As fans, we tend to treat athletes like commodities, automatons who are supposed to perform with a certain level of proficiency purely for our enjoyment. We boo when they fail, justifying this by dint of our having purchased a ticket, as if that gives us some level of ownership in the team and, by extension, the player. We often forget that there is a human being on the receiving end of our catcalls. Writers in the mainstream media and on blogs will rip a player’s performance, effort, and character, with little of the common courtesy you would expect in other contexts. Sure, the media helps give us a glimpse behind the curtain at the people who play the game, but for the most part, we tend to ignore the front of the baseball card for the numbers written on the back.
A number of articles written today reminded me that these are not just a series of names on Baseball-Reference, but are human beings made up of the same messy passel of emotions, strengths, weaknesses, trials, and goals as the rest of us.
The first is a story about Austin Romine, who lost a close cousin to the fighting in Afghanistan a few weeks ago. I highly recommend you read it, as it provides a window into the personal life and pain of a Yankee who is expected to put it all aside and compete for a roster spot. The second is a heart-wrenching story about Chad Cordero, who is trying to make the Blue Jays after throwing 14 MLB innings over the last 3 seasons. This past winter, he and the rest of his family were struck by tragedy:
Nothing since that night — since the phone rang and they raced to the car and drove like hell, only to discover their baby girl Tehya had died — has been normal. They now know statistics about SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome, and have met parents like themselves, with losses new and old, nearly all of them still wondering, “Why us?”
They have endured the unspeakable pain of burying their daughter, of visiting her grave every day — family picnics sometimes, each parent alone with Tehya at others. And eventually, they made the bold decision to head east — east, for baseball — trying to hold together their life as Cordero tries, simultaneously, to hold together his career.
“I want to do it for her,” Chad Cordero said….
He is shaken now. There are times during spring training when he heads to a bathroom stall at the Blue Jays’ complex, closing the door to cry. There will be times ahead — on a plane, on a bus — when he won’t be able to hold back.
“I’m gonna lose it,” he said. “I know it’s gonna happen.”
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Functioning, now, includes baseball. Tuesday, Cordero is due to throw in a major league spring training game for the first time. Trite as it might sound, Tehya will join him.
“I’m just using her as motivation, trying to find strength,” he said, “because I know, now, she’ll always be with me, no matter what.”
She will be with the entire Cordero family. Even Riley, two months shy of her second birthday, hears about Tehya. “We have to remember: she lost a sister,” Jamie said. So when Chad and Jamie speak of her — which they do often — Riley turns her head to the sky and blows Tehya a kiss, her own way of doing what her parents want: Remembering precious little Tehya Irene Cordero, Sept. 12-Dec. 4, 2010.
As a father of 3 little girls, this story made me cry and has been lodged in my mind all afternoon. I know nothing about Chad Cordero or the type of person he is. To be honest, I doubt I have spent more than 5 minutes of my time thinking about Cordero since he has been in the majors, and likely would have continued that trend if I had not seen this story. But I read his awful tale and tried to imagine his pain, and then tried to reconcile that pain with the public nature of his job. He goes out to that pitching mound in front of thousands of people, with many more watching on television, all of whom are judging every aspect of his performance. But few of them know his story, few of them know how hard it is to just stand out on the mound and focus on baseball, to put aside his pain and pitch at the level needed to survive in the majors.
This does not just apply to Cordero, of course. We have no idea what is going on in the minds of most players. Some will say that MLB players are paid a lot of money to perform, and I agree that by accepting those salaries they do put themselves into a position that requires performance no matter the circumstance. That said, no amount of money can force a human being to shutter his personal life into a small area of his mind and simply forget about it when taking the field. I wonder how quick we might be to jump to conclusions regarding things like effort and character if we knew more about players, if we knew about the guy struggling with a poor or abusive marriage, or a dying parent, or a child on drugs. Would we be so quick to judge? Put another way: I know that if I was a Jays fan, I could never draw up the ire against Cordero to boo him if he makes the club and then struggles in April. He’s dealing with his pain and doing the best that he can. Why would you boo?
I am not saying that we should refrain from engaging in healthy discussion and criticism about athletes. Rather, I am suggesting that baseball discourse might benefit from an injection of civility and humanity. Imagine yourself reading everything you say or write about a player directly to him, face to face. If you cannot imagine saying it, how can you write it? The written word should not be used as a weapon of cowardice, to attack people with words that we would never say directly to them. These are human beings with feelings and troubles just like us. Maybe it is time to retract the claws and treat them that way.
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Another similar article is this one (http://bo.st/eBBH6G), from the Boston Globe on Sunday, which chronicles Red Sox prospect Ryan Westmoreland’s journey back from brain surgery.
It’s long, but well worth the time it takes to read.
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Moshe Mandel Reply:
March 22nd, 2011 at 6:49 pm
Thanks for the tip, very interesting stuff.
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Excellent point and one worth be reminded of repeatedly throughout the season.
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I don’t really want to give TJ Simers any more attention than he deserves, but his article (if you can even call it that) on Marcus Thames (who by all accounts is one of the nicer/classier individuals in the game) was pretty contemptible. There are journalists who are trying to report and discuss sports news, and there are “journalists” who try to stir the pot and provoke people to get attention/notoriety. Simers, unfortunately, is one of the many who fall into the latter category.
It boggles my mind that a professional journalist can get away with writing what was basically an uninformed ad hominem attack on a guy who didn’t want to talk to him after he asked some obnoxious questions. I know guys like Simers may drive pageviews, but I’d like to think the LA Times would have some standards of journalistic quality/integrity.
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Moshe Mandel Reply:
March 22nd, 2011 at 11:29 pm
That was part of the inspiration for this column. I started to write an angry screed against Simers before changing direction into something I found more constructive. As you might see, I linked to Simers twice in the column, once in the first paragraph and once in the last.
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“I am not saying that we should refrain from engaging in healthy discussion and criticism about athletes. Rather, I am suggesting that baseball discourse might benefit from an injection of civility and humanity.”
I would only add to that last sentence “…which many a time, it sorely lacks.”
Great piece. Kudos.
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[...] Moshe Mandel of The Yankee Analysts — himself a father of three young girls — reflected on Cordero’s loss and how that changes the nature of the player-fan relationship for…: We have no idea what is going on in the minds of most players. Some will say that MLB players are [...]
Great post Moshe. As a new father, this touches even deeper. Keep up the good work.
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