I’ll go anywhere, anytime, for the chance to be mistaken for a Ballers player.

We were hauling food from huge pallets, setting up tables of beans and eggs and rice and milk and oatmeal and cornmeal and stuffing and, perhaps the star of the show, Scooby-Doo graham cracker cookies, to serve hundreds of people in the neighborhood with Helping Others Win on 8th in West Oakland, when I got word that a fellow Ballunteer—let’s just call them the best friend I hadn’t met yet—was asking others if I was a B’s player.

Be still my cold dead lizard heart. “It’s the mustache,” I said. Young cool ballplayers with rizz and Pioneer League championship rings have earned mustaches. “It’s obviously not my physique or coordination.” This I said to be humble, which I’ve heard is a thing, and I mostly believed it. But there’s always that tiny chance that somehow all my talent is hiding away…way away…in middle age…just waiting to be discovered pushing a hundred pounds of groceries for distribution.

And this wasn’t just a food pantry. There was live music and pet supplies and a table for opioid dependence help. If you had a ticket you could get a whole frozen turkey. You could hear the tinny whoosh of BART gliding overhead and down into the transbay tube. There were so many staff and volunteers we could barely fit in a picture. We got a small prayer for all of us before we opened the doors to let people in. There was thankfulness for the season and all of us being together; there was special praise for the Ballers and a request for more merch. But what I heard most I heard at the end. “Blessed to be a blessing.” Every time I hear it, I hope it means what I think it means: not that you have to be Really Good to do good, and not just that you should pay forward what you have, but more simply, you have to feel good to do good. Ru Paul, naturally, would say that "If you can't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” My friend Nate and I were on the food line together, his distribution of the oatmeal and milk second to none, and about an hour in, he turned and said, “You know, you don’t see anyone who talks badly about Oakland out here doing these things, do you.” Isn’t that the truth.

And the real fact of the matter is that this is fun. Not just the “I’m being a good person and my soul is full now eat your vegetables” fun but the laugh-out-loud kind too. Jokes and banter and warmth within the seriousness of the mission. Especially today, with so many people to help serve and to serve, the four hours were busy and there was always something to do. (There’s nothing worse than trying to look busy and nothing better than catching the eye of someone across the lot who is also trying to look busy at exactly the same time.) The staff and regular volunteers were, as always, bighearted and stern and expert and cheeky all at once. To work with so many people under time pressure and keep a line of hundreds patient and informed is no small feat. Not even a very upset woman—who may have been boxed into her house or parking spot by the line stretching outside, such was the gossip we got—who drove maniacally down the sidewalk, scattering people before peeling dangerously out into the street, pausing only to yell at all of us, could dampen the mood for long.

We Ballunteers were thanked endlessly for the hard work that others had mostly done. We got to be the smiling faces on the end of a long line of food and fellowship that made today and so many other days through the year possible. A young girl was thrilled with the rice because it was the same brand she had at school. When the bags got too heavy to carry down at the end of the line with me, the rice and beans guy, some made the difficult choice between them, but Scooby snacks almost always made it in. I was told numerous times that the food would help make for a happier Thanksgiving. My thankfulness is to the B’s and Helping Others Win for letting my unworthy Professional Baseball Player Face get the gratitude.

There are people far more charitable and thoughtful than I who would remind us, especially in this holiday season, that service takes many forms and that your sense of fulfillment or reward is not the paramount goal. Blessings come in all sorts and all kinds, but you need to be it to give it. And damn if there isn’t something deeply restorative about seeing the people you’re helping firsthand and sharing a moment, however brief, over the choice of beans and rice and of course the cookies.

Be a Blessing

Oakland Doesn’t Need Saving