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As a young baseball player, John Buck was a tryhard.
I don’t mean that in a bad way. Just one I find relatable: He so desperately wanted to prove himself and make it as a Major League Baseball player that he took himself really seriously.
“Too seriously,” the former journeyman catcher told me.
One day in spring training, he got jammed (that’s when a batter hits the ball poorly off the inside of the bat). Getting jammed shouldn’t be embarrassing — it happens to even the best hitters — but again, Buck took himself “too seriously.”
Then he heard Jose Lima, one of his own teammates on the Houston Astros, yell from the dugout: “Peanut butter and … JAAAAAAM!”
Both dugouts cracked up. And, yeah, at first Buck was embarrassed.
It has been about 25 years since Buck heard Lima yell those words, and yet he calls that moment a “core memory” (like from the movie “Inside Out”), and he still got goosebumps when retelling it.
I’ll explain why, but first I need to tell you about Lima: He was one of one. He danced in his jockstrap before starts, drank beer with fans in the parking lot after games and created a persona, Lima Time, that teammates swore was authentic.
For a couple of years, Lima was one of the better pitchers in baseball. And for a couple of years, he was one of the worst. After a good start, he popped bottles and partied on the team plane. After a bad start, he told a group of nervous reporters: “You guys scared of Lima or something? It’s just a ballgame, guys. Don’t be scared of Lima.”
Lima, who died in 2010, took baseball seriously — he loved it so much he played all over the world way past his prime — but he didn’t take himself too seriously. He didn’t take failure too seriously.
That is the philosophy of “peanut butter and JAAAAAM” (sometimes Lima used to sing it like a show tune, one former teammate said: “Jaaaaaam! Ooooh, jaaaaaaam! Oh that was a jaaaam!”). That was the message Buck took away from that day: “It was like: ‘Oh yeah, we’re having fun here. We’re all out here having fun, remember?’”
Buck, 45, now coaches high school baseball players and works with first responders. He continues to spread PB&J (sorry!):
- “I use that story to this day as a way to remind people to get to higher ground. To get a perspective from a higher ground while you’re in the thick of it.”
- “When I tell kids about ‘peanut butter and jaaaam,’ it’s always like: ‘Remember, we’re having fun. Let’s get your parents out of here. You guys would all laugh at this normally.’”
- “But I use it all over. Officers and first responders get jammed a lot. They get jammed, and they feel embarrassed and I use this as a reminder for them, too.”
- “That word, that phrase, has impact.”
I’ll end with one more story. Years ago, Lima was pitching in the Dominican Republic when he got blasted. He got pulled from the game in the first three innings, and afterward one of his teammates, Mendy Lopez, went into the clubhouse to check on him. To Lopez’s surprise, Lima was dressed and ready to head out into the night.
Lopez couldn’t hide his disbelief: “Lima, you just got crushed!”
“That’s the game,” Lima said. “They killed me tonight; I get them next time. But I’ve got to go sing.”
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