Scott Cordischi On Sports: Pro Athletes Just Don’t Get It!
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Jorge Posada doesn’t get it! Neither does Derek Jeter. Curt Schilling is clueless. As is Nomar Garciaparra. I guess you can’t blame them. After all being a Major League Baseball player doesn’t exactly require the type of knowledge one would need to, say, split the atom.
This past weekend in the Bronx, we saw another sorry example of just how out of touch today’s (and yesterday’s) professional athletes are with average schmucks like you and me - the dopes who spend our hard-earned money to see these nitwits play.
In case you missed it, Saturday night before the Red Sox-Yankees game at the Stadium, Yankee designated hitter Jorge Posada pulled himself out of the line-up about an hour before the game telling his manager that he couldn’t play.
Posada’s injury? A bruised ego!
The 16-year veteran learned earlier in the day that he, and his Major League-low .165 batting average, had been demoted to hitting 9th in the Yankee line-up. This, apparently, did not sit well with Posada who decided that it was more important to sulk on the bench rather than help his team break out of a losing streak in a game against their arch rivals.
After the game, Posada claimed that he had a stiff back which was why he couldn’t play in the game. The funny thing is that he never mentioned that to his manager or his general manager before the game.
We learned, as expected, that this was simply a lie by Posada who said as much the following night when he apologized to his manager for his actions 24 hours earlier.
It would be nice to think that Posada had an attack of conscience, but it is far more likely that he realized that he had created a public relations nightmare for himself and was getting crushed in the court of public opinion.
What was also disappointing about this whole incident was the reaction of some current and former players.
Posada’s teammate Derek Jeter publicly defended his teammate claiming that he did nothing wrong and did not need to apologize for his actions.
Former Red Sox’ Curt Schilling and Nomar Garciapparra, now baseball “analysts” on ESPN, also defended Posada’s action citing a lack of communication between Yankee management and Posada.
This pretty much cements the idea that these clowns have absolutely no idea whatsoever what it’s like to operate in the real world like you and me.
In the real world, if you’re not performing up to par in your job you could also get demoted or even fired with no golden parachute like a multi-million dollar salary to fall back on. And, in most cases, there’s no warning before being fired. It’s, “here’s your pink slip, thanks for the memories!”
If you are lucky, maybe you get to keep your job but take a pay cut. In these tough economic times, many feel fortunate to do even that.
Many pro athletes don’t feel that way. They have a sense of entitlement. Nowhere more was this on display than at Yankee Stadium and on ESPN this weekend.
What Posada should have done when he learned that he was batting 9th in the line-up was storm into Girardi’s office, slam the door shut and get on his knees to thank the Yankee skipper for allowing him to be in the line-up at all!
After that he should have placed a call to GM Brian Cashman and said, “thanks for giving my washed-up, 39-year old sorry _ss a 13.1 million dollar salary this year. What a country!”
Unemployment in this country is still very high. Many hard working Americans are having trouble paying their monthly bills and are losing their homes to foreclosure. Something tells me that’s not going to be an issue for Jorge Posada or Derek Jeter anytime soon.
What they ought to do is look around the ballpark every time they take the field and be damn thankful for the money that they are making playing a kids game while thousands of those in the stands worry about where their next paycheck is coming from. But that would require common sense which, obviously, these guys don’t have.
-If Joe Girardi had any sack, he would have batted Posada 9th Tuesday night in Tampa instead of 7th where he placed him in the batting order.
-The NFL’s labor dispute between the billionaire owners and the millionaire players is another example of people in professional sports who are completely out of touch with the rest of society.
-Congratulations to Drew Bledsoe for being selected for induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame. He was one of the key figures who helped change the culture of New England Patriots football from hoping not to lose to expecting to win.
-If LeBron James and the Miami Heat don't win the NBA title there will be a lot of happy people outside of south Florida who will view them as colossal failures.
-Speaking of LeBron, did the NBA feel that bad for Cleveland that they had to rig the draft lottery for the Cavs to get the #1 pick?
-There are some people out there who believe that Danny Ainge has something up his sleeve for the Boston Celtics this offseason and that is why Doc Rivers so readily agreed to his new 5-year deal.
-If only the Red Sox could play the Yankees every night.
-More and more people believe that we will never see Tiger Woods return to anywhere near the dominant player he once was.
-I guess the 2010 season was an aberration for Josh Beckett.
-If the Bruins season ends in the Eastern Conference Finals, it would be hard to call it a failure.
-Not that the B’s can’t make it to the Stanley Cup Finals.
-And Patrice bergeron or no Patrice Bergeron, Claude Julien has no choice but to give rookie Tyler Seguin plenty of ice time in tonight's game 3 in Tampa.
-Word is that new PC men's basketball coach Ed Cooley isn't thrilled with the way that some of his current players are (or, in this case, are not) buying into what he's selling. I'm hearing that a few of those current Friars may not be on the roster next fall.
-Lacrosse fans in New England are in for a big treat on Sunday when #1 Syracuse battles Maryland and Duke takes on Notre Dame at Gillette Stadium.
-And on Saturday in Hempstead, NY, two Rhode Islanders will square off when Virginia takes on Cornell in the men’s college lacrosse quarterfinals. Former Hendricken standout Colin Briggs is a middie for the Cavs while former PCD star JJ Gilbane plays middie and attack for the Big Red. Briggs had a goal in Virginia’s OT win against Bucknell last week while Gilbane found the back of the cage twice against Hartford.
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