For two years, I had a locker next to Ron Blomberg at a gym in Alpharetta.

I knew he was friendly. I knew everyone liked him. I knew he never walked through a room without starting three conversations before he reached the door. What I didn’t fully reckon with — at least not right away — was that the guy next to me in the locker room had a bat sitting in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

That bat got there on April 6, 1973, at Fenway Park, when Ron stepped to the plate as the first designated hitter in Major League Baseball history. Luis Tiant walked him on five pitches. The Yankees lost 15 to 5. And the game of baseball changed permanently.

Ron will tell you he screwed it up. He says it with a grin.

The story nobody was telling

Here’s what I’ve learned after more than 40 years behind a camera: the most important stories in any community aren’t the ones that get assigned. They’re the ones hiding in the daily life of the people already around you — at the coffee shop, at church, at the gym.

I pitched the Ron Blomberg story to Appen Media because I recognized what I was sitting next to. Not because an editor called me. Not because it showed up on a calendar. Because I had spent two years showing up at the same place, at the same time, and paying attention.

What the locker room taught me

Glenn Prince, who also works out at the same gym, described Ron this way: “Ron is the coolest guy — just a regular older guy. Whenever he’s in the locker room, he’s carrying on multiple conversations at one time with everyone.”

That’s exactly right. And that’s exactly why the story works.

Ron Blomberg is not performing accessibility. He’s not doing public relations. He is genuinely the same person in the locker room that he was in Yankee Stadium — open, warm, and completely unguarded. When I brought my camera to OneLife Fitness and later to his Roswell home, I wasn’t introducing myself to a subject. I was showing up as a neighbor with a camera.

That changes everything about what you’re able to photograph.

The image of Ron grimacing on the shoulder press — it hurts to raise his hands above his shoulders now, but the 78-year-old hasn’t missed a workout in seven decades — exists because he wasn’t performing for me. The frame of him stopping to talk with a fellow gym member on his way out the door exists because that’s just what he does, and he forgot to stop doing it because I was there.

That’s the access two years in a locker room buys you. No press credential gets you that.

Two locations, one truth

We shot at two locations that morning. The gym first — available light, people in motion, Ron in his element. Then his home in Roswell, where the walls tell the rest of the story: a framed Sports Illustrated cover from June 1973, a photo of Luis Tiant, his 1977 World Series ring from George Steinbrenner, memorabilia from a career that injuries cut shorter than it should have been.

The gym frames show you who Ron is today. The home frames show you the weight of what he carried — and still carries. Together they tell a complete story that neither location could tell alone.

The pitch

Some photographers I know wait to be assigned. I understand that instinct — it feels safer, more professional, less presumptuous.

But the stories I’m most proud of over four decades are the ones I recognized before anyone asked me to look. The Ron Blomberg story was sitting next to me in a locker room for two years. At some point, I had a responsibility to do something about it.

I pitched it to Appen Media. They said yes. And last Friday, I spent a morning photographing a neighbor I already knew — which is the best possible way to work.

Ron Blomberg still shows up at the gym. He still makes friends with everyone in the room. He still can’t get from the weight machines to the parking lot without stopping four times to talk.

He’s been doing it his whole life. He’s not about to stop.