A Baseball & a Change of Mind
By Jeffrey Page
There are some things that need to be said right here at the outset.
–I love baseball.
–I don’t like the Yankees. Never have. But among individual players, I liked Don Mattingly and Bernie Williams.
–Since he began his career at shortstop for the Yankees, I’ve liked Derek Jeter. To me – admittedly no dyed-in-the-wool sports fanatic – Jeter seems to play the game with an admirable selflessness. He talks about “the team” a lot, and I believe him. I don’t know if I’m naïve about this.
–For the last few days, I’ve been taken with Christian Lopez’s own selflessness, which seems to be at very least as pure and unsullied as Jeter’s. Lopez is the 23-year old guy from Highland Mills who is a Yankees fan, a Jeter fan, has $100,000 in unpaid student loans, and who managed to retrieve the ball Jeter smacked for his 3,000th major league hit, a home run to leftfield.
Much has been made of Lopez’s willingness to present the ball to Jeter without demanding a dime. Wow, I thought, this is a man to be admired. I still think so. This, I thought, is a man you’d be proud to call your son. I still think so. This, I thought, is a man who understands that there is more than money involved when you possess something that your hero yearns for.
I saw the convergence of Jeter and Lopez not as the meeting of one hero and one common man but as the meeting of two men of equal grace.
What Lopez did, I would do, I said to myself.
Then I started thinking about the economy, about that $100,000 Lopez owes for his education, and about the contract Jeter signed with the Yankees just before the start of the season, the contract that gives him $51 million over three years.
That’s $51 million to play a fun game and then take a five-month vacation. That’s $51 million – put another way, $327,000 a week – to do for a living what 300 million other people in this country only dream of as they struggle to make their mortgage payments, wonder if their jobs are secure, worry about the effect of being laid off on their children’s education, and think about this damned economy and whether they’ll survive as the president and the congress turn it into a game of chicken. All this while unable to afford a ticket to a Yankees home game.
I changed my mind. Had I caught that ball out in the leftfield stands, I would have made it available to Jeter for a price.
Because $51 million could pay off the $100,000 student loans of more than 500 people or buy groceries for people trying to make ends meet. Because it’s for nothing more important than playing a game.
This is no shot at Jeter or at Lopez. They did what they had to do.
I would do what I have to do. I would make a deal with Jeter and if I had a kid about to go off to college, I’d rest a little easier tonight. Jeter would have his ball; my kid would have her education.
Jeff can be reached at jeffrey@zestoforange.com
Tags: Jeffrey Page
July 14th, 2011 at 12:45 am
The decision of Lopez to give the ball to his hero was noble. The failure of Jeter to insist upon giving Lopez a generous gratuity was cheap.