Trophies and Tales: The Stories We Carry

A few hours before my birthday, a special package arrived in the mail - a baseball signed by Carsten Charles Sabathia Jr., a Hall of Famer who played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Cleveland Indians, Milwaukee Brewers, and New York Yankees. I won this at the 2025 Playmaker’s Classic in Phoenix in February.

If I had a trophy case, it would have a place of honor - alongside the many stories and experiences that have shaped my journey. You may be wondering why its picture is next to that of my grandfather who died 56 years ago. I will get to that.

I’ve never had a trophy case. Not because I lacked those exhilarating moments of victory—those times when body, mind, and soul aligned to produce peak athletic performance.

I did.

I broke the 200m record at Moleli High School, running barefoot on a dusty track in Rhodesia.

This was long before smartphones and social media, so there were no highlight reels or viral posts to capture the moment. No medals, no trophies - just an entry in an old school notebook, likely faded with time.

But I do have living witnesses—including my best friend Danny (in the picture, black pants).

Hard to believe now, but back then, we were the two fastest sprinters at Moleli. He always edged me out in the 100-yard dash, but I had the upper hand in the 200m. I was also part of our school’s soccer team, which only lost one game in two seasons. We have no trophies from those years. What we collected were experiences.

Running for More Than Just Glory

My next stop was Jameson High School in Kadoma which until then had only served white students from the neighboring Rhodesian farms. The school’s Latin motto, Sine Metu ("Without Fear"), was emblazoned on our crest—ironically, the same phrase found on every bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey. But at Jameson, fear was very much palpable among the exclusively white teaching and administrative staff and students as it became increasingly clear that minority rule in Rhodesia was coming to an end—which it officially did just two months later, in April 1980.

I was put on the rugby team on account of my speed. If you look at the photos of me in the blue tracksuit from those Jameson days, it’s obvious - I was not a big guy. And rugby is a rough sport. At the time, Black players were still a rarity on school rugby teams, and the few of us who made it onto these squads had an extra incentive to run fast - not just to score tries, but to avoid getting crushed. Teams from other desegregating schools took special pleasure in flattening the Black players on the field. I carry a scar from a split lip, earned in a match against Mt. Pleasant High School, as part of my collection of experiences from those years.

From Handstands to Almost Drowning

At Jameson, my athletic journey took yet another unexpected turn. One afternoon, I was showing off my handstands in the parking lot next to the school gym. This wasn’t a new skill - I had honed it through fierce childhood contests with my cousin Ben at Vungu Primary School, a rural school where my parents had been banished after being accused of masterminding a strike by Black workers protesting unfair living and working conditions at the Chrome mines in Selukwe (now Shurugwi), where they taught and where I was born.

When the gym teacher, Mr. Brownlee, saw me balancing effortlessly on my hands, he was impressed. Without hesitation, he recruited me onto the gymnastics team. For reasons only he understood, Mr. Brownlee - who also coached the swimming and diving team - assumed my handstand skills translated directly to diving.

So, one day, he insisted I dive. The problem? I couldn’t swim. Well, sine matu, I took the plunge anyway, and let’s just say I’m lucky to be alive to tell the story. (I did eventually learn to swim – many years later. But that’s a story for another day.)

Trophies Come in Many Forms

It would have been cool to have a trophy case. But what I do have is a collection of experiences - ones that have no physical trophies but have shaped my life in ways that matter far more. They aren’t just personal memories - they open doors to meaningful conversations.

Like recently, when I greeted the young Romanian receptionist at our hotel in Paris in her native language. Her face lit up as I shared my fondness for Mămăliguță cu lapte, a dish I ordered almost every day at the (in)famous Ștefan Gheorghiu Academy of Social and Political Studies while studying behind the Iron Curtain in Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Romania.

Moments like that remind me that experiences are more than just things we live through - they connect us to others. If the purpose of trophies and experiences is boasting, then I believe that diminishes their true significance. I’ve had many incredible experiences in my life, but I didn’t create them on my own. There were people before me - people who laid the foundation for me to walk paths that once seemed improbable.

One of my most treasured possessions is that black-and-white photograph of my paternal grandfather, who passed away in 1969. It reminds me daily of the legacy he and my grandmothers built, a foundation strengthened by my late parents. Even while raising us in segregated Rhodesia, they instilled in us the confidence to pursue whatever improbable dream God placed in our hearts.

Sine Metu could have been their motto. But unlike its use on Jameson Irish Whiskey, which they never touched, they would have embraced it as a statement of faith - to live without fear and to fully exercise the privilege of being alive: collecting experiences.

So yes…this signed baseball by Hall of Famer CC Sabathia will have some interesting company in the trophy case I’m finally going to build alongside photographs of some of the most important people in my life - those enshrined in my personal Hall of Fame. Because without them, I would never have had the courage to befriend people with completely different stories to tell - people like my amazing friend Amy Hever, who invited me to experience the MLB's Playmakers Classic 2025 held in Phoenix, Arizona, where I entered the longest drive contest in the gaming room and lost…but still won the raffle for this ball.

Cool. Very cool.