WDYM What Do You Mean?
WDYM What Do You Mean?
Through the Years with Mo.
Have you ever wondered how a friendship can shape your entire life? Join me, Michael Gillespie, on "What Do You Mean?" as I recount the incredible journey of friendship with my longtime friend, Maurice, or Mo. From our days at the Central YMCA in Hamilton, Ohio, to our unforgettable high school years, Maurice has been a cornerstone of my youth. Listen in as I share stories of intense ping pong battles, exhilarating dodgeball games, and our memorable high school broadcasting days on 89.5 WHSS. This episode is a heartfelt tribute to Mo.
This episode is not just about reminiscing; it's about celebrating the enduring power of friendship. Hear all about Maurice's athletic prowess in football and basketball, and a particularly unforgettable high school basketball playoff game where his intensity left a mark. I also share a touching update on Maurice's current life, his successful family, and athletic children. As a special gesture, I decided to honor Maurice by replicating his high school jersey for his upcoming birthday. Get ready for an episode filled with laughter, nostalgia, and the profound impact a true friend can have on your life.
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you're listening to the wdym, the what do you mean? Podcast, hamilton's number one podcast. Now sit back and relax. Here's hamilton's own, michael gillespie, and welcome to the wdym podcast. I'm your host, michaelpy. As Kobe said, how y'all doing today? I hope everybody's doing good. I hope everybody is doing well.
Speaker 1:This episode we're getting straight into it. This episode is a roses episode. This is where we pay homage to a friend of mine who, uh, deserves it. You know, I always say, at least lately, I've been saying we never give enough to our friends and stuff our friends and our family and just say, hey, man, I appreciate you and everything. Um, this one was planned way back in march of 2024, the middle of show choir season for me. I tried my best to do something for him and I did, but uh, we'll get into that all later.
Speaker 1:But, as on this show, we call it. You know, when we give roses, we call it something. If we call it this bud is for you, mo or maurice, we've been friends for a long time. We were good friends in high school and everything. You know, we've always been friends and everything. But this is the origin story of mike and mo. Or when I first came, you know, came to know who maurice was. This started back when I moved in with my dad. When I moved in with my dad we used to live on fourth street and you know we used to. You know, just playing streets, you know. And in the middle of the hood and everything, he decided to move and move to another part of the city of hamilton and when he would go to work or when summer would start, I would just stay at home and just play playstation and super n Nintendo all day and it would get boring. So he signed me up to go to the YMCA, more specifically the Central YMCA in Hamilton Ohio. Now I've been to YMCA's before and I'm pretty sure you've been to YMCA's before. The Central YMCA was so beneficial to me as a young kid. I've met so many of my lifelong friends at the Y that programmed was such a help looking back at it in hindsight that this program was so beneficial to a lot of us and shout out to the Central YMCA for having a program for inner city kids and everything, to have somewhere to go and have fun. Now, what they had there was absolutely amazing for somebody who who never, never had this before. When you come in, you pay your fees. They had pool, pool balls and pool tables and everything foosball, computers, basketball, swimming in the pool. They they had trips we used to go. I think we've been to. I got my first Reds game with the YMCA, first time going to surf Cincinnati with the YMCA. What else did we do? We went up to Oxford a couple of times with the YMCA. I just had a great time dealing with the YMCA and so forever grateful, forever grateful for the YMCA.
Speaker 1:One of the things that I did not mention was ping pong. We played ping pong like no other Competition at its finest when we played ping pong. This is the typical game of ping pong right here, just the typical back and forth, nothing too big unless you played Maurice. Maurice was a ping pong elite, so to speak. The reason why Maurice was an elite ping pong player? Because he played with absolute power.
Speaker 1:Let me describe Maurice for you. Maurice is roughly and this is just me, I don't. I don't know off the top of my head exactly, but I think he was like six, four In seventh grade. He was a tall can of worms back in the day. So Maurice was tall. So it was all about power, for maurice was power. This is maurice game. Listen to the backspin. Did you hear that? That? That is maurice's style game. Play, play, play, play power. That was it. So that was his game.
Speaker 1:Everything with Mo back then was power. Simply because he was taller than all of us, he could play bully ball and no one could stop him. There was nobody there. There was nobody there. 6'4 at seventh grade. You know what I'm saying. Maurice was about power and he took every advantage for it, and rightfully so. There's nothing wrong with doing that. If I was six four, I would probably do the same thing. Right, he had the shot, the over the head shot in basketball. You couldn't block it. You just hope he missed that's. That's. That's how dominant Maurice was, how dominant Maurice was. But but I will say this there was somebody who can rival Maurice and that was Mel. But we will get into that here momentarily. But Maurice was all about power. Mel, on the other hand, was all about Now, when I came into the picture, I'm just watching.
Speaker 1:I don't know none of these people. I don't know nobody. I'm the new kid on the block. I just came through YMCA, but I see Maurice64 just slamming game. That's what he's saying. Pinking, pinking, game Game, it's over, it's over, it's over, you're done. That was his game.
Speaker 1:But the rivalry and again, this is all my speculation, just from what I'm seeing there was a rivalry with Mel. Because Mel was skilled, mel could slice a ball. Who's slicing in the seventh grade at ping pong? Well, mel is. Mel is the one slicing the ball, perfectly, coming back and it's coming on a curve and hitting the edge of the of the table and bouncing awkwardly. That was male. Male was equal to mo in ping pong and I think that got under his skin, because nobody can beat mo at ping pong. Okay, like occasionally, I can get one or two out of 10 in right, mel can rival Mo and that's what. That's what made it so amazing. Just see Mel using technique and skill on Mo. So it would be heated ping pong games and this is how it went. And then the thing about it is everybody gathered around the ping pong table. Hey guys, mo vs Mel, round three. We're like oh, oh, everybody, let's go and we go watch. That's how it was. It was so good to see these two play each other and I think, again, I think that Mo didn't like that. I think I'm speculating here in hindsight it was the same in basketball. Again, mo 6'4.
Speaker 1:There was people that were good. At the YMCA we had Brian Jackson was speed and cutting agility. He was, let's see, he was like I described his games like Dominique Wilkins, you know, he was just ferocious and fast and cutting and everything. Then we had like Bryant Jackson, who was, you know, in the middle ground and pound and quick shots like that. We had Marcus McCoy. He was an average all around gamer and that was Moe's best friend. And then we had Mel. Mel was technique, inside jumper, just passing the ball, dribbling skills. I remember see, this is what bothers me about Mel. Mel was just skilled, you just couldn't play with him. You just couldn't, you just couldn't. Mel was so skilled at all his positions. But Mo was all about power and when they played basketball against each other it was another one of those things. Hey, mo and Mel in the gym, it's 16, 13, mel got the ball and we're playing teams and stuff. But whoever, even if we had like a whole bunch of people, it was always Mel versus Moe.
Speaker 1:And you may ask yourself well, mike, where were you? I was terrible at basketball. I was terrible at basketball because in my neighborhood we played cart ball, not basketball cart ball. We would take a cart from Kroger's, flip it on its end and shoot it. That affected my jumper. To this day I cannot shoot a jumper without coming short Nine out of 10 times. No, let me change that 9.99999 out of 10 times my jumper is Broken and forever broken. That's because we played cartball instead of regular basketball. We didn't have a hoop, okay. So, yes, they were even in ping-pong, yes, they were even in basketball, and they were even at dodgeball.
Speaker 1:Now, but dodgeball at the YMCA was so serious. It was so serious and this was, if anything, I think this game, this dodgeball, was Mo's specialty Because, again, mo was about power. Like he would hit, like okay. So let me rewind just a little bit. The ages that could come to the Y were like 8 and 16 and maybe 17. It didn't matter for Moe.
Speaker 1:Moe would throw the ball so hard. He had this little kid I think his name was Ryan, and Moe would just throw the ball. If you were a sitting duck, moe would throw the ball, not bullying, he's playing the game. He ain't just constantly picking, he just finds somebody to hit and, um, he would hit him. Back to Ryan. Ryan was like no older than nine, and he's like 4 11. And Mo threw that ball and I've never seen a little kid get decapitated that fast because his head came right off his shoulders. And he is still unconscious to this day. Right, he's unconscious. I went to visit him a couple days ago. He's still unconscious and everything.
Speaker 1:No, I'm kidding, but that was the type of game we played. Every time it was mo and marcus. It's lights out, everybody's's losing, everybody's losing. Moe and Marcus are winning because they're throwing the ball 100 miles per hour. Didn't care who. You were right.
Speaker 1:So I would notice this and I would play on Mel's team. Right, it's like going up against. It's like David and Goliath. You don't want to be on Goliath's team, you just want to knock out Goliath. And Marcus and Mo were the two dogs, two big dogs on the team. There was no other big dogs in dodgeball other than Mel and myself.
Speaker 1:Now, I was good at dodgeball. You can call me neo of dodgeball. If dodgeball was a professional sport, I would be in the hall of fame. Right, small frame, and I, boy, I swear I could bend like, like make, like a neo in the matrix. Man, you couldn't hit me for nothing.
Speaker 1:So the one game out of the hundreds and thousands that we played at the YMCA, the one game I remember was Mo and Marcus these are the main two guys, and me and Mel and so we were like we can't, the power of Mo is just too much. He just throws the ball too hard. You can't catch it, because if you catch it you're out. Standard dodgeball rules. The thing is we had those rubber balls that made the ping noise. It wasn't those little foam balls, we had the rubber balls. Moe was slinging those like a cannon. That's how fast it felt when you got hit by Moe. You felt it for a couple days. That's how fast it felt when you got hit by a mole. You felt it for a couple days. That's how powerful he was, and with him and Marcus it felt like he was bullying.
Speaker 1:So the one time we teamed up me and Mel, me and Mel got together and said look, man, let's get him. And we were like, we agreed, like let's get him, let's show him that me and you can do it, cause me and Mel started forming a friendship and everything so like cool. So what's the game plan? The game plan is get Marcus out first. Marcus was slower than all the four of us. Marcus was the slowest one, right, so we get him out first. Let let Mo get everybody else out. You fatigue them, so those cannons ain't coming as fast, and then we gang up on them, right? So that was the plan and the plan was working fine. We were getting people out, getting people out.
Speaker 1:Then it was, like you know, noticeable, a couple people and marcus and moe and all right, let's execute the plan. So I would throw purposely high at marcus and then mel would come across the corner, across the court, and hit marcus boom, he, he's out. I was like, oh, and then Moe would look over and he's like you got my guy. I said, okay, you, okay, you guys want to play. You got my guy, but those cannons, he's been tired, he's fatigued, he can't get us like he can. Right, we still can't catch him, but we can dodge him. Right, we can dodge them. Right, we can dodge them.
Speaker 1:We're playing the game and mo fires a cannon at me, hits me in my chin. Now, if you ever look closely at me, I got a little tattered pattern underneath my chin on the right side. That is the dodgeball scar that I still got. I don't remember what happened after, because I got knocked out of the game of the game. I didn't get knocked out come on, man, tougher than that so I got knocked out.
Speaker 1:So it's just mo and mel. Mo is firing these, boom, hitting the back of the wall, bouncing back. Boom hit the wall, bounce back to him. Mel just dodged. It was like yeah, that was the male scream, so he's trying.
Speaker 1:So eventually one ball gets caught on our side and in these rules at the ymca, if you shot the ball and make it, your whole team comes back. And mo was not having his. I could. You know mo's, I this, I can do it all on my own. I don't need you guys. Moe got it. He's doing Jaren right now. So Jaren from Dragon Ball Super, where he thought he could take the whole team all by himself because he thought it was so powerful.
Speaker 1:Anyway, so Mel gets the ball, shoots it, it goes in, our whole team is back and it's a numbers game. Now we're just like it's over, right, it's uh, cm punk. It's clobbering time. We're gonna get him, but mo don't have it. He's still slinging, knocking heads off his shoulder, heads off his shoulders, killing people out there. There's blood everywhere, but eventually we do the same tactic where one of us throw high and gets his legs and we get him, and when we got him he was mad. He ain't gonna lie, he was mad. But you know he's a sportsmanship like no good game, guys, good game, blah, blah, blah. And that was. That was one of the one of the stories that I remember particularly we were having. We had YMCA battles, right so.
Speaker 1:But the next couple of weeks I guess Mo was planning stuff, right. So we one time we were in some we didn't go to the Y. He came to my house, we ordered pizza, we were eating pizza and everything. He said, hey, hey, mike, why don't you invite Mel over? I said invite Mel over. He said, yeah, man, invite Mel over. I said, yeah, man, invite Mel over man. I said y'all cool like that. He said, yeah, man, we cool man, just invite him over punk. I said, okay, debo, it's cool. So I would call Mel. We were planning and I, hey, come on over, we're gonna have pizza there. He said, cool, he come over and everything. So Mo came first. Mo was there first chilling, you know, at the house already and he's like when Mel come, let me know.
Speaker 1:You say Rover or Red Rover or something like that. I'm like what he said say Red Rover, man? I said, alright, man, six foot four, bully, I got you right. So my doorbells ring Ding dong, ding dong that was my dad's doorbell and I pull up. I go downstairs and, uh, I greet mel, yeah, I greet mel. Wide eye, like a wide eye, like hey, man, what's up? He said so, what's up, what's wrong with you? I said, man, nothing's wrong with you, nothing's wrong with me. Man, what's wrong with you? Said nothing. Man, you, you freaking me out. Man, what's wrong with you? I? I said nothing, man, you freaking me out. Man, what's wrong with you? I said nothing, man, just, you know, I got this new game on PlayStation as we're going upstairs.
Speaker 1:So we got this new game on PlayStation called Red Rover and Mo jumps out like hey, punk. And we start WWE wrestling in the middle of my, in the middle of the living room, right. So we're wrestling and all that stuff and of course, moe don't sell to nobody. Moe didn't sell. Well, we put him in the striped shooter my legs are too strong and we couldn't do it. Hit him with a super kick. No, you hit me in my chest. We had so much fun back in the day.
Speaker 1:Alright, so the moral of this story is Mo picked up mail jackknife power, bombed him into my dad's couch and broke the legs of the couch. We are freaking out here. We're like, oh my God, my dad's going to beat me as soon as he sees this couch. I can't believe what we did and what we're going to do. So we went to this local store the belts, whatever. It's a store down the street where I, where I, was living, and we super glued it. We super glued it and set it up where the leg could stand. But if you put you sat down on it, it will crumble. So Mo and Mel left, left me with my dad when he comes home. So I, I, I left, left me with my dad when he comes home. So I, I cooked him, I cooked him dinner. Right, I cooked him dinner and he came in. Oh, man came in, sat down. As soon as he sat down, the couch broke, boom. I said dang. He said, yeah, well, uh, uh, michael. I says, uh, well, this is, this is my mom's couch and it's really old. I guess we're going to have to get another one. I said, man, it's been around since I was born. He said, yeah, carlos, you're right, we're going to have to get a new couch. I said, whew, escape that one, right.
Speaker 1:So after the YMCA, maurice would go and play. So he would go play for the school. And our schools were divided by three schools. We had Wilson, garfield and GW, george, george Washington and uh, mo will go to George Washington and dominate. He will dominate over there Football and basketball Mostly.
Speaker 1:That would translate all the way to high school and high school we, we connected in broadcasting and we had a great time in broadcasting. If I could tell you the stories of what we did and I'm not saying just me and mo, because we were, we were the uh, minorities, no pun intended, in that class. There were some crazy people in broadcast, but we had a lot of fun. We did broadcasting together, we hung out together and everything, and we even did take that back. We even did broadcasting baseball. Now imagine how dry baseball is. Imagine doing baseball at high school where you don't have you know you're trying to learn the art of broadcasting where you don't have dead air. So when you have dead air that people lose interest and stuff and we're live. We're live on the air.
Speaker 1:89.5 WHSS that was my thing WHSS me and Mo would do it and it would be like 15-20 seconds. We're just looking at each other like, well, you gonna say something, you gonna say something, and all that stuff. Mo would also go on to play at a high school level and watching him play I'm like dog, he's a, he's good. Like Mo is good, mo is. Mo is a good football player. Mo is a good basketball player. You know I'm watching some of the things that he plays and he would get as high as he was on varsity and maybe a couple starts here and there. But I remember his basketball career more than anything. The reason why is because when he played he didn't get that many minutes like and everything but the rotation.
Speaker 1:See the thing about 90s basketball, 90s football in Hamilton we didn't branch out a lot, we did a lot of option in the 90s and it's weird for me to say that now because when I look at football today it's completely different. So if you were a starter in the 90s, you started almost every game. There was no different packages or anything like that. And the same went with basketball. If you were coach's son, really favorable with the coach and everything you played. There's one particular moment Hamilton basketball. We're in the playoffs. Hamilton is known for its baseball and basketball, not football. Um, so we made it to the playoffs. And when, when hamilton makes the basketball playoffs, everybody's excited, everybody goes, we start traveling and everything. We uh, they make it so far. Where they make I think it's regionals in dayton and back in day.
Speaker 1:I got the cd and Mo's like yo, let me borrow that CD player while I'm on the bus. I'm like cool man, because you know I'm riding with the principal just to go, because you know my dad, he worked, so I couldn't, couldn't ride with him. He didn't want to go, and so I ride with the principal. He said he's off on a ride. I'm going like I don't want to miss any Hamilton history, you know. So we go and the game's not going in our favor, right, and we're down by a good 15, 20 and mo gets in. So I'm like okay, uh, yeah, my boy mo's and I'm cheering him on. Yeah, let's go, mo, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:And then the first play the first play mo's in. He's playing somebody. He hits the guy foul and breaks his leg or arm I think it was leg, but I want to say his leg arm. He broke the kid. I'm like, oh, we had to. You know, the ambulance came out, it carted this kid off. He was, he was hurt. I mean, he looked bad, he was like he went through, he went through the juggernaut. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:I'm like, bro, what did you do? They said, man, I don't know, man, I was just so hyped off your CD that you played. I said what song is on it? It's like the Onyx. You know, shut him down, shut him down. What that song with DMX and everything. I got so hyped, so that's all. I killed him. I said, you sure did you better write him a letter or everything.
Speaker 1:He killed the kid. He did. I don't know what happened to him, but I'm pretty sure he passed away. I'm kidding, he didn't actually die, just had a broken. He broke something on him, right. So that was Maurice man. That was Maurice man, and today his kids are flourishing so much and I think one's about to go to play football in Virginia. And you know the other one, his other sons and even his daughter are very athletic and successful in everything they do.
Speaker 1:So that's what prompted the podcast is because I want to let them know and I want to let the world know that my friend, maurice was also great at what he did and a good man at that. You know, everybody doesn't get their flowers and opportunity and I guarantee if Mo would have got his opportunity he would have been super successful, he would have been so successful. But, you know, not in the cards. So I was like man, you know what His birthday is coming around in March. I want to give him something he can remember, like something that you know as his best friend in high school and everything you know as his best friend in high school and everything. And seeing him as a young teenager who threw the ball like crazy at dodgeball and was excellent in basketball and excellent in football, an overall good dude, I retired him right. I went out and replicated his high school jersey and made him a GOAT, one of the greatest of all times. And even though you know life has separated us and you're doing your thing over there and I'm doing my thing over there, I have never forgotten how great you really are, my friend, and I want you to know that and I'm putting it out there in front of the whole world to let you know you're special, you always have been and you always will be and you will always be the great mo moberg. But I will end it on one funny story.
Speaker 1:Um, one time we went to a party and, uh, he was sloppy drunk. I've never seen Mo drunk before, right, he got that Stevie Wonder like Bob or no, the Ray Charles Bob and everything. He said man, I'm hungry, man, go get something to eat. I said, well, what do you want? He said man, do you want to slam a case? A case of White Castle burgers was 30 burgers, right, he's like, yeah, get a case. Man. I said, all right, man, cool, are you going to have? No, I ain't got no money, man, just get, get. Get the case. Like, okay, shoot, all right. So we get the case. We get the case 30 burgers, 30 mini White Castle burgers.
Speaker 1:You can't, you can't, you can't finish them all. I don't think I've ever finished them all and lived. You know what happens when you eat white castle. Let's not play silly right and shout out to white castle because this is freaking delicious back then. Now I'm old, I'm older, nah, nah, that's a death wish now.
Speaker 1:So so we get the 30 case and I stay in the car because he's drunk. I go in the white castle, get 30 case. Come on, say give me the case. Give me the case, man, it's all right, cool man. Take the case. Man opens up and small, just swallows three of them like that. I said, okay, that's three less than you. I got 15. You got 12. He said, no man, I'm hungry, bro, I'm hungry. We go back to his house. He smashes at least 20 of those bad boys. And I finished. You know he's 6'4 giant, still growing. Smash, at least smash 20 of them. But I couldn't. I couldn't have ate. I couldn't have ate 20 of those anyway. But I thought that was a funny story to end the show on Maurice. You are special. Just remember that, bro. And that's the end of the show.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to WDYM. I hope you had a good time. I did, but there is a part 2. Part 2 to this and that's the end of the show. Thank you for listening to the WDYM. I hope you had a good time. I did, but there is a part two to this. What about Mel? Right, we talked about Mo a little bit, but what about Mel? Mel is special too. Mel is special. Let me take that back, but we'll talk about that in the next episode of the WDW. Thank you guys for tuning in. As always, peace out girls. Girl Scout, boy Scout, I'm out.
