You Are Who You Are Right Now

I met Dave Rozema at a Tigers event recently. I’ll be honest, I had to look him up first. He was a little before my time and I was barely a kid when the ‘84 squad took it all. But Dave knew none of that, and it didn’t matter.

What I noticed was that Dave wasn’t performing legend. He wasn’t rushing the line, half-present, counting down to whenever he could leave. He took time with me and my son, gave us each a signed photo, chatted for a few minutes like he actually meant it. Just a genuinely good guy doing something real for the community.

All that ‘84 stuff is real. It happened. It mattered. But it’s not what defined that interaction. What defined it was who he is right now, in this moment, choosing to show up fully for people who weren’t even alive to watch him pitch.

I think about my own “legendary” past sometimes. 24-hour mountain bike races. Running conferences. Hosting meetups. Starting a web development company with my dad at 22. Building things that mattered. I’m proud of it. But if I walked into a room and led with it, leaned on it, let it become my identity? That’s the slowest path to irrelevance I know of.

Here’s what I’ve landed on: legendary isn’t a status you hold, it’s a thing you do. Repeatedly. In the small moments nobody’s watching.

Sign the photo. Take the two minutes. Be present with the person in front of you even when you don’t have to be. Build something today, not just a story about something you built. That’s it. That’s the whole playbook.

Dave Rozema didn’t need to be warm to a stranger and his kid at a Tigers event. He did it anyway. That’s why I remembered it. That’s why I’m writing about it.

You don’t get to coast on yesterday’s legendary. But you get a clean shot at today’s.