Great Players, Great People

The MLB winter meetings are under way in Dallas and there has been a little bit of action although perhaps not as much as I might like to see.

Prior to the start of the meetings my team, the Mets, allowed their star shortstop Jose Reyes to escape NY and head to Miami to join the Marlins. He signed a 6-year, 106-million dollar contract and stays in the same division as the team that signed him and raised him.
This particular deal stings as a Mets fan. Reyes was the catalyst of the club and had a great year leading the league in hitting even though he missed 29 games. He did miss a bunch of games over the past few years so since he is approaching 30 that was getting to be a concern. But it was still a risk worth taking for the Mets to keep him in NY. Obviously the Marlins thought the risk was worthwhile.
The Mets simply have financial issues since the team owners were ripped off by Bernie Madoff. But this is exactly why Mets fans want the Wilpons to sell the team to somebody financially in a better situation.

The real big news happened last night though when the Marlins, preparing to play ball in a brand new stadium with a retractable roof, offered St. Louis Cardinal firstbaseman Albert Pujols a ten-year deal reportedly worth 220 million dollars. I did just hear that the Cardinals made a counter offer although those terms were not released. There has not been any comment from Pujols or his agent at this time. There apparently is a hang up over a no-trade clause that Pujols wants but the Marlins will not give because of the length of the contract.
Frankly I would like to see Pujols stay in St. Louis. This isn’t because he would be in the same division as the Mets now but rather because St. Louis is such a great baseball city and Pujols is one of those future hall of famers that I hold in high regards such as Stan Musial, also a Cardinal, or Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle who played his entire career with one team. It’s a trivial point really, but when players who make the Hall of Fame play with a bunch of teams what team hat do they put on the plaque? That question always gets asked. It should be a no-brainer, in my opinion.

By the way, that 22 million a year would not even make Pujols the highest paid first baseman in baseball. That honor goes to the Phillies Ryan Howard who gets 25 million a year and the Yankees Mark Teixera who, I believe, is at 23 million.
That is despite Pujols arguably being the greatest player in this particular era.

There is still no word about the other major free agent out there, Prince Fielder. Beyond that some people claim that Texas Ranger pitcher C.J. Wilson is a key free agent, but he choked hard in the playoffs and World Series so I don’t see teams piling up to pay him boatloads of money. There was a rumor that the Rangers offered him a 4-year 60-million dollar deal as a counter-offer to a rumored 6-year deal from a “nameless” team that his agent floated out there. But then my baseball hero Nolan Ryan, CEO and President of the Rangers, said that it was news to him.

I do have a hunch that if Pujols stays in St. Louis, the Marlins make a play for Fielder. It seems to make a bunch of sense since they could probably get him for less and that less would still be much more than Fielder might get in other cities.

Does anyone care that the NBA is going to play a shortened season this year since they have worked out that labor agreement? Not me. I’m not a basketball fan anyway with one major exception.
In my state, Delaware, we have one of the greatest female basketball players in the country, if not the world. Her name is Elena Delle Donne.
I’ve been able to watch this young lady play since her 8^th grade season at Ursuline Academy in Wilmington, DE.
Delle Donne was a phenom about whom people were talking before I had a chance to see her in school. She was part of a couple of AAU National Championship teams and then won a few state championships with her Ursuline team.
Elena is a 6-5 forward who might have one of the best shots in ALL of basketball, and that would include professional men as well.
She is also simply a class act and if you search her name you can find out a lot more about her.
While at Ursuline she was courted by legendary college women’s basketball coaches who came to Wilmington to watch her play and they included Gino Auriemma from Connecticut and Pat Summit from Tennessee.
She originally decided to go to UConn but then stayed here in Delaware and was ineligible to play during her freshman year playing volleyball instead.
Now she is in her 3^rd year playing basketball at UD and had lead the team to its best start in school history and its first-ever top-25 national ranking.
This past year she was on the US team that won the gold medal in the World Cup or whatever it was called and she should be a candidate to make the Olympic team for 2012.
I finally had a chance to watch her play at the collegiate level the other day and without a video camera in my hands like I had for all of those years while she was in high school while working with my video company.
So what happens? The Blue Hens win, of course, but she gets rested by the coach for too much of the game. There are probably 3000 people in the stands most of whom would not have even been there if she wasn’t on the team (and no offense to the other girls on the team a few of whom I know also.) The stadium is selling food, drinks and merchandise on top of the tickets and she gets rotated in and out like one of the regular players.
Meanwhile she is chasing a national scoring championship also and ended up short of her average (30.4) for the game (23.)
The guy sitting next to me is trying to tell me all of these stories about Elena, all of which I knew (not that I am a personal friend or anything but I’ve just heard them since I’ve been around for years.) Now he is pissed off because the coach is resting her. This guy came all the way up from GEORGIA to watch her play in this particular game! He is calling the coach all sorts of names and I’m trying not to laugh but at the same time I agree with him.
He makes one real great point that I have made over the years and it’s that she is getting penalized for being too good. Here she has a chance to win a scoring championship that she deserves to win because she works hard and is talented but to “make it fair” for the others or to spread around playing time, Elena gets benched. We both agreed that the other players who didn’t get a lot of playing time should have gotten rotated in to get a chance to play with Elena since she makes all of them better on the court.
The same guy, Ralph was his name, also expands on his point and says that we keep doing this in America too. When somebody succeeds we chop them down. We tax them more, we regulate them more and do whatever it takes to “even the playing field” so everyone else can have more, or whatever the lame excuse is.  

I agreed with him whole heartedly.

The irony is, however, that Elena Delle Donne, just like many others I have met who are successful and talented, is also very humble. She is completely aware of her gifts and is as grateful for them as anyone can be. (That story of why is also out there and one which is not necessary for me to write here.) No one would hear her complain that because she is in that “one percent” of people who are blessed with her level of talent that others are trying (whether intentionally or not) to keep her even with the others around her.  

I try to surround myself with people who want to move forward and succeed because they work harder and overcome obstacles. I have a low tolerance for those who are jealous of what anyone else has and believes things should be taken from them just to “make it fair.”

Not that the UD coach is really doing this, mind you. She is keenly aware of what Elena Delle Donne is doing for her career right now. In actuality the team had a game the following night and rotating players wasn’t a bad thing to do with a big lead for the Blue Hens. But this was just a great time to talk about someone special and also make a broader point at the same time. See how clever I can be once every other month or so?

Done