Meaningless Encounters I've Had With Legends of Baseball.

Legend of Baseball

Gary Sheffield

Date:

Most recently, this morning.

Location:

Tampa, Florida

The Inside Scoop: I joined a nearby health club a couple months ago. It's pretty nice - only a block away and it's got basketball, tennis, plenty of treadmills, a steam room, sauna whatever. I go maybe two or three times during the week and once on the weekends. Always in the morning, like first thing. And every time, this same guy always is working out. When I first saw him, I was like - he looks familiar. But I couldn't place him. He's built, but kind of short. Maybe even shorter than me. After staring at his face, I realized he looked kind of like baseball legend Gary Sheffield. So he's there every time and eventually I stopped staring because I figured that'd be weird. But then today we were alternating between machines and I looked at him and I thought, "Damn - he looks exactly like Gary Sheffield. But he's way too short. Sheff is like 6'5 or something I think." Curiosity got the best of me - so I Googled "Gary Sheffield" after my workout. Turns out he's listed at 5 feet 11 inches (which is a total stretch - he's maybe as tall as me and I'm not 5'11. Kind of like how Allen Iverson was listed at 6 feet 1 inch even though everyone knew he was 5 feet 9 inches.) So not only is Gary Sheffield shorter than I thought but evidently he lives two blocks from me in the exact same neighborhood as me (his house shows up on Google!). But the deal is he lives in the nicer, gated part of the neighborhood and I live where all the hired help stays.