Two Stories; Giving and Taking

This is a story about two stories.  Both are typically American.  Both reflect values.  One story is about values cherished.  The other is about values gone awry.  The stories tell a story; about what is good in America and what is wrong with America.  Each story is about responsibility; accepted and denied. Both stories were on the recent nightly news and were broadcast within minutes of each other.  One story can warm the heart and bring a tear.  The other story is a groin kick that makes you wonder about the double dealing we often think pervades our society.    

A Convenient Epiphany

In the capitals of our nation a person’s worth is defined by the size of his bank account, his clout or his political expediency.

There has been a mass epiphany within the ranks of the Republican Party's politicians.  For many in The Grand Old Party, the notion of gay marriage no longer poses the threat to western civilization that it did about 5 months ago.  Let me think, just what was it that happened 5 months ago?  Oh yeah, I remember, that was along about the time of the last election when the self-described Party of Lincoln got shellacked when it came to garnering votes from just about everyone who isn’t an old white guy.  And just for the record I'm an OWG myself. I just happen to be an OWG who doesn't relate at all to the GOP. 

What's Happened Here?

When did it all change?  Why did it all change?  How did it all change so much?  I grew up in the suburbs of San Mateo.  It was a middle class neighborhood in the hills above the town, on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula, about 30 minutes south of San Francisco itself.  It was the fifties and sixties; a time when we boomers lived the American Dream defined by well-manicured lawns, ranch style homes and the notion that we, the children, would live in a better America. 

Sequestering Morality

Emergency responders like the ones who are here today — their ability to help communities respond to and recover from disasters will be degraded.  Border Patrol agents will see their hours reduced.  FBI agents will be furloughed.  Federal prosecutors will have to close cases and let criminals go. 

~  Remarks by President Obama on Sequestration, February, 19th 2013

"A culture that victimizes it's weakest members is a culture in decline."  ~  John Barry of The Southern Tier AIDS Program.

We’ve been sequestered!  Or is it sequestrated?  I don’t know; either way it comes out to the same thing.  We’ve been screwed.  By our government.  Again.  Actually I couldn’t say whether or not I’m actually part of the “we” that’s being screwed.  I’m in the comfortable middle class and I imagine I’ll come through this without really noticing much.  If I decide I want to take a flight somewhere I might have to show up at the airport a little earlier; so I lose a little sleep.

Life is Not Fair

The game of life is hard to play
I'm gonna lose it anyway
The losing card I'll someday lay
So this is all I have to say

~  Suicide is Painless (M*A*S*H Theme).  Music by Johnny Mandel, Lyrics by Mike Altman

"Life is not fair; get used to it."
~  Bill Gates

"The world is not fair and often fools, cowards, and the selfish hide in high places."
~  Bryant H. McGill; Author and poet.

Within the short space of a week I was reminded more than once that life is not fair. They came of course by way of that universally respected organ of philosophic discussion; Facebook.  

One was a debate about 49er quarterbacks.  I’d expressed displeasure over Alex Smith, the starting quarterback apparently losing his job because his understudy had performed well the week before while Smith sat out with a concussion.  My contention was that Smith had been playing well over the course of the season and done nothing to lose his status as the starting player.  There was an exchange of opinions over the merits of one player over the other with one poster punctuating his comment with, “Life’s not fair.”

A few days later a friend posted a commencement address made (allegedly) by Bill Gates in which he listed 11 things that they don’t teach you in high school.  Rule number one on the list of Gatesian sagacity was; “Life is not fair – get used to it.”  Ouch. 

Let me make it clear, these weren’t the first times I’ve come across that pearl, “Life’s not fair.”   You hear it all the time.  At times its glib bullshit – something to say when you’ve really nothing more of any substance to add to the conversation.  Other times it’s used as Gates intended; a sort of hardnosed, Darwinian, tough love approach to survival in this veil of tears.

An Open Letter From a Breaking Heart

This is a post written by Calvin Peña.  I met Calvin, who is one of my daughter's friends, through social media.  This post by Calvin started out as a message that he sent me in response to my last post; America Heal Thyself IV.  His words resonated so I asked him permission to publish it as a post.

An Open Letter From a Breaking Heart

Calvin Peña

Even when I was a regular church-goer I never thought I would break down and cry at a Bible verse.  Think again.  I came across a verse in Matthew 25 recently that brought me to uncontrollable tears: "He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, that whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me." 

America Heal Thyself IV

Final Part

People over Money 

This is the last post of four dealing with healthcare in America.  Before commencing I should point out some important facts about myself to provide perspective.  I’ve always had health insurance through an employer and still do.  I’ve never complained about the premiums or copays.  I would not flinch if my rates or taxes were increased to provide healthcare for each and every citizen.  There are always personal sacrifices that we can make for the good of all.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

From The Declaration of Independence.

Of the thirty-three developed nations, thirty two have universal healthcare.  The lone exception is the United States.  How could that be?  In 1776, when America was just a concept a group of patriots signed a document that established as unalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Integral to two of those rights, life and the pursuit of happiness is good health; or at the very least the opportunity for good health. And yet we find ourselves mired in a cantankerous debate over whether we should have universal health care anchored by a robust government system.  If we were a truly civilized society, we would have long ago figured out how to accomplish this. 

Nearly 50 years ago America experienced a similar debate about healthcare.  It was a time when the elderly were tied to their children for survival.  There was no healthcare system in place for the elderly to turn to.  In 1959, George Reedy, the man who 5 years later would become Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary summed up the status of America’s elderly; “Somehow the problem must be dramatized in some way so that Americans will know that the problem of the aging amounts to a collective responsibility.  America is no longer a nation in which grandmother and grandfather can spend their declining years in a log cabin doing odd jobs and taking care of the grandchildren.” Johnson took on the challenge and in 1965, Medicare became a reality.  Oh there was a hue and cry and the alarm of creeping socialism.  Said Ronald Reagan; “If you don’t [stop Medicare] and I don’t do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”  Well I’m closing in on the sunset years and I still don’t have a portrait of Joe Stalin on the wall and contrary to Reagan’s dire warning Medicare was actually liberating.  America isn’t bound by the shackles of despotic Socialism but the elderly are no longer tied to their children.  They live longer more productive lives on their own, assured that their medical needs are taken care of. Young families no longer have to wonder what to do with the grandparents when planning the family vacation.  They no longer have to choose between saving for their children’s college education and keeping granny healthy.

Once again we’re in a healthcare debate; this time over universal coverage.  We’re told by conservative pundits that if it’s a government program, it’s bound to fail.  Nothing that the government does ever turns out right.  These are words that come from the self-same individuals who will regale us with the greatness of America; a nation that can accomplish whatever it sets its collective mind to. The nation that sponsored the exploration and opening of the West in the 19^th century, facilitated the carving of a canal in Panama, spearheaded the downfall of Axis tyranny, built the Federal Highway System, funded science research that is second to none, possesses the most powerful military ever known, landed a man on the moon and for decades operated a successful space shuttle.  We did all of these things yet we can’t find a way to make healthcare for everyone a reality? When it’s convenient to make their case, the Palin’s and Limbuagh’s will always decry the incompetence of American government.

At the heart of the debate is money; the rising costs of healthcare; an aging population putting pressure on funding and medical resources; the impact on the deficit.  We’ve been told that to have government sponsored healthcare is not sustainable; that it’s impossible.  I have to believe that finding the means to fund universal healthcare is possible.  This country spends mountains of money on programs that nobody bats an eyelash over.  Consider a military budget that dwarfs the rest of the world.  Our two “potential military opponents” Russia and China have combined military budgets of 142.5 billion dollars a figure that is dwarfed by our budget of 739.3 billion dollars.  And while Mitt Romney is ready to add another two trillion dollars to the defense budget he finds that we can’t afford medical care for the citizenry. 

Investing in the health of Americans is a positive investment but if you're looking for investments to fume over there are plenty out there.  How about Pakistan?  Why did we never have a contentious national argument over doling out some 20 billion dollars to Pakistan? Over the last 10 years we poured money into a nation that not only gave aid and comfort to insurgents fighting against us in the Afghan war, it pretended not to notice a tall Arab terrorist hooked to a dialysis machine living next door to their military academy; and then they were outraged when we killed the man.  But Pakistan was Bin Laden’s friend years before he was on our radar.  That was a time when the Soviets had left Afghanistan and we poured countless millions and more millions into Pakistan while it supported Bin Laden and the precursors to the Taliban. Where was the outrage over giving money to a nation playing us for fools?  We can support a rogue nation that works against our own interests but we’re pennywise and pound foolish with healthcare for our own.    

Over the course of three posts, I’ve not discussed the debate over money.  I’ve not delved into the minutiae over the funding of universal healthcare and I certainly won’t begin here.  That’s because at its very core it is not a money issue, it is a moral issue.  And yet the two, money and morality, have become tragically intertwined.  We’ve come to a hell of a situation in which people cannot afford to get sick. Consider that:

     Crushing hospital and medical bills are the cause of most personal bankruptcies. The results of a 2007 study by the American Medical Association states: Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical; 92% of these medical debtors had medical debts over $5000, or 10% of pretax family income. The rest met criteria for medical bankruptcy because they had lost significant income due to illness or mortgaged a home to pay medical bills. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes, and had middle-class occupations. Three quarters had health insurance. Using identical definitions in 2001 and 2007, the share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 49.6%. In logistic regression analysis controlling for demographic factors, the odds that a bankruptcy had a medical cause was 2.38-fold higher in 2007 than in 2001. The study also found that; The share of bankruptcies attributable to medical problems rose by 50% between 2001 and 2007.

      People put off medical care until such time that they can afford it. US News reported that a woman in New Jersey had a 51 pound tumor removed.  The tumor was not only malignant; it was putting pressure on her interior vena cava which returns blood to the heart.  The tumor grew to its appalling size not because the woman was obese and didn’t know it was there or because she was chronically stupid.  No she was forced to wait until Medicare kicked in before she could have the required surgery. What would have happened to her if she were not on the cusp of Medicare?

     
And then there are those not as lucky as the New Jersey woman; the ones that simply die; something that Mitt Romney assures us doesn’t happen; “We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”  Well according to a Harvard Medical School study, some 45000 people a year die due to lack of medical insurance.  The study also found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

     I imagine that someone could try to make the argument that the study is flawed; the numbers inflated.  Okay let’s grant that the numbers are inflated. From what? 35,000?  20,000?  10,000?  Is there a point where the figure becomes acceptable? If there is then please go to the comments section and fill in the blank.
 

Beware the sanctimonious hypocrites; the so called God fearing folks, Huckabee, Santorum and their apostles, the Tea Party.  Phony Christians and blustering humbugs; they claim a franchise on the defense of life and bloviate about the moral decay of America while their actions and policies expose their meanness and cruelty caring not one fig for a family on the edge of poverty that suffers a parent with untreated high blood pressure or a child with autism and no recourse but to simply soldier on.  It doesn’t touch the souls of these "Christian soldiers" that over 35% of uninsured children go a year or more without seeing a doctor. Carrying a Bible in one hand and a bludgeon in the other their twisted creed distorts Christian charity as creeping Socialism.  An inbreeding of right wing ideology, tub thumping evangelical Protestantism and unbridled paranoia seeks to marginalize “the least of these” as Christ called them.

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

The Book of Matthew; Chapter 25; 41 – 45.

In my first post on healthcare I quoted a man’s response to an article on healthcare. He said; “if u want insurance buy it, if not pay Cash..if not, go Die..”  As loathsome as I find that sentiment I have to say that I’ve more respect for this fellow than those that choose to remain behind a veil. 

I’ve long ago grown weary of the whiners on social media bitching about Obamacare and how its going to raise their insurance rates and lighten their bank accounts.  Tough shit. I have someone close to me with type 1 diabetes.  She did nothing wrong except sit by while her pancreas decided to short circuit.  I’ve a wife who’s gone toe to toe with cancer three times, won each time and shown more courage and character than some pudknocker sniveling over having to cut back on his Coors ration because my wife deserves coverage as much as he does.  I’ve a friend with a child who has a heart condition.  I’ve another friend with a quirky thyroid that requires medication.  One with a history of spinal surgeries.  These people are all a job loss away from possibly losing health coverage and losing a chance to thrive, to be productive members of society to love and be loved by their families and of losing those unalienable rights of life and the pursuit of happiness.

And so to those whiners I have a challenge and a parting sentiment.

Your challenge is to become courageous and honest and stand up for your view to the people who would be most affected. Your challenge is to go to a friend with some affliction; you must know somebody; we all do.  Look that person in the eye and say these words; "You know if you ever lose your health insurance I guess it sucks for you.”

And my parting sentiment?  I don’t give a good goddamn about your fucking bank account.   

Money; The Root of Regulation

"Regulation is strangling businesses of all sizes in California, and we've got to streamline regulation so it's easy, not hard, to do business."
Meg Whitman 

"That role for government is breaking up the monopolies, insisting on public disclosure, insisting on public audits, insisting on restitution whenever someone has been cheated."
Dennis Kucinich

"Let me say that I don't like money.  I work and I earn it because it's fundamental to survival. I spend it on necessities and frivolities and I donate it (thought not as much as I should) to causes more worthy than those that get my money for the necessities and frivolities. Let me repeat; I don't like money. It is evil and it inspires the evil in people."
Paul Anderson (Me)

 

This all started with yogurt; Greek yogurt.  Greek yogurt and phony Greek yogurt to be precise.  Then it went to foreclosure and bank regulation and from there it went to a legislator ranting about laissez faire and now it’s grown into an argument about the morality of making money. 

Bamboozled at the Old Ball Game (A Fan's View)

“There is but one game and that game is baseball”  John McGraw

“When baseball is no longer fun, it's no longer a game.”  Joe DiMaggio

The cops just knocked on the door and told us to turn down the music; the bartender skipped last call and stopped serving; mom just told our friends to go home; and the lifeguard just hollered, “Everybody out of the pool.”  The party’s over. That’s how it felt for us Giants fans when it was announced that left fielder Melky Cabrera was suspended for 50 games (the remainder of the season) after he tested for excessive levels of testosterone; dirty.  What is it about left field at AT&T Park?  First it was drug cheat extraordinaire, Barry Bonds; now Cabrera.  

Saints, Sinners and Codes of Silence

By now the world, or that small part of the world that follows American football, knows that the New Orleans Saints have been, for the past three years, taking part in some decidedly un-Saintly behavior.  No, this isn’t going to be a post about football per se but it is inspired by the events surrounding what is now known as “bounty-gate.” 

Football, a sport that thrives on violence, has been forced in the last few years to walk a shaky balance beam; one between the magnitude and types of collisions and hits that it can allow and the recent focus on the effects, both immediate and long term of those hits.  That focus has come from former players with debilitating injuries, from the medical community and also, as if they don’t have other things to worry about, from Congress; yeah that Congress the legendary house of grand-standers, losers, knaves and busybodies.  And so with all of this going on, members of the Saints’ coaching staff and defensive team decided it would be a fine time to offer bounties to players who could knock an opposing player out of a game.  It was a practice that violated an assortment of rules both written and moral and when Commissioner Roger Goodell got wind of it the Saints were told to knock it off; an edict which the team of course ignored.  The league office found out that the Saints from players on up must have thought that the commish was just kidding and continued with the bounties.  Well the Saints just found out that you do not fuck with Roger Goodell and you certainly don’t lie to him and make him and his most prized possession, the NFL, look like hypocritical chumps.  As a result, head coach Sean Payton was suspended for the year, former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams may have coached his last NFL game and various players are probably scanning the help wanted ads as they wait to see what happens when Goodell cracks the league whip on them. 

Well, someone must have told the league office of the goings on in Saintdom and here is where a moron named Warren Sapp comes in.  Warren Sapp is a former player and current idiot who now does football commentary on TV.  When Goodell fired off his lightning bolts Sapp tweeted that former Saint, Jeremy Shockey was the “snitch” in the vein that anyone who would reveal the bounty system could only be a sleazy, slimy, backstabbing dirt bag.  Here’s what you need to know about Warren Sapp; he’s a bug-eyed goon and longtime sufferer of diarrhea of the mouth with a Twitter name of QBKILLA.   In a similar tone, Mike Golic, one of ESPN’s Mike and Mike referred to the player’s traditional “code of silence” which apparently protects everything from players’ sexual escapades right up through bounties.

Codes of silence aren’t unique to football locker rooms.  They exist on the streets, in offices, in industry and in government.  A disgusting code of silence even existed in the Roman Catholic Church when priests who got their sick jollies out of telling their altar boys to bend over were shuttled from diocese to diocese and shielded by the hierarchy in order to protect the reputation of the church.  That worked out well for the church didn’t it?   Reporting illegal, immoral or otherwise harmful behavior to law enforcement, higher ups or, even worse, the media is frowned upon and can result in anything from being ostracized to be being demoted, to being harassed, to being fired, to ending up in a ditch sleeping the long sleep.  This is where a particularly repugnant T-Shirt comes in.  It bears the logo “Snitches End Up With Stitches.”

I used to work with a young man who would occasionally wear the Snitches in Stiches T-shirt and I found it offensive at the time (and still do). When Mike Golic discussed the “code of silence” he did so in reverential tones as if protecting questionable behavior is the moral thing to do.  Really?  Why is that?  Why is it honorable to keep silent about acts that are harmful or immoral or both?  Oh I know the answers.  You’ve got to have your friend’s back or you can’t do something to harm the brand of the organization.  Even if it means selling your own soul.   

I doubt that someone with Sapp’s malfunctioning moral compass would ever stop to think that whoever did blow the whistle on the Saints might have saved some player from having a knee blown out or worse.  To me it’s a pretty fair trade off if a rogue coach is forced to sit out a season to save a player from a potentially career ending injury.  Does a friend who commits crimes really deserve to be protected?  If that friend is robbing or injuring or even killing shouldn’t you first be turning that person in and then questioning your criteria for choosing friends? 

This, code of silence, “I’ve got your back,” mentality is entrenched in our society.  If you turn someone in you, YOU, Y-O-U are the bad person for “singing like a bird,” “ratting someone out,” or “dropping a dime.”  You are, in the language of my generation, a “stool pigeon” or a “rat fink.”  In an online dictionary I found a definition of rat as; “A despicable person, especially one who betrays or informs upon associates.”  Well what does that make the perpetrator?  What does it make the victim?  I know the answer to that question.  In the language of the day; “sucks for you.”  Even if you’re now broke, injured or dead. 

There is another term for “snitch” that shows up when it concerns reporting industrial or governmental shenanigans.  It’s called whistle blowing.  During my lifetime there have been a number of whistleblowers whose actions have exposed corruption, waste and illegal activities going on in places that we thought we could trust.

                In 1970, New York Police officer Frank Serpico exposed corruption within the department.  And you thought it was just a movie.

                In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers telling the American people that most of the justification for the Vietnam War was a charade; instead of seeking peace the U.S. Government was actually broadening the war and while we were supposedly promoting democracy in Vietnam we were taking part in corruption and the rigging of elections.

                Lois Jenson exposed rampant harassment of female workers in Minnesota’s Eveleth Mines leading to a class action lawsuit that forced the mining company to establish a sexual harassment policy.  It was the first ever sexual harassment lawsuit and it served notice to the business community that harassment is a real issue that is not to be taken lightly.

                And of course who could forget “Deep Throat”, the informant who fed reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein information that eventually led to the resignation of Richard Nixon, a sitting president who thought he was immune to the laws of the people he had been elected to serve.  At this time it’s appropriate to credit Nixon whose merry band of burglars got caught trying to break into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee at a business complex in Washington D.C. called Watergate.  Watergate went on to become the general term to describe the chain of tawdry events leading to Nixon’s resignation.  Since then any scandal worth its salt is described with –gate tagged on to it; hence “bounty-gate.”

The people that I just described should all fall into the category of “rat fink, snitch;” shouldn’t they?  They ratted out their colleagues.  And when they and others like them did that they caused the improvement of society and in doing so they oftentimes were the victims of unrelenting retaliation.  Karen Silkwood, for instance, was in the process of exposing safety violations at the Kerr-McGee plutonium fuels production plant in Oklahoma when she died suddenly in a mysterious fatal one car crash. 

So lets put all of this in a nutshell. If you report an associate for purposely committing an immoral act that injures someone else, you are an asshole; even if the person who you are protecting is the original asshole. If on the other hand the selfsame associate becomes a victim of the immoral actions of another asshole who isn't an associate and you happened to see who the perpetrator was and turn him in then you are something altogether different.  You are now a champion of justice, a hero. Taking the twisting of morality further, consider that the moral bedrock of a code of silence is the protection of an immoral act. I have a new word for that; hypocrisy-gate.  

Derek Jeter, Three Thousand Hits and a Christian

     Yesterday Derek Jeter got his 3000^th hit which just happened to be a home run.  He was only the second player to achieve that mark with a dinger, the other being Wade Boggs.  When a ballplayer’s milestone hit just happens to be a long tater it creates something of a logistical problem; a problem that leads to anything from an informal negotiation to a court battle.

     There was a time when a fan would settle for a short meet and greet with the player and an autograph or two in exchange for a home run ball.  That sort of behavior is now frowned upon.  Nowadays it’s expected that the fan will enter into hard negotiations with the player, the team or both.  Shockingly (he said with tongue firmly in cheek) a cottage industry has developed around home run balls.  Called ball hawking it is capitalism on steroids, pun intended.  In simple terms the ball hawk snags the ball and then tries to take the player to the cleaners (Yes I know what you’re going to say and I’ll take that up later).

     A few cases in point here.  In 2008, A’s rookie Carlos Gonzalez hit his first major league homer.  A ball hawk named Tom Snyder caught the ball and asked for a jersey and two signed bats.  The A’s rejected the offer saying that uniforms take too long to replace.  So in what I would consider a bizarre bit of negotiating, Snyder asked for $10,000 which the A’s also rejected.  Snyder left with the ball and Gonzalez probably figured his souvenir 1^st home run ball was gone.  Not so, as Snyder traded the ball a week later for a signed photo with Gonzalez (a fair deal he should have taken in the first place).  The “gentleman” who caught Ken Griffey’s 600^th home run ball asked for, as Griffey put it, “a few things that were out of hand.”  The imagination sort of reels over what “out of hand” means.  Griffey never got that ball which eventually sold for $42,000 at an auction. The stories about the McGwire and Bonds “record breaking” home run balls are now legend.  McGwire’s 70^th in the ’98 season sold for $3 million and the Bonds 73^rd single season ball went to court over who actually caught the ball.

     Returning to Jeter’s 3000^th; it was caught by a fellow named Christian Lopez.  According to the folks who are supposed to be experts in the matter, the ball would be worth about $250,000.  As the ball sailed over the fence the Yankee brass were probably opening the safe and pulling out the checkbook.  Lopez was located and asked his price.  Nothing; Lopez wanted nothing.  Well the Yankees weren’t going to accept an outrageous offer like that so they gave Lopez four front-row Legends seats for the remainder of the season, including the playoffs and a gaggle of signed Jeter memorabilia.  In addition he had his photo taken with Jeter and met with Reggie Jackson and other Yankee stars (and I would imagine, got their autographs as well).

     Now, back to that “cleaners” thing.  Yeah, yeah I know, Jeter’s salary will average $16 million dollars over this season and the next two, and the Yankees are one of the richest franchises in sports, so between the two a couple hundred thousand is nothing.

      A quick review of the comments section of any article on Lopez/Jeter says that in the eyes of many of his fellow Americans, Lopez is a bloody fool.  A few choice samples from Yahoo Sports for your reading pleasure:

                “What a fool!!!!! He looks like he eats a lot. Will regret that he didn’t take the money.”

                “Christian did a STUPID thing, nothing admirable about it. His girlfriend should dump him.”

                “The right thing was to get paid so your family will be set....just sayin”

     And here’s one of my favorites, “All you people who talk about morality, integrity, the right thing to do, etc. when it comes to this make me sick. Since when does anybody who catches a ball have a moral obligation to return it?”

     A couple of thoughts.  To be fair, a number of commenters commended Lopez for what he did, citing integrity, moral obligation and honesty.  None of those really apply here.  The ball was not stolen property.  According to Major League Baseball rules, the ball belonged to Lopez free and clear so there was no compelling reason, legal or moral to give the ball to Jeter.   So why did he do it? I would like to think it’s because he’s a good guy.  I also would like to think that I would do pretty much the same thing.  I’ve often posed that same question to myself and my answer has always been that I would probably ask for an autographed ball and an autographed picture of me with the player.  And I think that’s a fair deal.  As a baseball fan those would be some nice mementoes for the mantle.  I seriously could not see myself asking for a horse choking bankroll.  It isn’t in my makeup and apparently it isn’t in Lopez either and if that makes us chumps then fine, we’re chumps. 

     As it worked out, in my opinion anyway, Lopez got a pretty nice little package.  Had he gone into a hardball negotiation session, I doubt that he would have been offered that deal and may have ended up settling for less.  He could also have opted to auction the ball.  As to the comment that Lopez’s girlfriend should dump him, it’s quite likely that the quality that made him give the ball to Jeter is just what she is looking for in a mate.  Maybe she just isn’t in to opportunists.

     This story might also say something about Derek Jeter.  With the possible exception of some Red Sox and Mets fans Jeter is seen as one of the classiest guys in sports.  A milestone hit by A-Rod, or the aforementioned Bonds might not invite the kindness shown by Lopez.

     And so this leads me to a final comment on the whole affair.  In a short time Derek Jeter will retire and when he does it will leave one less in a meager pool of classy athletes who would invite the kind of goodwill shown by Christian Lopez.