If there are second chances in life, Ted Williams should be the poster boy. The homeless man with the baseball moniker has skyrocketed into national prominence as “the beggar with the voice.”

I think I may have driven past Williams once or twice at the I-71/Hudson Street exit in Columbus. If I did, I paid him no more mind than any other panhandler who stands on the corner with a sign “please give me something.”

You see, I’m jaded about the whole panhandling thing. I worked in downtown Columbus for 11 years, and there was hardly a day that went by when I wasn’t approached by someone who had an elaborate hard-luck story. In one case, the same man who days earlier had asked for money to get home to his mom in Akron walked up with a flimsy tool belt and asked for money to call a locksmith — seems he’d locked his equipment in his car. When I mentioned that his story had changed from one week to the next, he denied it and walked away cursing.

Then there’s the fellow who walks up and down High Street across from the Ohio State campus before concerts at local rock venues, making his living on change and well wishes. While many others probably know his name, I don’t. It’s a career for him, and I’m no employer.

I’m jaded, but not ignorant. I know there are those who are in real need. But how to tell the difference? Every story is a good one, and I don’t have the luxury of peeling off wads of bills when I don’t know where it’s going.

Had Columbus Dispatch videographer Doral Chenoweth III taken my attitude, Ted Williams would never have become famous. And he may never have gotten a second chance. The Red Sox namesake would be forever retiring at the end of the day to a tent behind some God-forsaken gas station. But Chenoweth shot some video of Williams and asked him to do something in a radio voice.

By God, the guy is good! And the video went viral.

Now, broadcast agents, radio stations and television networks around the nation have taken an interest in Columbus, Ohio’s, Ted Williams. The question is what will happen next?

Word has it that he has been so overwhelmed by the attention, that he snuck off a plane in New York this morning to avoid the crowds. I say, good for him.

While Williams has his second chance, now’s no time to blow it. Take it easy, take it slow. Moving from a street corner to a steady job will not come easily to someone who has lived the life he has led. Claiming to be clean and sober now for at least two years, Williams is now faced with decisions he could never have imagined.

I’m happy for him. Today he reunited with his mother in New York, an emotional reunion for both. I hope his final chapter is the feel-good story we all want it to be.

The proof of the pudding will be this: When the media storm dies down, and when steady work finally comes — the Dispatch reports that he already has signed a contract with Kraft as the voice in a commercial airing on ESPN during the Fight Hunger Bowl on Sunday — will he be able to transition? Or will the same things that dragged him down before screw him up again?

Williams says he has found God, and that’s what has turned his life around.  If true, every person of faith should take it as a life lesson in how the impossible can become possible.

I know one thing. I will never look at a beggar the same way again.

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