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Kamilah Kashanie (KK): All season we’ve been sharing stories of trailblazers. People who rocked the boat and made waves, in their careers, in science, in music.

And on this episode, people who shook things up in another “arena”, sports. And we’re not talking about the jocks. It’s the StoryCorps Podcast from NPR. I’m Kamilah Kashanie.

Our first story is about finally finding where you fit, even if you’re almost 7 feet tall. When Rob Maiden was a kid, he was a little bigger than some of his classmates.

Rob Maiden (RM): I’ll never forget going from the ninth grade to the tenth. I went from 5’6” to 6’3” over the summer. So I left school, and by the time I came back all my friends were all like the same height and all of a sudden I went past them. So I got my buddies saying, “Hey don’t stand next to me.”

KK: Rob grew up in Texas, where football is pretty much everything. And when he came to StoryCorps with his friend Daniel Jacob, he told him that that seemed like a natural fit for him.

Rob Maiden (RM): My mom’s about 4’11”. My dad’s about 5’10”. I’m 6’5” and nobody’s near my size. It was so bad that my mom thought something was wrong with me. But my dad loved football, so he would say to me, “Man if I would have known you’re going to be this big, I would have made you play. You should be a tight end right now. I should be at the games.” I said, “well I wasn’t really into a lot of people hitting me”, and it was just a little bit too much. What about your life? Childhood?

Daniel Jacob (DJ): I was awkward and shy. Painfully shy. At least I thought I was.

RM: That’s pretty weird, because as outgoing as you are.

DJ: wasn’t always that way. It was probably always in me. And then it just needed a vehicle.

KK: Daniel and Rob both found that vehicle in the Mavs ManiAACs, an all male dance squad in the NBA. It started off as a playoff gimmick back in 2002, but now it’s legit.

They’re a hip hop dance group of, self proclaimed, beefy men who perform during Dallas Mavericks games. And they all have nicknames.

RM: You have Big Rob.

DJ: Chunky D. 

RM: J.J. Porkchops. AKA Chops. Who started out being called Bacon.

DJ: Wonder Bread. 

RM: Well, I just called him “Bread.” 

DJ: I just call him “Wonder.”

RM: We’re so lazy, if your name has more than two syllables, we’re not going to use them. You know, you have all these guys from so many walks of life. White, Black, Hispanic, Filipino. You name it, we have, or have had it in this group.

And we’ll start out fully dressed, but we have a moment that’s called the bust out.

DJ: We’ll be dancing and it’ll just go, ‘BOOM’!

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RM: We kind of end with some exposed bellies and,

DJ: We have half-shirts which shows off a little more skin.

RM: A lot more skin, if you’re my size. I’ve seen so many people start out going, “Oh boy, what is this?” And by the end of the song, they go, “These guys are pretty good.” [Laughs] For whatever reason, when we dance, it just tends to make people smile. And we just fell in love with those smiles and we’ve been going strong ever since.

KK: The Mavs ManiAAcs have performed at birthday parties, pep rallies, even weddings,

And even though they bring a ton of joy to other people, there was one person in particular who had a hard time coming to terms with all of it.

RM: My father, he’s a man’s man, so he didn’t get any of that stuff. I would invite him to games all the time and he’d give me a million excuses as to why, “I have to get up early tomorrow. Well, I don’t drive at night.” But I will never forget he came, and he met me after the game. He’s watching all these folks come up to us. And we’re signing autographs and a fan walked up to us and he had my face on his shirt. I look at my dad and say, “Can you believe that?” And that guy said, “Did you say that’s your father?” And I said, ‘Yeah’. And he said, “Sir, would you sign this?” My dad never signed an autograph in his life. I won’t ever forget the look on my father’s face, and he did not stop talking about it. And how much he just respected me as a man because he said “You look like you really were born to do this.” And it really stuck with me because now when I’m raising my kids, I’m not as hard on them about what they’re trying to do with their life, because I just have this belief that it’s going to work out. And, you know, so far, life has worked out pretty good.

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KK: That was “Big Rob” Maiden and his friend Daniel “Boy ain’t right” Jacob. Our next story comes from someone who also found her place on the basketball court.

YJ: I was always outside playing basketball in the courts against the boys. I was always the only girl and I used to, like, really be really good. And sometimes the boys would pick me before they other friends so they would get mad.

KK: Yolanda Johnson grew up in Pennsylvania with her grandparents. And as she told her wife, LaTausha Bonner-Johnson, there was a reason why she spent so much time playing ball.

And just a warning, this next section mentions suicide.

Yolanda Johnson (YJ): My grandparents were from the old school, so I think they can tell when I was younger that I was going to be gay ‘cause I was always like this. And there was times where they used to beat me for it. But um, I didn’t know how to be anybody else.

My first girlfriend — we were so close, and she was just so awesome when I was with her. So I didn’t even know things were bad. She jumped off a bridge and, you know, I was really torn up about that. And I remember coming home crying and my grandma, she looked at me and she said, “What’s wrong with you?” And I told her. She said, ”Wives don’t even cry over their husbands like that. If you feel that bad, the bridge is still there, you can go jump too.”

But, um, I kind of got lucky because this guy named Mr. Kail, he picked me up on his basketball team to play for his team, and he knew I had a bad home life. He would come and pick me up from my house every day for practice. He knew I didn’t have money. He never questioned it. He paid for every tournament. He just always looked out. He was a good guy. 

I started getting letters from colleges when I was around, like, 12 years old. I remember coming home from school and having garbage bags full — and I’m talking about, like, the big black garbage bags, the big ones. I got recruited by a Division One school. So, you know, when I got to Florida, I worked hard. Just to get there and the head coach to tell me, “Yolanda, we don’t want the young girls of America thinking, it’s OK to be like you. We can’t have you represent this program.”

KK: Yolanda had to leave school around her sophomore year, and she stopped playing basketball. This was also around the time she met her future wife, LaTausha.

YJ: I remember I was still horrible to myself, you were super happy about something. And I just said some dumb stuff that was negative ”That ain’t going to happen. Something always goes wrong.” I just remember the look on your face, man.

LaTausha Bonner-Johnson (LB): Getting to know you more, and finding out about your life. And, I don’t know. You just — there is so much pain in your eyes, and I just, I didn’t want to see that pain no more when I looked at you. I just wanted to show you that love.

YJ: Give me one of your favorite memories.

LB: I would say when we begged God if he would just give us our very first apartment, we didn’t care if we had to sleep on the floor. And we were sleeping on the floor [laughs]. We was literally starting at the bottom and we were the happiest we could probably be.

YJ: And our love is so strong now. Almost 12 years later.

KK: Tausha and Yolanda got married in 2010. And around that time, Yolanda reconnected with the first love of her life, basketball. But in a slightly different way. Yolanda is now a basketball coach. The kids call her “Coach Yo”.

YJ: When I got those kids out there doing that 20 minutes of hell drill and their legs are shaking and there’s still ten minutes left. And I can make them push past that breaking point. And they refuse to quit. To me, that’s the best feeling in the world.

Kids deserve to get everything out of life, there’s going to be so many things that’s going to try to stop ‘em and so many things that’s going to try to break ‘em. I want to be that one to let these kids know that it doesn’t matter what anybody say. You don’t have to be who people say you have to be to succeed. You know? You can make it.

KK: And Yolanda still hasn’t forgotten about the coach who showed her what was possible.

YJ: And you know, I call him sometimes. I’ll just call him like, ”what’s up Mr Kail, what’s going on?” He say, ”Out of all the kids that I coached. You’re the only person that calls and checks up on me.” And that makes me feel bomb. He deserves it. I mean, I don’t know where I would be without Mr Kail. You know, I don’t know where I would be without him.

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KK: That’s Yolanda Johnson, speaking with her wife, LaTausha Bonner-Johnson,

After the break, we head to a baseball stadium in Baltimore, to meet a different kind of “professional athlete”, who never even steps on the field. Stay with us.

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KK: If you’ve ever been to a baseball game, you might not be aware there are actually two games happening at once. The obvious one is on the field. But there’s also vendors competing in the stands, seeing who can sell the most snacks during the game.

And our last story comes from a guy who slings beers so well it got him his nickname.

Clarence Haskett, also known as “Fancy Clancy,” has been a vendor at Baltimore Orioles games since 1978. And he’s sold more than 1 million beers. He came to StoryCorps with fellow beer vendor Jerry Collier.

Clarence “Clancy” Haskett (CH): My very first day, I was still in high school. And I don’t know why I remember this, but I made eight dollars and twenty-five cents.

Jerry Collier (JC): I met you probably the second day of my new job where I was a beer vendor when I was nineteen years old. And you just crushed it. When I looked around the ballpark, there was this ray of sunshine everywhere you look. A guy who outworked people, who out-loved all the customers more than anybody else. And I said, “That’s who I want to be like.”

CH: But see, I had little secrets though. I used to move quicker than a lot of the other vendors because I was a sprinter in college. And another thing, you know I had the gift of gab. And I used to do rhymes so that helped me out.

JC: — give me one of your rhymes!

CH: Well back in the old days, I used to use this one a lot, “Hey! Empty your pockets, put your money in your hand cuz here’s Clancy, your beer man!”

JC: [laughs]

CH: So you know, I used to do little things like that. And all the vendors that we worked with, all of us had some type of a personality for doing something.

JC: And if you go into the stadium and you’re number one, you have incredible pressure to be a selling machine.

CH: The way that I look at my job as a vendor, my mindset is I’m a professional athlete. I have to stay in shape, I have to train during the off-season. Because vendors running around with straps around their neck? That’s only on television commercials. Good vendors pick up their case and they carry it.

JC: It’s consuming.

CH: Yeah.

JC: It’s in your soul. Put it this way — both of us, when it came to our wedding, how did we plan our wedding?

CH: — Around the Orioles game.

JC:  — When the Orioles were out of town! [laughs]

CH: Yup.

JC: You know, Clancy, you epitomize to me and so many people all that’s right in the world. If it’s a rainout at the Orioles game and you only sell two cases of beer, in the big scheme of life, that’s not a problem. And I think that’s more than the rhymes and all the rest. You’re larger than life in a lot of ways.

CH: I can always go somewhere and get a free beer from somebody.

JC: [Laughs]

CH: I can go into a restaurant or bar that I’ve never been in before — there’s always somebody knew who I was, so, I definitely shake a lot of hands. And as long as I’m still healthy, I know I got another good ten years.

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KK: That was Clarence ”Fancy Clancy” Haskett and Jerry Collier back in 2014. It’s been a while since that conversation, so I called him up to check up on him.

KK: So, of course, the question everyone wants to know is, are you still doing this? 

CH: I did it all the way up until the pandemic hit and then we didn’t have any vending at the stadium. And then I caught COVID-19 last year and I was in the hospital for 10 days. But I honestly think because of the way that I was physically in shape, that it helped me through it. 

KK: So your job, the passion for all this and everything, ended up really helping your life? 

CH: Exactly. 

KK: That’s crazy. I’m assuming, you know, you’ve met a lot of people being a vendor. Have you stayed connected with some of them? 

CH: Oh I stay connect — matter of fact, I text them out of the blue. I send them a Christmas card every year, and let me tell you something else. One of my regular customers owns a brewery, and he talked to me a few years back about putting my face on a can of beer. 

KK: Oh! 

CH: I said, “Man, that’s not going to work.” And he said, “Of course it will.” So maybe a year or so after that, we decided to do it. And we debuted Fancy Clancy Pilsner. 

KK: That’s so dope.

CH: And ever since that beer came out, he said that has been the number one selling beer in his brewery. 

KK: You’re killing it. So your friend, Jerry, that you did the conversation with said that you epitomize to him, and a bunch of other people, all that’s right in the world. And so at a time like now, everything feels a little upside down, all the COVID stuff, what do you feel like keeps you going? 

CH:  Last year, we still really didn’t have the vendors in the stadium, but I still wanted to work. So I talked to management and I asked them, could I bartend? And they said, Yeah. So I’m still able to talk my stuff to the fans. You know, during this time, you got almost a million people that done passed away from this, but just in the United States. Do you know what that means? Everybody that you know, knows somebody that done died, right? 

KK: Mmhmm.

CH: So at some point somebody has had some sorrow in their life. I mean, we’re all on this Earth for a little period of time. We all know that. But sometimes you just want to enjoy yourself at a ballgame. 

KK: I get that. If you could say anything to people that maybe listened a couple of years ago, what would you want people to remember? 

CH: Let me tell you something I thought about a lot when when I was in that hospital for 10 days. My father told me one thing that I always remembered. He said, ‘No matter what you do with life, I always try to be the best at what you do.’ Okay. Well, that didn’t work out for me in sports. You know, I really wasn’t the best athlete in the world, but I could run. I took that ability and I applied it to vending. And guess what happened? Fifteen consecutive years as the number one vendor. No other vendor has been number one for 15 consecutive years. 

KK: That’s amazing. You probably have a lot of pride about that, yeah? 

CH: Yeah, that’s pretty good. 

KK: Yeah, that’s incredible. 

CH: No matter what you doing out here, no matter what it is, try to be the best at what you do. 

KK: I love that. My mom says that too.

CH: Yup.

KK: Thank you so much for talking to me, Mr. Haskett.

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KK: That’s all for this episode of the StoryCorps podcast. 

It was produced by me and edited by Jasmyn Morris, who’s our executive editor. Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd, who also composed our theme song. Our fact-checker is Natsumi Ajisaka. Special thanks to Jarrod Sport, Aisha Turner, Vera Testing, Liyna Anwar, Cail Cron, Maya Millett, Christina Stanton, and Eleanor Vasilli.

To see what music we used in the episode, go to StoryCorps – dot – org,where you can also check out original artwork created by artist Lyne Lucien.

For the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Kamilah Kashanie. Catch you next week.