Hope Is Not A Strategy

It Is A Gift

Some memories begin with what happened. Mine almost always begin with who was there.

By noon, Jeffrey and I had already looked out the dining room window more times than we could count. Lunch was on the table. Our attention wasn't.

Every few minutes one of us wandered back to the window, convinced that looking one more time might somehow make Grammy and PaPa David arrive sooner. Then, finally, the immense burgundy Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale turned into our driveway.

Dad had resealed the black asphalt earlier that summer. In the afternoon sun it looked almost new, one of those quiet projects he faithfully took on every year. At fifteen, I simply thought he liked having a nice driveway.

The Oldsmobile had barely come to a stop and Jeffrey and I were already outside. PaPa David stepped from the driver's seat wearing the same warm smile he always seemed to wear.

Before there was any talk of baseball...before anyone reached for the trunk...before the journey began...he opened his arms. A hug that made me forget there was anywhere else I needed to be. A kiss on the cheek. "I love you, boychick." Every single time.

Only then did he walk to the trunk. Inside were four worn blue and yellow stadium seat cushions. One for Grammy. One for PaPa David. One for Jeffrey. One for me.

The trunk closed with the heavy sound only those old American cars seemed to make, and Jeffrey and I climbed into the back seat, already debating batting orders, pitching matchups, and whether this would finally be the Brewers' year.

The drive to County Stadium was never simply how we got there. It was part of where we were going. Street by street...conversation by conversation...ordinary life slowly disappeared in the rearview mirror.

The closer we came to the stadium, the more the city itself seemed to lean toward baseball. Then it happened. The unmistakable aroma from the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory drifted through the car. We were close. Really close.

Even today...chocolate still smells like baseball.

By the time PaPa David turned into the County Stadium parking lot, it was already full. Long before the first pitch, charcoal smoke drifted between rows of station wagons, pickup trucks, and family sedans. Folding chairs circled portable grills while brats sizzled over glowing coals and onions slowly caramelized beside them.

Mustard, charcoal, and crisp early-fall Milwaukee air blended into a smell I have never forgotten—the smell of baseball.

Children played catch between parked cars. Friends wandered from one tailgate to another balancing paper plates and cold drinks, stopping every few steps because they had spotted someone they knew. Across the parking lot, Dwayne Mosley's familiar voice drifted from a transistor radio, occasionally disappearing beneath laughter before finding us again.

The gates hadn't even opened. And still...everything had already begun.

We climbed out of the Oldsmobile, each of us carrying a seat cushion beneath one arm. The parking lot stretched farther than fifteen-year-old eyes could appreciate. Everywhere we looked, people were making the same familiar walk toward County Stadium.

Some wore faded “Starter” jackets that had seen more than one season. Others carried gloves, paper bags full of peanuts, or transistor radios pressed against their ears so they wouldn't miss the pregame show.

Parents held children's hands. Teenagers laughed louder than they needed to. Grandparents matched the pace of excited grandchildren.

County Stadium could hold nearly fifty-six thousand people. That afternoon, it felt as though every one of them was walking beside us. No one had to tell us where to go. We simply joined the current.

Looking back, I realize that no one ever taught me how to become part of that crowd. There wasn't a membership card. There wasn't an introduction. There wasn't even a conversation.

Somewhere between the parking lot and the turnstiles...we had already become a community. Not because we knew one another's names. Because we already knew why we had come.

That has always fascinated me. The game hadn't started. No one had won anything. Nothing had yet happened that afternoon. And still...fifty-six thousand people were already sharing something together.

Hope has a way of doing that. Long before it changes our circumstances... it changes where we believe we belong.

I loved that walk. Not because it was exciting. Because it never felt hurried. There was an unspoken understanding that no one wanted to rush past the beginning. The conversations mattered. The laughter mattered. The smell of charcoal mattered. Even the slow-moving line outside the gates somehow felt like part of the experience.

For years I thought all of that happened before the game. Today... I think it was the game. Not the baseball game. The human one. The one where strangers quietly become neighbors simply because they have chosen to hope for the same thing.

The first glimpse of the field never failed to stop me. You would emerge from the tunnel into the lower grandstand, and suddenly everything opened. The grass seemed impossibly green. The baselines stretched toward first and third with a precision that somehow made the whole afternoon feel important. Players drifted across the field during warmups. Groundskeepers made one last pass across the infield.

Nothing looked rushed. Everything looked intentional. At fifteen, I thought they were getting ready to play baseball. Years later, I would recognize that same rhythm while walking through a restaurant before dinner service. A chair quietly straightened. The lights turned down. A menu placed squarely on the table. The music blanketing the room.

None of it guaranteed a memorable evening. Every bit of it quietly whispered the same thing. "We've been expecting you."

We found our seats just behind the Brewers' dugout. Without saying a word, PaPa David handed each of us a seat cushion before sitting down himself. He never made a ceremony out of kindness. He simply practiced it. At fifteen, I barely noticed.

Today...I smile when I think about it. Because I have spent much of my adult life trying to become the kind of person who remembers the seat cushions.

The summer of 1982 had changed Milwaukee. Not because the Brewers were perfect. They weren't. Not because anyone believed championships were guaranteed. No one did.

Something quieter had happened. Over six months, the Brewers had become worthy of our trust. That is different from earning our admiration. Admiration watches from a distance. Trust walks through the gate with you.

The Brewers had lost the first two games of the American League Championship Series in Anaheim.

One more loss and the season would be over. Outside Wisconsin, many people assumed the story had already been written. Inside Wisconsin it felt unfinished.

Not because we believed the Brewers couldn't lose. Because we believed we knew who they were. Character remembers what disappointment tries to make us forget.

It quietly says,

"I've watched them before."

"I've seen how they respond."

"I've seen who they become when things become difficult."

Hope wasn't ignoring reality. Hope was remembering character.

I didn't know any of that sitting behind the Brewers' dugout. At fifteen, I simply wanted them to win. Children rarely analyze hope. They simply live inside it.

Perhaps that's why childhood memories stay with us so long. They reach our hearts years before our minds find words worthy of them.

A few days before Game Five, PaPa David made a trip to Milwaukee County Stadium. Not to watch baseball. To pick up our American League Championship Series and World Series tickets.

Before he left, Grammy handed him a box. She didn't explain it. She didn't have to. Inside were homemade cookies for Dick Hackett, the Brewers' Vice President of Marketing, and the people who worked beside him.

No one had asked for them. No one expected them. There wasn't an occasion that required them. She simply couldn't imagine arriving empty-handed when she had something she could lovingly prepare.

For years...

I thought Grammy was sending cookies.

Today...

I think she was preparing a place where people knew they belonged.

Those cookies had become legendary in our family. Tiny. About the size of a penny. One recipe yielded nearly three thousand of them.

The story was that Grammy and her sister, Auntie Yetta, began making them that small when my dad, Uncle Thomas, and their cousin Larry were little boys, so little hands could hold several without leaving crumbs all over the house. Whether every detail of that story was true eventually stopped mattering.

The cookies became larger than the recipe. They became part of how our family loved.

Every visit to Grammy and PaPa David's apartment seemed to begin the same way. Before anyone sat down. Before coffee. Before conversation. There was always a bowl waiting.

Jeffrey eventually learned to make those cookies standing beside Grammy in her kitchen. At the time, it looked like a grandmother teaching her grandson to bake. Years later, after Jeffrey became a chef, I realized she had been teaching him something much larger.

Not through instruction. Through repetition. Through generosity. Through presence. Some truths are too important to explain. They have to be lived until someone else naturally begins living them too.

As I grew older, I began noticing that the people who had shaped my life shared the same quiet rhythm.

Dad never explained stewardship. He resealed the driveway every summer.

PaPa David never lectured us about belonging. He opened his arms before he opened the trunk.

Mom never announced that our home should feel welcoming. She simply lived as though it already was.

Grammy never described hospitality. She filled the cookie bowl.

The older I become, the less I believe the greatest teachers are the ones who explain the most. I think they're the ones whose lives become understandable through living.

There is a reason I spent thirty years in hospitality. For a long time, I thought it was because I loved restaurants. Today, I think that answer is too small. I love what restaurants quietly declare about people.

Before the first guest arrived, the room had already been loved. Chairs straightened. Lighting adjusted. Glasses polished.

Nothing about those preparations guaranteed a memorable evening. Every one of them quietly whispered the same thing.

"We've been expecting you."

I have come to believe that hospitality begins long before anyone says,

"Welcome."

It begins the moment someone starts preparing for another person's arrival.

Years later, when I became a leader, I realized that my job was never simply to prepare a restaurant. My job was to prepare the people who would prepare the restaurant. Culture always arrived before the guest did.

If the team felt seen...the guest usually would.

If the team trusted one another...the guest usually sensed it.

If the team prepared for one another...they naturally prepared for everyone else.

Belonging has a way of multiplying.

It is difficult to offer something you have never received. It is almost impossible not to offer something that has been given to you generously. Perhaps that is how inheritance works. Not by asking us to remember. By quietly becoming the way we live.

The older I become, the more I think love has a memory. Not the memory that remembers birthdays or anniversaries. A different kind.

The kind that remembers another person's comfort before they arrive. It remembers the seat cushions. It remembers the cookie bowl. It remembers to reseal the driveway before winter comes. It remembers to make the coffee before the other person wakes. It remembers that someone else is coming...and quietly prepares for them.

Love prepares for people.

For a long time, I thought that was simply how my family lived.

Today, I think they were teaching me one of the deepest truths I know. The people who prepare places where hope can survive...rarely realize they are doing it.

They simply love faithfully. Day after day. Year after year. Until someone else one day recognizes the inheritance they have been carrying all along.

Then...

Cecil Cooper stepped into the batter's box. The moment itself lasted only seconds. The anticipation had been building for months. The crack of the bat. The collective inhale.

Cecil Cooper was waving both hands frantically toward the grass.

Down.

Down.

Down.

As though he could somehow persuade the baseball to fall safely onto the outfield before anyone could reach it. It did. County Stadium erupted. So did I.

For just a few unforgettable seconds...fifty-six thousand people breathed with one heart.

It took me years to find the words. That afternoon...hope became joy.

For a long time, I believed hope was the feeling that everything would work out. Life has taught me something more true. Hope has never guaranteed outcomes. Restaurants still have difficult nights. Leaders still face painful conversations. Marriages still endure hard seasons. Parents still worry. Children still leave home. The people we love still leave us far sooner than we believe they should.

Hope has never promised that life will spare us from heartbreak. It offers something quieter. And, I think, much stronger. Hope is what allows us to keep preparing anyway. Not because tomorrow is guaranteed. Because tomorrow is still worthy of us.

When I was younger, I thought the opposite of hope was despair.

Today...

I think the opposite of hope is indifference.

Despair still cares. Despair still longs. Despair still grieves because something precious feels lost.

Indifference simply stops preparing. It stops setting the table. It stops making the coffee. It stops remembering the seat cushions. It stops believing another person is worth the effort.

Hope refuses to surrender to indifference. It quietly says, "Prepare anyway."

That distinction has changed the way I see almost everything. The restaurants I admired most never prepared a dining room because they knew every table would be full. They prepared because every guest deserved to walk into a room that was ready for them.

The leaders who most influenced me didn't inspire trust by asking people to believe in them. They inspired trust by becoming the kind of people others could reasonably believe.

The strongest marriages I've known weren't built on extraordinary anniversaries. They were built on ordinary Tuesday mornings.

One cup of coffee. One conversation. One thoughtful gesture. One quiet preparation after another.

Almost everything meaningful in my life had already begun before I arrived. The coffee. The dining room. The cookie bowl. The seat cushions. The embrace. The conversation. Someone had already been thinking about me.

As I have grown older, I have become less interested in dramatic moments and more fascinated by the quiet faithfulness that makes those moments possible.

The American League Championship wasn't won because of one swing.

That swing mattered. But it rested on thousands of pitches...hundreds of games...countless practices...ordinary mornings...and faithful preparation that no one remembers.

The same is true of almost everything that matters. Strong families are rarely built in extraordinary moments. They are built around ordinary dinner tables.

Healthy cultures aren't created during annual retreats. They are formed in everyday conversations.

Belonging isn't established by grand gestures. It grows through hundreds of small reminders that someone was thinking about you before you arrived.

Looking back...

I no longer think the people who shaped my life were trying to teach me lessons. They were simply living lives worth learning from.

Dad prepared home. Grammy prepared a table. PaPa David prepared an embrace. Mom prepared a dining room table. Jeffrey prepared meals. Jody prepares mornings.

Each of them, in their own quiet way, declared the same truth. Love prepares for people.

I didn't recognize that when I was fifteen. I simply received it.

Only years later did I realize I had spent much of my adult life trying to give away the very thing they had first given me. And perhaps... that is the truest definition of inheritance I know.

Not preserving the past. Continuing it.

There are days when I can still close my eyes and find my way back to Milwaukee County Stadium. Not because the stadium is still there. It isn't. Not because I remember every game. I don't.

I find my way back because memory has never really been about places. It's about people.

I can still see Dad's freshly resealed driveway catching the afternoon sun. I can still hear the heavy door of PaPa David's Oldsmobile closing behind us. I can still smell chocolate as we passed Ambrosia. Charcoal in the parking lot. Grilled onions. Mustard. The smell of baseball.

I can still feel PaPa David's embrace. Still hear him say, "I love you, boychick." Still picture Grammy quietly placing another bowl of tiny cookies on the table before anyone had the chance to ask.

For years, I believed those memories stayed with me because they were happy. Today...I think they stayed because they became part of me.

The older I become, the less I believe hope is something we manufacture. I don't think we simply decide to become hopeful.

Hope grows in places where people have been faithfully preparing for one another for a very long time. It grows in homes where someone has already thought about your comfort. It grows in kitchens where a cookie bowl is always full because someone expects you might stop by.

It grows in marriages where coffee is waiting before the other person wakes. It grows in restaurants where every chair is straightened, every table is set, and every guest is welcomed as though they matter.

It grows wherever someone quietly says, "I was thinking about you before you arrived."

Looking back...

I think that is what I have spent much of my life trying to build.

In restaurants. In coaching. In leadership. Around dinner tables. Inside conversations.

Not simply excellent experiences. Places where hope feels at home.

I used to think my work was helping people become better leaders.

Today...

I think my work has always been something more human. Helping people prepare places where other people can flourish.

Leadership is simply one expression of that. Hospitality is another. Marriage is another. Friendship is another. Home is another.

For years I believed the greatest gift the people in this story gave me was love. Now I think something more true has emerged. They made love believable.

Not through speeches. Through consistency.

Not through perfection. Through presence.

Not by promising that life would always be easy. By quietly showing me, over and over again, that people were worth preparing for.

That recognition has followed me into every chapter of my life. When I coach a leader, I am not trying to manufacture confidence. I am trying to help them become the kind of person others can reasonably trust.

When I walk through a restaurant before service, I am not simply checking details. I am asking whether every preparation quietly tells the arriving guest, "We've been expecting you."

When I think about the people I love most...I rarely remember what they accomplished.

I remember how they made room.

Room at the table. Room in the car. Room in the conversation. Room in their schedules. Room in their hearts.

Perhaps that is what home has always been. Not a place where life is perfect. A place where hope is quietly prepared before it is needed.

Sometimes people tell me that hope isn't enough. They're right.

Hope has never balanced a budget. Hope has never solved a difficult conversation. Hope has never won a baseball game.

Hope is not a strategy. It never has been.

Preparation still matters. Discipline still matters. Character still matters. Faithfulness still matters.

But I have learned something equally important. Preparation without hope eventually becomes obligation.

Hope reminds us why the preparation matters.

It reminds us that tomorrow is still worthy of our best work. That another guest is worth welcoming. Another conversation is worth having. Another marriage is worth tending. Another team is worth building. Another season is worth beginning.

Not because success is guaranteed. Because people are. And people are always worth preparing for.

I no longer think the most important thing that happened in October of 1982 was that the Milwaukee Brewers won the American League pennant.

Important as that was...it isn't the inheritance.

The inheritance was a grandfather who opened his arms before he opened the trunk. A grandmother who refused to let anyone arrive empty-handed. A father who quietly prepared home every summer. A mother who made home feel like home every day. A brother who learned beside Grammy that recipes were really another way of loving people.

An entire city that reminded a fifteen-year-old boy that hope doesn't suddenly appear when the moment demands it. It has usually been growing quietly all along.

In driveways. In kitchens. In parking lots. In ordinary Tuesdays. In faithful people. Long before the first pitch.

Today, County Stadium is gone. The outfield grass is gone. The scoreboard is gone. The seats are gone. The parking lot is now home to American Family Field. Even the sweet smell of chocolate drifting from Ambrosia belongs to another chapter of Milwaukee's story.

But every time I straighten a chair before a guest arrives...Every time I prepare for a coaching conversation before my client walks through the door...Every time I think ahead for someone I love...Every time I find myself quietly preparing for another person's arrival...I realize the people who showed me my inheritance aren't really gone.

They're simply using my hands now.

I think that's what inheritance has been all along. Not preserving the past. Allowing the people who built us to continue loving the world through the lives they shaped.

Perhaps that is why hope has never felt naïve to me. Hope isn't wishful thinking. It isn't pretending everything will work out. Hope is remembering that someone loved us faithfully enough to prepare a place where we could believe before we knew belief was possible.

And because someone once prepared that place for us...we can prepare one for someone else.

That is how hope survives. That is how memories, culture, and inheritance endure. That is how ordinary people quietly become part of generations they will never meet. Long before the first pitch. Long after the final out.

Hope is not a strategy. Hope is a gift.

One Question to Carry with You

Who quietly prepared hope for you before you even knew you needed it... and whose hope are you preparing now?

---

For Grammy Mildred and PaPa David Parr...who prepared hope long before I knew its name.