at our district offices gave our members and residents in those areas an opportunity to donate without distance being a factor.”
In addition to blood donations, non-perishable food was also collected for local distribution.
Ingram says the Spring Into Action drive is a part of Baldwin EMC’s vision to be community involved.
“As a member-owned cooperative, we’re called to do much more for our community than just provide electricity. Our goal is to improve the quality of life for those we serve, and events like this are one of the ways we can do that.”
Community Heroes Week returns to Atlanta Braves in August
ATLANTA — The Atlanta Braves Foundation and FOX Sports South have announced the return of Community Heroes Week, the inspiring, weeklong community recognition initiative.
The third annual Community Heroes Week will take place Aug. 13-17, when the Braves host the Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies. Nominations are now being accepted and can be submitted on http://www.Braves.com/inspire.
The Braves are seeking nominations for individuals who have made a lasting and positive impact on their community in Braves Country. A panel of Braves and FOX Sports South staff will select five individuals to be named the 2018 Community Heroes Week Honorees. Nominations will be accepted until Friday, June 15.
“We have been inspired and grateful by these wonderful people in our community over the last few years,” said Atlanta Braves Director of Community Affairs Ericka Newsome. “We are delighted to continue to recognize people in Braves Country who go above and beyond to help others and make our community a better place.”
On each day of Community Heroes Week, the Braves will recognize a different Honoree by surprising them with a day of VIP treatment. From the surprise of meeting Braves players and FOX Sports South on-air talent to a game at SunTrust Park that evening, every Honoree’s day will be filled with unforgettable elements. Each Honoree’s story will also be shared during the game and in the FOX Sports South telecast, to celebrate the individual and bring awareness to their cause or organization.
“We look forward to again showcasing Honorees from Community Heroes Week during our Braves telecasts on FOX Sports South and FOX Sports Southeast,” said Rolanda Gaines, Director of Marketing and Communications for FOX Sports South. “This is fun and compelling initiative that allows us to shine a light on everyday people.”
For more information, visit http://www.Braves.com/inspire.
Alabama governor signs bills supporting military
MONTGOMERY – Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed four bills Monday supporting veterans and the military. The governor signed House Bills 58, 83, 88 and 92. Earlier this month at Maxwell Air Force Base, the governor also signed into law House Bill 388, the Military Family Jobs Opportunity Act.
“Throughout my career, I have advocated for our service men and women, and I will continue to do all I can as governor to offer my support to those who have given us so much,” Ivey said. “Alabamians are steadfast in their support for the military, and I am proud to strengthen Alabama’s bond with the military through these five bills I have signed into law.”
HB 58, known as the “Parks for Patriots Bill,” grants free admission to active or retired service members, who are Alabama residents, to state parks operated by the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. An appropriate active or retired military identification card, a driver’s license with a military veteran designation, a valid Department of Defense Form or any other documentation prescribed by law or administrative rule must be shown to obtain free admission. In November 2017, Ivey announced that entry into Alabama’s State Parks was free for all veterans. At that time, Rep. Dickie Drake said he planned to file a bill in the 2018 Regular Session that would permanently codify Ivey’s Parks for Patriots plan into law.
“I am so proud to have sponsored a bill that allows veterans and current military to have free admission to Alabama State Parks,” Drake said. “With Memorial Day close at hand, this should be something nice for our Veterans and our military who have given so much and make so many sacrifices; we can never fully repay them.”
Ivey also signed HB 83, the Veterans Employment Act, and HB 88, which gives preference in competitive bids on state government contracts to businesses owned by veterans. Drake also sponsored HB 88. The Veterans Employment Act, sponsored by Rep. Connie Rowe, gives a tax credit to small businesses that hire unemployed veterans.
“This was an opportunity to help both our veterans and small businesses at the same time. Incentivizing the hiring and retention of our military veterans by Alabama small businesses allows us to acknowledge their service and provide them with more job opportunities,” Rowe said. “Small businesses will benefit, not only by qualifying for the tax incentive, but also by bringing employees into their businesses with the admirable traits and skills acquired during military training and service. It’s a win-win piece of legislation.”
HB 92, sponsored by Rep. Barry Moore, allows a person who meets the military service and award requirements to be issued a windshield placard displaying an appropriate military honor or veteran status. The placard will permit parking in designated military parking places. The bill makes it unlawful for a person to park in these designated military places without distinctive placard.
“In our great nation, we recognize that freedom is a right given by God, but we also know that right is protected by those who fight for it,” Ivey said. “I am grateful for the hard work and support of the Alabama Legislature for passing strong legislation supporting our service men and women.”
Earlier this month at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ivey signed into law HB 388, the Military Family Jobs Opportunity Act. Through this bill, professional licensing boards are required to issue licenses and certificates to military spouses who hold licenses and certificates from other states. In the case a state has lesser requirements, the state will issue temporary licenses. Sen. Gerald Dial and Rep. Thad McClammy were the sponsors of this legislation.
A bond beyond baseball
The following story appears in my book Valley Road: Uplifting Stories from Down South. Get it here.
The baseball coach felt as if the pastor was talking directly to him. Sure, there was a congregation full of people, but the message was so pointed, so personal, that it felt like a one-on-one conversation.
The sermon was about stepping outside of your comfort zone. The coach had always talked to his high school players about doing the right thing, about what he wanted them to do. He did the same when he was the coach at his previous job. He had never really shown them.
“Baseball is just kind of an avenue for us,” he says.
When the church service was over and he went outside, he told his wife that he wanted to start a Bible study in their home with any player who wanted to come. He then called a friend, who had been a youth pastor at one time. He was all in to help. The next morning, the coach was preparing to tell his players of his new idea when one knocked on his door. He asked his coach if he would be all right with the players starting a Bible study in the locker room. He told the player that he would not believe what happened the day before.
“It was like God’s way of saying, ‘This is what you should do,’” he says.
The Bible study started the following Sunday. It was not mandatory, and players were told that it would not affect their playing time. It was totally separate from baseball. The coach figured on maybe a handful of players showing up. Fifteen of the eighteen on the roster came. Those numbers remained steady. Every Sunday during the baseball season, the players met at their head coach’s home for food, Bible study and fellowship. Sometimes, the studies lasted fifteen minutes. Sometimes, they lasted an hour. Afterward, they would watch the Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN or play Wii. Players learned a lot about each other. They opened up about family, girlfriends, choices, college. They grew closer.
“It was an unbelievable time of team bonding away from baseball,” he says.
The coach’s favorite memory from those Bible studies is about a player who was selected in the Major League Baseball draft. He decided to instead play football and baseball at an Alabama university. That player came back to his old stomping grounds one Friday night for a football game. The coach stood with him on the sidelines. He asked if he missed the Friday night lights, playing sports at the high school level. The player said that he really didn’t. The coach was floored. How could an athlete not miss high school sports, his glory days? The one thing the player said he missed were those Bible studies.
“It just humbled me,” the coach says.
The coach has continued the Bible studies since becoming the head baseball coach at his third high school. After one of the studies, one of the boys called the coach thirty minutes after everyone left his home. He wanted to come back. They sat on his back porch for two hours, just talking. Without the Bible study, that relationship may have never deepened.
“I think it’s more than a Bible study,” he says. “It brings kids closer together. To me, that’s the special part. And that’s the important stuff. We are giving them an avenue to talk to us.”
The Bible studies happen during the baseball season, though on some occasions they have begun in December because the kids wanted to start them earlier. The coach says the importance varies from kid to kid, from team to team. Each one has a different personality.
“I just think we’ve seen some kids grow closer together,” he says.
The coach led his current team to its first baseball state championship in school history not long ago. He will not go so far as to say the Bible study was why the team won it all, but it was clearly a factor. That team, he says, just had something different about it. They were close. During the playoff run, at Bible studies on Sundays, baseball was not even a topic of conversation.
“We love it,” he says.
At a football game about five months after winning that state championship, the baseball team returned for the ring ceremony. There were four seniors on that team, and they had all started college at three different institutions. This was their first time being back together since graduating. The coach watched as they sat at their own table in the stadium’s press box, just sharing their experiences as college freshmen. It took the coach and his wife back to when they originally started the Bible study.
The coach gestured toward the group and said to his wife, “Look how special that is.”
A bit about ‘Heart of the Plate’
My third book, Heart of the Plate, is one that I wrote rather quickly.
Some may think that it is not of a certain quality, since I wrote it in about four months and had it published five months after the release of Deep Green. That’s for others who read it to judge and not me.
But I will say this: It is a fictional story I had in my mind for a long time, a story of redemption that I wanted to tell. I wrote pages and pages each day because I believed in the story and its message. It’s more than just baseball. It has addiction and overcoming, love lost and love rekindled, heartbreak and uplifting moments. It has something for everyone, and I hope you order a copy and let me know what you think.
Jeff Wright is at the pinnacle of his Major League Baseball career, earning his way into his first All-Star Game. Not long after, Jeff suffers a gruesome, career-ending injury and ventures down a path of self-destruction, and becomes addicted to painkillers. He is arrested for drug possession. Upon completing a stint in a rehabilitation center, Jeff returns to his hometown of Lewis Rock, Georgia, where he discovers that the town’s largest job source, Reynolds Manufacturing, is being sold off and will leave hundreds jobless. He also attempts to rekindle a love that he lost years ago. What begins as mandatory community service for Jeff’s arrest quickly becomes his saving grace. Follow along as Jeff helps his hometown through a difficult time the only way he knows how — through baseball.
The book earned praise from former Major League Baseball players Wes Helms, Matt Guerrier, and Jason Standridge, as well as former college softball head coach Karen Johns.
Read an interview about Heart of the Plate
Pitches and promises
The sophomore pitcher circled the mound before the first batter stepped into the box, and then he bent over behind the rubber. He extended his left hand and began to use his index finger as a pencil for the cool dirt. It was winter, and the high school baseball season was just underway. He was set to face his high school’s arch rival, one of the best teams in the state of Alabama. The sophomore had already won his first three starts as a varsity pitcher, including a five-inning no-hitter, striking out nine batters in a shortened game due to the mercy rule. He was an ace. But against his team’s rival, he should have been nervous. He was a sixteen-year-old pitching against a great team, after all. But he was as cool as he could be. He was pitching with purpose.
GET VALLEY ROAD: UPLIFTING STORIES FROM DOWN SOUTH HERE
Not long before the game, he stood in his coach’s office in the stadium’s press box, and talked about his purpose with a reporter. His mother died the previous October after battling breast cancer for nearly two years. The family found out about her diagnosis on Valentine’s Day when the sophomore was an eighth-grader, in the drive-thru at a Wendy’s. When she died, his mother was fifty years old. Just before she died, her son promised her two things — that he would marry a woman who reflected her and that he would pitch his way to college baseball.
“When people lose family members, some rarely get the opportunity to talk with them and say goodbye,” he says. “Barring the situation, I feel really thankful I was able to do that. When my mom was on hospice care, I got to be around her a lot. While she wasn’t very responsive, you could tell when she was hearing and listening to you. I got the chance to tell my mom how thankful I was to have her as my mom, and she taught me more (about) life than she would ever know. Getting to tell the person who gave you everything in life how thankful you are for it and how much you love them for the sacrifices they gave to benefit your life is something that will give you peace to any situation. I also promised her things in life that I would accomplish for her – in memory of her.”
He left the press box after a fifteen-minute interview and warmed up for the game. Just prior to the first pitch, he bent down to etch his mother’s initials and the breast cancer symbol on the backside of the pitcher’s mound. He proceeded to hurl a complete-game five-hitter, allowing his only two earned runs in the top of the seventh, the final inning. His team won 3-2. He struck out six batters. He finished his first varsity season with nine wins and one loss for a team that won the area championship.
“The support I had from my baseball team that season was something that was beyond special,” he says. “I felt so close to all those guys and I knew they were behind me supporting me through that time.”
His head coach that season was supportive. After the win over the team’s biggest rival, the coach talked about how his pitcher’s tough situation ministered to his team, how instead of the team ministering to him, his family ministered to the team. He called it amazing.
Over his final two seasons of high school baseball, the pitcher compiled twelve wins against just four losses and a 1.88 earned-run average. He struck out more than one hundred batters.
For his efforts, he earned scholarship offers from several college programs around the Southeast. He chose the one closest to home, to be near his longtime girlfriend and son, who was born when he was a high school junior. His plan was to propose to his girlfriend during one of his college baseball seasons. He did so on the first weekend of the 2017 college baseball season. She said yes.
“I feel like it is a promise kept, and I am blessed to be in the situation I am in,” he says. “I will always look back to my coaches and teammates during the hardest time in my life and see the positive impact they had on my life, and where I am now is because of all they did for me during this time in my life.”
As far as his mound ritual, the pitcher no longer etches his mother’s initials in the mound, but they are written across his glove, so that she will always be there for him every time he steps on a mound. He looks back to that sophomore season as a blessed time.
“Going through things like that will always be hard, but when you have people surrounding you and providing love and encouragement, it gives you a peace about it,” he says.
The piano man
A chapter from “Valley Road: Uplifting Stories from Down South”by Gary Lloyd, complete with video of the man playing the piano:
As long as I have known him, he has played the piano.
At Christmas, Mr. Darby would play “Jingle Bells” and “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” at my grandmother’s house. He could have played professionally, and there is no doubt about that.
When I moved into my grandmother’s old house not far from Trussville, Alabama, the brown Wurlitzer piano remained. Its top held framed engagement and wedding photos, and its bench often acted as a resting place for bills and other mail. I never played, but there was a time, when my wife and I lived there, that Jessica would sit down on that piano bench and play. Our dog, Abby, sat with her.
When we moved out, the piano again remained. It stayed when a family friend moved in, and after he left. It has stayed since my mother-in-law moved into the house. She likes the piano there, and so do I. It provides a glimpse into the past.
The man who tickled those ivories for so many years is in his nineties now and has lived in a retirement community for a number of years. He has battled severe dementia. When he has called my parents’ house and spoken to me, he has believed I am actually my dad. When I have visited him at the retirement community, he has asked the same questions over and over. He doesn’t remember asking them the first time. Each time, I just answer him, as if it is the first time he’s asked.
This retirement community has a spacious lobby area, almost like a huge living room. There are couches, women at tables playing card games, and a huge, glass case filled with fluttering birds.
There is also a piano.
We visited the Piano Man on September 1, 2014, to see him for his birthday, which was the following week. Mr. Darby wore gray slacks and a teal sweater, and I wondered how in the world people can wear sweaters in September in Alabama.
Somehow, we convinced him to sit down at the piano and play. I wondered how he would know what to play, how he would remember which keys to press. He sat down, and muscle memory took over. He played “It Had To Be You,” not messing up a single time in a video recording that lasted one minute and four seconds. I couldn’t believe that a man who often forgot my name could do this. It was remarkable.
Elderly women stopped dealing cards. Men, aided by their walkers, came to sit closer. The staff looked on. Everyone clapped. Mr. Darby’s cheeks reddened.
That song has been recorded by famous surnames such as Sinatra, Holiday, Charles, Bennett and Stewart.
Call me biased, but I would add Darby to the top of that list.
A rundown on my 5 books
My full house is complete.
Two fiction novels and three works of nonfiction.
And due to work and graduate school, I may not be publishing another book for quite a while, despite having several ideas in mind. Who knows, though? Maybe I’ll have another published in the near future. It’s something I love doing.
So, in the meantime, why not provide a quick video rundown of Trussville, Alabama: A Brief History, Deep Green, Heart of the Plate, Valley Road: Uplifting Stories from Down South, and Ray of Hope?
In the video, I briefly talk about each book, summarizing the plot and letting you know where you can find each. I even profess my feelings for the Atlanta Braves, a tumultuous relationship that I can’t seem to quit.
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Check out the video below.
Gary Lloyd Books 