ARE YOU FAMOUS?

Have you ever been identified as someone famous? Has anyone every mistaken you for a movie star, a politician, or another public figure? It is an interesting experience. Early in our hike we stopped for water at a trail side spring. A young solo hiker whom we later came to know as Chico passed by. We were friendly as was he and when he went by he looked back at me and said, “Are you famous?”
I said I was not, at least not in Georgia since there are probably not 5 people in the whole state who know me. He looked at me intently once again and then hiked on his way.
It was a couple of days, maybe a week before we saw him again. We were camped above a hiker shelter and I needed to go down by the shelter for water. When I got there, he was sitting on a log reading a book. I got our water and sat down for a minute on the opposite side of the small fire he had going just to talk a minute. We talked about the book he was reading and then he said to me, “are you sure you are not famous?”
I laughed. I forgot that he asked me that question when we first met. I assured him I was not famous. Over the next week or so we met him a few times. On one occasion he said to me, “You have to be someone famous.”
“Who do I look like to you?” I responded.
“Well,” Chico said, “I am not much of a sports fan but you sure look like a famous baseball coach.” Jen and I said in unison. “Joe Torre.”
“Who is that?” Chico asked. We told him the coach for the Yankees and he looked at me intently again and said, “Is that who you are?”
“Uh, it is baseball season in a few days, what would I be doing here on the AT if I was a baseball coach.” We laughed and then he was gone. He hiked much faster than we did and we didn’t see him again until Hot Springs where his wife had met him for the weekend. He introduced us to his wife as the baseball coach for the Yankees. She looked pretty hard at me and then shook her head. She didn’t believe it.
I have been mistaken for Joe before. One time at an outdoor concert a I saw a young man on the back row of the choir looking at me persistently. Usually you can’t tell who a person in a choir is looking at, but this kid was definitely looking at me. When they finished their set, he jumped off the back of the risers and made a bee line straight towards me. I figured he must be someone I had known in the past. He came right up to me and said, “Do you know how much you look like Joe Torre?”
I am honored, being as how I am a Yankee fan. I was wearing a Yankee hat at the concert, but I was wearing a Salt Lake Stingers hat on the trail. I would like to have Joe’s contract and his dollars, but I wouldn’t want his headaches for anything. The most expensive team in baseball and they have lost 5 of the last 7 and are not even winning half their games this year.
I think if there is any career that compares to being a pastor it must be coaching. You never know what you will be blamed for, you never know how those in your charge will perform, and you never know when you will be ready to move on to another team. At the same time, though there are the agonies of defeat, there are also the joys of victory. It is great to be the coach of a team and watch as that team performs well, either from the dugout, the bench, the sideline, or the pulpit.
What do you think? Do I look like Joe Torre to you?