Watkins: Jackson man pays it forward with baseball card

I sometimes hear friends say that the person in front of them in the fast food drive-thru line paid for their meal. Those friends are almost giddy because somebody did something randomly nice for them.

Which is awesome.

And it is sad.

I still try to open doors for females when possible because that’s what I was raised to do. But it has become increasingly difficult because women don’t expect it anymore. At least, that’s what they tell me.

“Oh, thank you,” they will say. “I didn’t know men still did that.”

Where I grew up, in the country, one never showed up at somebody’s house without taking them something. I don’t want to call it a gift because that sounds way too formal. You simply took something because it was polite and it would make them happy.

For example, my stepfather visited us last Saturday. He brought a plastic grocery sack filled with homegrown tomatoes and a watermelon he pulled from his patch. He didn’t have to do it. We would have let him in the door without those items. But it was a nice thing to do, and it made us happy.

I’m sure some city folks do that, too. But it is engrained in country folks to share the wealth, and I’m pretty certain that is a handed-down trait from generations who lived when sharing was the only way families in communities survived.

That leads me to the point of this column.

Meet Robby Gathings, a 55-year-old Jackson resident who works as chief financial officer at the law firm of Forman Watkins Krutz & Tardy. Full disclosure: The Watkins in that name is my older brother, and that is one reason Gathings was hesitant to allow me to tell this story. He didn’t want it to look like he was trying to get a leg up at work.

Two things: Anyone who knows my brother will tell you that would be like fishing with a bull whip — limp and a waste of time. And Gathings doesn’t have to do favors for any of the firm’s partners. His knowledge and production speak volumes.

He read my May 27 column about buying hundreds, perhaps thousands, of baseball cards as a boy in hopes of landing one Yogi Berra. No luck.

And I never bought one for myself because I felt like that would be cheating. I didn’t earn it. I didn’t choose the correct pack, which is all part of the baseball card game. I’ve bought other cards. I couldn’t bring myself to buy a Yogi Berra.

But when I was visiting with my brother recently, he reached out his hand that was holding something.

“A guy at my office wants you to have this,” he said.

It was a Topps 1958 Yogi Berra card. A professional outfit graded it to be in excellent to mint condition. It was in a hard protective case.

Tears came to my eyes.

For a few seconds, I was 6, my brother was 11, and I’d finally pulled the lucky pack.

“I have to pay him for this,” I said.

“No, I already tried. He doesn’t want anything for it. He just wants you to have it,” my brother said.

“I’m kinda lost for words,” I said.

“That would probably be payment enough right there,” my brother said, grinning. “He just wanted to do something nice for somebody who shares his love of baseball cards.”

When Gathings and I finally met, I mumbled and stumbled like a kid in seventh grade trying to ask a girl to go steady.

“To say ‘thank you’ seems sort of shallow,” I told him. “But I just want you to know that it means a lot that you were willing to do this, simply because you have a good heart. The card is something I’ll treasure the rest of my life.”

And I told him where the ’58 Berra was currently on display: Atop our living room mantel. I see it as I pass by it several times a day, and I can also see it from my favorite chair. I often wonder if it meant as much to the original owner as it means to me.

I’m offering a semi-educated guess: No.

Gathings grew up in Jackson and used to ride his bike to the nearby tote-sum convenience store.

“You sounded just like me in your column,” he said. “I would get that pack of cards, get that bubble gum out of the pack and start chewing it, and then I would go through those cards.”

It was a good day if the pack included any member of the Boston Red Sox, his favorite team. Even if the guy was a scrub.

He kept his cards in a cigar box, and he also glued some to poster boards. “I wish I hadn’t done that,” he said, managing a laugh. “Those cards were done when you tried to take them off.”

His love of collecting has continued into his adult life. He has also visited several big league ballparks, including his Red Sox’s beloved Fenway.

“I think I really grew to appreciate baseball when I was 11 years old,” Gathings said. “I was an aspiring left-handed pitcher, and my coach in the north Jackson youth league was Lucius Fouche. He had a pitching rubber and a home plate set up at his house, and I know that man got tired of answering his phone. I was always calling, asking if I could come over and pitch.

“But he was really encouraging and positive — and competitive. I think I broke every board in his wood fence.”

Not so much from the velocity of the baseball, but from its straying path.

Gathings has a wonderful collection of cards. Banks, Yastrzemski, Ryan, Mantle, Musial, Seaver, Williams, Brock, Ford, to name a few. All are kept in alphabetical order. Some are from his childhood, others he has purchased during his time as a husband and father of two.

I wanted to know one thing: Why did he feel so strongly about giving me the baseball card?

He could never get past “because it’s nice to know someone loves cards as much as I do.”

But during two conversations, he mentioned his mother. “People would tell you, the woman would give you her last dollar,” he said.

So giving and sharing were instilled in him.

Gathings also told the story of a local dentist who refused to charge for keeping his children’s teeth shiny.

“I finally called him and said, ‘I really appreciate it, but I can pay you. You don’t have to do this,’ ” Gathings said. “But he told me about my father-in-law, Larry Clark, who was a doctor and died of cancer in 1983. He told me that my father-in-law treated his children when they were sick and didn’t charge him, and he wanted to honor the agreement. He said that rather than repaying him, I should find someone else to help.

“I never forgot that.”

Indeed, he didn’t.

Contact Billy Watkins at (769) 257-3079 or bwatkins@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @BillyWatkins11 on Twitter.