By Michael Mattingly | July 26, 2026
What Do We Remember?
After the final major championship of the season, I found myself thinking about a question that golfers and sports fans love to debate.
Who is the best player?
Is it the golfer who wins the biggest tournaments?
Or the one who quietly plays better than everyone else over the course of an entire season?
It’s an interesting conversation.
But I think it’s the wrong question.
The better question is this:
What is greatness?
I first began thinking about that nearly forty years ago.
Not on a golf course.
On a dusty baseball field in Tilden, Illinois.
It was August 1987.
The kind of hot summer afternoon where the dirt seemed to float in the air long after every
ground ball.
Sweat soaked through our heavy blue-and-gold jerseys. The leather of our gloves had been
baking in the sun for two hours.
We were fourteen years old.
Old enough to think we were becoming men.
Young enough to believe life would unfold exactly the way we imagined.
In a town the size of Tilden, everyone knew this group of boys.
Our parents had watched us play together for years.
Our coaches had waited patiently for us to become old enough to be the starters.
They believed we were going to be good.
Truth be told, so did we.
The game had reached its final moments.
A ground ball was hit toward shortstop.
Even now, I can see him as clearly as if it happened yesterday.
Dark hair.
A slight mullet.
A wad of chewing gum—at least I think it was chewing gum—working its way from one side of
his mouth to the other.
A worn black leather glove.
Converse high-tops instead of baseball cleats.
He looked like every small-town ballplayer in America.
Until the ball was hit.
Some players react.
He anticipated.
Before the baseball reached him, it was almost as if he had already watched the play unfold in
his mind.
He glided to his left.
Scooped the ball cleanly.
Dropped his head.
Accelerated toward second base.
Step.
Touch.
Turn.
Throw.
The relay skipped through the dirt.
I dug it out at first.
Out.
Double play.
Game over.
The parents applauded.
The team spilled onto the field.
One of our coaches turned away.
Years later, one of the parents told me, “He looked like he was on cloud nine.”
As a fourteen-year-old, I thought he was smiling because we had won our first game.
Today I know better.
He wasn’t smiling because of the scoreboard.
He was smiling because hope had become visible.
He had waited years for this class of boys.
He had watched us lose.
He had watched us grow.
And for one afternoon, everything they believed about us looked true.
The world was still our oyster.
None of us yet knew that talent and opportunity are not always lifelong companions.
As everyone walked off the field, we met at the slab of rubber that passed for a pitcher’s mound.
We touched gloves.
He grinned.
“Nice catch.”
He was talking about the throw I had picked out of the dirt.
The funny thing was, he never mentioned that he was the one who had bounced it there.
I have thought about that moment many times over the years.
Because maybe greatness isn’t only what we accomplish.
Greatness is also how we make other people feel while we’re accomplishing it.
He was the greatest baseball player I ever played with.
Not because someone told me.
Because I saw him.
The game slowed down for him.
He had instincts that couldn’t be coached.
The kind that make everyone watching quietly say to themselves,
“That kid is different.”
Ten years later, he was gone.
I don’t think about the circumstances very often.
I think about the kid.
The black glove.
The Converse high-tops.
The smile.
The confidence.
The possibility.
I remember him before the world had a chance to disappoint him.
And maybe that’s the gift memory gives us.
It lets us preserve people at their brightest.
Hall of Fame catcher Ted Simmons once recalled the six-pitch sequence from an at-bat that had
taken place more than forty years earlier.
Albert Pujols can still recite the starting lineup from his first major league game.
Some athletes remember every detail.
Perhaps that’s part of what made them great.
Miguel Ángel Jiménez remembers golf differently.
The ponytail.
The stretching routine.
The cigar after the round.
The smile that never seems very far away.
Watching him, I’ve often thought that he understands something statistics never capture.
Golf is something to experience.
Not merely something to conquer.
Maybe that’s why I enjoy watching both Jiménez and Scottie Scheffler.
They couldn’t appear more different.
Yet both make golf look like a privilege.
One through quiet excellence.
The other through unmistakable joy.
Both remind us that there is something bigger than winning.
So who is the best golfer?
I honestly don’t know.
Maybe it’s the player with the trophies.
Maybe it’s the player with the best statistics.
Maybe it’s the player who dominates an entire season.
But I know this.
Forty years later, I don’t remember the score of that baseball game.
I remember a coach trying not to smile.
I remember a dusty field in Tilden.
And I remember a fourteen-year-old kid who made everyone around him believe that anything
was possible.
The older I get, the more I believe the scorecard tells only part of the story.
The rest of the story is written by the people who shared the field with us.
And perhaps that’s the truest measure of greatness.
Not simply what we accomplished.
But how we made others feel while we were accomplishing it.
Enjoy Your Sunday – MWM
Michael Mattingly is a freelance journalist from Smithton, Illinois, with a background in advanced mathematics and creative writing.
He is a student of the game of golf, drawn to its pressure, rhythm, and unpredictability. He is also an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan and a loyal Chicago Bears supporter.
