Baseball Love From Botswana

Season ticket holder cheers on Dores from southern Africa

by Chad Bishop

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt baseball’s reach has certainly stretched significantly further than ever before over recent years. Now head coach Tim Corbin’s program can include Botswana among the places where the black and gold is represented.

Long-time Vanderbilt fan, season ticket holder and self-described “Vandy-holic,” John Tarpley is responsible for giving the Commodores some support from deep in the heart of southern Africa.

“When we moved to Kenya in 2016 I gave up my baseball ticket which was on the wall in the right field bleachers,” Tarpley told VUCommodores.com via email. “I regretted letting that ticket go.”

Tarpley, a Vanderbilt medical school graduate, was a student manager and trainer for the freshman basketball team during the 1962-63 season for Vandy coaches Bobby Bland and Don Knodle. He then worked as a student manager and trainer from 1963-66 for the basketball program – a stretch that included a Southeastern Conference championship in 1965 – and a student assistant trainer for fall and spring football and a freshman baseball manager as an undergraduate.

Once Tarpley’s days in Nashville had come to an end, he and his wife Maggie Tarpley found themselves headed to Nigeria where John began work at the Baptist Medical Centre in Ogbomoso, Nigeria, and at the University College Hospital at the University of Ibadan in Ibadan, Nigeria. Maggie Tarpley joined the Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary.

The two returned to Nashville in 1993 and John Tarpley, who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, spent the next 23 years as a surgical educator while Maggie Tarpley, from Burns, Tennessee, took on the role of education officer for Vanderbilt University Surgery and webmaster for the Association of Program Directors for Surgery. Both remained true in their support for Vanderbilt Athletics with season tickets for football, men’s and women’s basketball and baseball.

 

 

When Tarpley retired from Vanderbilt in 2016, he and his wife departed just days later to return to their calling of working in Africa. But after beginning work in surgical education, research basics and clinical work at the AIC Kijabe Hospital in the central highlands of Kenya, the Tarpleys found they were needed elsewhere.

The Tarpleys and their colleagues are now in position to launch three residency programs in January at the University of Botswana.

“We were specifically recruited and encouraged to consider Botswana to try and launch a general surgery residency program – there being no surgical, obstetrics and gynecology or anesthesiology residency programs in Botswana in 2018,” John Tarpley explained. “We explored, discussed and prayed about Kenya vs. Botswana. (Maggie) is ‘driving’ these last five years (in Africa). She felt we were needed more in Botswana than Kenya. I agreed. We agreed. We hope to be here through August of 2021.”

In Nashville as recently as November – for Vanderbilt men’s basketball coach Jerry Stackhouse’s debut – John Tarpley decided then and there to recover those baseball season tickets he had given up a few years prior. He spoke with a Vandy ticket representative at a postgame gathering and mulled it over.

Weeks later the Tarpleys were proud owners of two Vanderbilt baseball season tickets – despite being more than 8,000 miles away.

“I sought to sign up for a baseball seat in anticipation of being there regularly for the 2022 season and as long as I am able to attend,” Tarpley said. “A retirement bucket list top item.”

So until the first pitch of the 2022 season at Hawkins Field is thrown, Maggie Tarpley will continue to advocate for improving resources for education with a focus on increasing research interest, skills and quality while John Tarpley will teach and educate.

And his thoughts will never stray too far from West End where he learned some of his greatest lessons of all.

“As a program director in surgery my vision was/is to abet, equip, help my residents improve, hone their skills, develop great clinical judgement and realize they are most-blessed. I try to stay humble, eschew arrogance and help those in need,” Tarpley wrote. “(It’s) not too far removed from taping ankles, washing socks, arranging things on road trips and encouraging folks when they were down – helping others improve, function and focus.”