We showed up to the baseball game with minutes to spare. The Sand Mountain sports complex parking lot was overrun with muddy trucks, economy cars, and SUVs. They were calling for rain tonight, but the powers that be had decided this baseball game would not be canceled.

There was excitement in the air. The same kind of under-the-surface joy that precedes all ball games. Only more so. Because, you see, this was a Miracle League game.

Miracle League baseball began in Conyers, Georgia, in 1998. It all started when a Little League coach named Eddie invited a 7-year-old wheelchair user to join his baseball team. One thing led to another. And a league was born.

The original premise was simple. The kids would play real baseball. On a real field. With real uniforms and everything.

The league has come a long way since then. Today, there are over 350 Miracle League Organizations across the country including Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico. The Miracle League serves over 450,000 with disabilities. And believe me when

I say this: Disney World has nothing on this organization.

This is the happiest place on earth.

The first guy I met when we arrived was a young father. He was helping a little girl walk across the parking lot. The girl had golden hair and an open smile. She was using a walker. Her name was Mia.

Mia wore polyester baseball pants, a jersey, and she looked ready to smack the cover off the ball.

I was attending the game with my friend Becca. Becca is 11 years old. She is blind. When she met Mia, midfield, they were pure excitement.

“We’re going to win!” shouted Becca.

“We’re going win!” replied Mia.

Then they held hands and made their way to the dugout.

Of course winning isn’t the main objective here. Actually, they don’t even keep score. If you were to keep score at a Miracle…

This hotel does an okay breakfast. Not great. But edible. If you don’t mind eating, for example, linoleum.

The hotel’s flagship dish is a premade omelet that looks and tastes like industrial plastic. The biscuits are hockey pucks. The gravy is not unlike commercial adhesive. And the sausage—I know from experience—will turn your bowels into stone.

This morning, the lobby is full of people waiting to eat. Everyone is hungry. Everyone is fussy. They are grumbling and murmuring like the Children of Israel. I am among them.

We come from all walks.

There is a girl’s softball team, clad in uniforms. There is a group of workmen, wearing neon vests and boots; they look like they could eat a whole cow.

There is a gaggle of business guys in nice suits, dragging roller bags. These men are constantly thumbing away on their phones, wearing Bluetooth earbuds, and having animated conversations with invisible people.

A group of young men in ultra-tight cycling attire, wearing jerseys covered in corporate logos even though nobody pays these people

to ride their $32,000 cycles.

And there are three Mennonite families, dressed in dark colors and modest clothing.

Enter Carolyn.

Our entire dining room experience is managed by one woman. She is a meek woman. Older. The mother of six. She lives in North Alabama. She drives 45 minutes to work every morning. She works doubles shifts most days.

After she works the breakfast shift, she cleans rooms and does laundry. She makes her living cleans up our mess.

Carolyn is a woman who looks like your grandmother. Sweet face. Small stature. Slightly bent from the decades of hard work.

She sees the crowd of people waiting in line for breakfast, and she realizes that this is all her fault. She is behind schedule this morning because her daughter is pregnant, and Carolyn was at the ER all night with her daughter, making sure the baby…

The things I could write about pound cake. I could go on and on and bore you to death, so I think I will.

After my father died, I remember visiting a Methodist church with my boyhood friend, and he was introducing me to people. He was raised Methodist, I was not. My people were Baptist.

The Methodists were cheerful. My people didn’t believe in cheer. Our pastor preached hard against alcoholism and promiscuity because these things could lead to dancing.

My friend pointed to one lady in the congregation. She was slight, with gray hair, and a blue skirt suit.

There are some people you don’t forget. She was one of those people. She had a heavenly glow. People smiled when they passed by her like she was unique.

“Who’s that woman?” I asked.

“That is the Pound Cake Lady,” my pal said in reverence.

After the Methodist service, my friend led me to a downstairs fellowship hall. The Methodists put out a bigger spread than any I’d ever seen. There was even a special table

dedicated to cornbread and biscuits.

It was too much. Overwhelming. I even saw people standing outside the fellowship hall, smoking cigarettes after their meal. It was as though they were unwinding after sin.

The woman in the blue skirt suit placed something on the end of the table. It was golden, fat, hulking, sacred pound cake.

“Hurry and get some,” said my friend, “before it’s all gone.”

He was right. The cake didn’t last four seconds among those chain-smoking Methodists. But when it disappeared, the old woman replaced it with another.

People blessed her name forevermore. Hallelujah. And so did I.

So every church has a pound cake lady. They are young, middle-aged, or elderly, and they are holy. These ladies are messengers, sent to humanity as proof that God is not gluten-free. He loves white flour, sugar, and butter, no matter what…

The pediatric oncology ward is a scary place. I don’t care who you are, or how tough you think you are. You walk through this part of the hospital and you’re scared spitless.

I approached the nurse’s station. A horseshoe desk. The nurse was popping her gum. She gave me an appraising look.

“You Sean?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

In a few moments, she was knocking on the hospital room door. I walked into the room and there was another nurse seated at the boy’s bedside, keeping an eye on his vitals.

The boy’s mother was down the hall, taking the first shower she’d taken in eight days. Meantime, the boy was asleep. He was bald. There was a feeding tube in his nostrils.

“Knock, knock,” the nurse said quietly.

The boy stirred. He looked at me and smiled. His blue eyes were the color of tap water.

“Is it you?” he said. “Sean of the South?”

“I’ve been called worse,” I said.

“I thought you’d be fatter.”

Which was a compliment, I suppose.

“I’ve wanted to meet you,” the boy said. “Because you’re a redhead, and so am I.” He

touched his bald head. “Well, I WAS a redhead.”

I sat at his bedside.

“I’m dying,” he said. “I probably won’t be here in a few weeks.”

His words broke me. I began to cry but I held it in. This kid didn’t need my tears. He’d shed enough of his own. This is the one thing I’ve learned by writing about many pediatric cancer patients throughout my career. These kids don’t need tears, they need strength and laughter.

Then the kid said, “Guess what?”

“What?”

“I’ve been to heaven,” he said.

“You have?”

He nodded.

I grew up fundamentalist. The version of heaven I was force fed was all about streets of gold and mansions. My people were obsessed with the paving material of heaven’s streets and the…

Dear Graduating Class of 2023,

My name is Sean Dietrich. You don’t know who I am because you are young and you actually have a life.

Whereas I don’t have a life. Namely, because I am a professional writer, which means, among other things, that I live below the poverty line.

Well, okay, I don’t live “below” the poverty line, exactly. But I have spent a number of years surviving entirely on ramen noodles.

Which brings me to my first point: Do not major in English.

So when your principal called me a few weeks ago and asked me to give the commencement speech, I want you to know that, quite frankly, I was just as shocked as you are.

Even so, I’ve been asked to come up with poignant, life-changing remarks for young people, so that’s what I’m going to do.

Give me a second to make some up.

The first thing I want to tell you is to always obey your parents when they’re nearby. Your parents spent the first half of their lives cleaning up your

excrement. You owe it to them.

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying you should obey your parents because they’re smarter than you. I’m not even suggesting that your parents are particularly wise. Your parents might be complete dolts. Many parents are.

Which, of course, explains the current state of Little League baseball.

When I was a kid, Little League baseball games were played by 10-year-olds who were encouraged to manage their own ball game, get into fistfights, be rowdy, break bones, and sometimes chew Red Man that was stolen from their old man’s gloveboxes.

Today, Little League games are totally safe. Which is good, I suppose.

Kids today wear thick plastic helmets, sterilized protective gear, and antibacterial jockstraps. Kids do not get into fistfights. Instead they learn about “conflict resolution” and how to “work through the issues.” Everyone gets a…

It was a crowded airport. I was between layovers. I sat at the airport bar.

The man beside me was nursing a cold beverage. I ordered a beverage, too, but I realized I had forgotten my wallet. It was in my checked bag. I had been fiscally castrated. I was penniless.

The waitress brought me ice water.

The man beside me was wearing a suit, staring into his beer glass. The conversation went like this:

“What do you do for a living?” he asked.

Ah, yes. The quintessential guy question. It’s never “Where are you from?” or “What’s your sign?” It’s always “What do you do?”

“I am a writer,” I said.

He looked at my ice water and nodded as though this explained everything.

“I’m executive marketing director,” he said.

“Wow.”

“Yep. And you wanna hear something?”

“Sure.”

“Well,” said the man, thumping his chest. “I’m a dad today.”

“You are?”

He smiled. “Yeah. My wife had a baby girl. I was in Oregon this morning, on a sales conference, when she had our kid. Want to see a picture?”

The man removed his phone and showed

me a picture as I sipped my tepid bathwater. It was a baby all right.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Shania.”

“Shut up,” said I.

He grinned. “No, I’m serious. My wife loves music. Loves Shania Twain. It was either that or Janice Joplin.”

“Good call.”

On cue, a gaggle of business guys sat at the end of the bar. People-watching never fails to hypnotize me. Watching business people is a particular favorite pastime.

Many businesspersons move through this world like they are very important. They simply exude confidence. In an airport, they move through each terminal wearing the expression of people who have the world by the groin.

Whereas I move through terminals wearing the expression of a guy who has just stepped in a pile of something.

The man wore…

Foley, Alabama. It’s an overcast day at the beach. Lambert’s Cafe is already busy this morning, and they aren’t even open yet.

There is a small line forming outside the front doors. Lambert’s opens at 11 a.m., but We the People are ready at 10:48. We stand outside among a small group of tourists, ready to eat ourselves into type II diabetes.

For the unbaptized, Lambert’s is home of the throwed roll.

The restaurant’s gimmick is simple. Throughout your dining experience, a guy frequently comes out of the kitchen, carrying a cart of hot yeast rolls, and he pitches these rolls to customers.

The guy throws these rolls across the crowded restaurant. And you try to catch the roll. I have never caught a roll. Not in my entire life. But then, in my defense, I have never been a coordinated individual.

So here’s how it happens:

The guy or gal with the rolls roams the room, until he or she makes eye contact with you.

When he or she has established through visual confirmation that you

indeed desire to be the recipient of a projectile individual miniature loaf of bread, he or she throws a roll at you.

Notice I did not say “throws a roll TO you.” They throw it AT you. They aim for your cranial region.

When someone throws something at your face, your natural instinct is to protect yourself. The roll sails across the restaurant like a surface-to-air military offensive, and all you can do is defend your most precious asset.

I have been to Lambert’s hundreds of times because it is my favorite restaurant on planet earth. But I’ve never caught a single roll.

Even so, this restaurant has always been a special place for me. I don’t know why.

I used to come here for my birthdays. Every single one. We would drive all the way to Foley, stand in an impossible line…

I took my dogs for a walk. It was sunny. High 80s. The blossoming trees made Crestwood smell like heaven.

The first person I met was an old man, sitting in his yard. He was beneath a massive oak. He ate from a hospital tray, sipped tea from a straw. He wore a Gilligan hat. His nurse was seated with him.

I was walking past his house and he spoke to me because everyone talks to you when you have dogs. It is a universal truth, unrefuted by science.

At the time I had three dogs on a leash. A blind coonhound (55 pounds), an alleged Labrador (110 pounds), and a bloodhound (60,000 metric tons). My ligaments were being torn asunder.

I waved hello. The old man waved back. His nurse waved. I asked how he was feeling today.

“Don’t ever make the mistake of being 88,” he said.

Then he laughed. “Actually, it’s not so bad,” he added. “If you don’t mind having a titanium hip, bolts in your knees, or being violated

with catheters the size of commercial garden hoses.”

I walked onward.

Next, I met three young men who were playing catch in their front yard. And by “young men” I mean these men were still in diapers. They were maybe 2 years old.

Their mothers were outside with them. The boys were tossing a Wiffle ball back and forth. Although, technically, it wasn’t a proper game of “catch” inasmuch as nobody ever caught the ball.

I waved at them. They all waved back.

“Pet da puppy?!” one boy shouted to me.

I let the kids run their hands along the smooth coat of my blind coonhound. They enjoyed this. But not half as much as me.

After that, I met two older guys, loading a canoe atop their Honda. They had tackle boxes strewn in their driveway. Clearly a fishing trip was on the horizon.

One…

As a boy, my father used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry and drink beer in his garage.

We were Southern Baptists, and Baptists do not drink beer inside, only in the garage. Occasionally they smoke out there, too. But only when your mother is out of town visiting her aunt Cynthia.

Out in that garage I listened to 650 AM, Nashville. I heard Loretta Lynn, George Jones, Sarah Cannon, and all the greats.

If my mother happened to be home, and if she came into the garage unexpectedly, my father would quickly pass me his beer and cigarette and say to my mother, “Look what I caught your son doing.”

Foremostly, I was a kid with musical proclivity. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “musical talent.” I was, however, allowed to sing and play piano in church.

Namely, because it was only a 27-member church, and the only other in our congregation who was called upon to sing offertory hymns was Mrs. Wannamaker, who my father

said had a voice like a Buick with a bad starter.

When I was 11 my father died, whereupon I began listening to the Opry faithfully. Every Saturday. I suppose I was trying to keep him alive, somehow.

Eventually, I grew up. Eventually, I parted ways with modern country music because I preferred a style of music that didn’t involve thong underwear and three-thousand-dollar boots. I preferred my father’s style of music. Blue collar music. Tunes sung by folks who knew what it meant to work for a living. Just like my old man.

After a long, rocky childhood, and a string of persistent failures, I fell into novel writing when I was in my 30s. I enjoyed it. I was soon raking in hundreds of dollars per year.

Even so, I have been fortunate enough to produce a handful of novels, and I feel grateful for this.

No,…

The four of us were at the Chinese restaurant to celebrate the 10th year I’ve been writing a column.

It was a small dinner party. My cousin and his wife. Me and mine.

Our waiter was a cheerful guy who spoke with a heavy foreign accent. He said he was originally from—and this is why I love Asian restaurants—Mexico.

We knew this because he could not pronounce the Chinese dishes, such as zhá jiàng miàn, and zìchuān huǒguō.

He had an even harder time understanding English words. For example, I ordered a sweet tea, but he brought me a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

“This is an affront,” I said to my wife.

“I’m sorry, señor,” said my waiter, “I will take your beer back.”

“No, wait,” I said. “Let’s not react in haste.”

We ate ourselves silly. We celebrated with spring rolls. We ate Krab® rangoon. Egg drop soup. And when it came to the calamari, we were enjoying our appetizer when my cousin informed the table that this might not be actual calamari.

“What do you mean?” we said.

My cousin went on to

tell a story. He knew a guy who used to inspect meat processing plants for a state agency. One day, the man was at a farm and he saw several boxes stacked and labeled “artificial calamari.”

“What is artificial calamari?” he asked the plant manager.

“Hog rectums,” the manager replied.

We all stopped eating mid-bite.

“The industry term is ‘pork bungs,’” my cousin went on.

I ordered another “sweet tea.”

Everyone at the table stared at the plate of puckered calamari on our table. Whereupon my wife brought out her phone and started Googling the validity of the claims about alleged “seafood.”

Come to find out, there is such a thing as my cousin’s unsavory theory. However, it would be illegal in the U.S. to serve pork parts and call them “calamari.” Moreover, the USDA reports…