Page 4 - Mr Goheen and Me

flyleaf of each copy Ross wrote a special encouragement to each player. I still remember the salutation he wrote in mine:
“To Jimmy Tulloch, the best shortstop in Mississauga...”
Whether it was accurate or not didn’t matter. Mr. Goheen thought I was “the best shortstop in Mississauga”. Those words meant more than any trophy I would ever receive. I never got much encouragement from home or anyplace else. I read that inscription over and over. It made me feel valued. Unfortunately, that’s all I read. It would be a couple of years before I got past the introduction and into the book of Matthew.
“Reach Out” collected dust on my shelf as I entered high school and was occupied with being a teenager. I had long ago stopped attending Kenmuir Baptist, however Mr. Goheen frequently invited me to try out his new home church in Streetsville. I always had a ready excuse. But that man was so lovingly persistent and gracious. It was hard to say “no” to him. He never stopped asking.
Encouraging words were all I ever heard from Mr. Goheen. He specialized in building people up. He took it upon himself to get involved with a local paper called The Streetsville Review and covered the local sports scene writing about the various teams and athletes that represented Streetsville. Perhaps his most widely read piece was a weekly column called, “Athlete of the Week” which, as the title suggests, featured a story about an athlete from the area who had done something of note. It was considered an honour to appear in that column.
One week I opened the paper to the sports section and was shocked to discover that I was “Athlete of the Week”. In my estimation I
hadn’t done anything remarkable that week, but Mr. Goheen thought differently. He began the story by recounting our team’s hard luck year. He wrote how we had competed hard against tough competition but failed to make the playoffs. It was a nice tribute to the team. I liked that.