Tony Kemp retired today. Unless you were into baseball there’s a good chance you may have never heard of him. He never hit 60 home runs. He didn’t have a 3 ERA then go and hit .320 and was the face of the entire country. He didn’t win an MVP or a Cy.
But he won a World Series. He played 9 solid years for three teams. Almost as importantly he’s got a bobblehead (I think he share’s it with Jose Altuve).
But what I know best about Tony Kemp is that whenever he’d come into the clubhouse, whether it was as an A, or an Astro or an Oriole, I looked FORWARD to seeing Tony Kemp. Because Tony Kemp is just an awesome guy. We’d talk about our man caves. We’d talk about random crap. He’d give me a big smile, a man hug, and we’d go on our day. I have a personalized ball he signed for me that is worth as much to me as any of my superstar balls because the inscription has heart.
I can #humblebrag that I’ve seen so many ballplayers that when the super duper stars came in they never fazed me. I never got “excited” when the Yankees came to town so that I could see Aaron Judge (even though he’s also a super nice guy), or the Angels with Mike Trout or so on. But it was the teams with the Tony Kemps. The guys who would shoot the crap with you about stuff you talked about a whole year before like you just got off the phone yesterday.
That’s what being a visiting clubbie was really all about. It wasn’t so much about the game itself. By the time I joined the visiting clubhouse I was such a veteran that me and games were just ships passing in the night by that point. To me It was about the relationships.
I’m not talking about the friendships I’ve developed with my fellow clubbies. The relationships I had with THOSE guys are on a different plane of existence and deserve not a post but an entire novel. That’s something else. That will be written about a different day. That’s a different level of love.
But the relationship I had with so many players, the Tony Kemps, was something that really just kept me going. Kept me going through the rain delays, the 4 hour games, the endless grind of the August heat and the April cold.
Thank you Tony Kemp. Not just for your 9 years of service. But thank you for making an old clubbie excited to come to the ball park, even if for just a series or so.