I’ve always loved baseball. The crack of the bat. The cheer of the crowd. The intoxicating power of the game’s biggest stars. As a child getting pummeled by bullies in Miami after my parents went through a scarring divorce, the daily boxscores were all I had to hold on to to keep my life from slipping away. Well, that and my close relationship with G-d. But that goes without saying.
And back then, the greatest players were like deities themselves. I still remember them: Reggie Jackson! Mike Schmidt! Jim Palmer! George Foster! The list goes on and on. I won’t say I idolized them — keep in mind what happened to those Israelites who built and worshipped a golden calf while Moses received the commandments!
But those great hitters and pitchers seemed to have an aura about them, a bubble of respectability and power that I desperately wanted to emulate. Everyone knew their names; journalists relentlessly analyzed everything they said; they could buy and sell every single schlemiel yelling obscenities from the crowd. Too bad I couldn’t hit a curveball, or really any other kind of pitch at all. Also, too bad I was hopeless in the field and on the basepaths as well. Wouldn’t it have been great to have a major league baseball player named Shmuley Boteach?
Now, of course, baseball is more popular than ever. Attendance rises every year, and so does the media attention paid to the sport; so, too, do the salaries of its players. The best players make multi-millions of dollars, and even the worst ones make “only” a million or so. And that is before endorsements, appearance fees, speaking engagements, and all the free things that rich people always get from other rich people.
But being a rich and famous baseball player is a little harder than you might think. One is on the road for half of each year, away from the comforts of home. These players risk injury every game — both physical and emotional. The more money one gets, the more one has to pay to agents, handlers, sycophants, weed carriers, and one’s Uncle Gummo back home who just found out he’s got the diabetes. And then there are the temptations faced by all rich and famous men.
By which, of course, I mean women.
Don’t get me wrong, I love women. I respect their soulful wisdom, their fierce protectiveness, and their springlike demeanor…as well as their rosy, apple-shaped cheeks! But let’s face it — there is poison in those lovely apples. Men are not strong enough to handle the intoxicating essence of femininity. This is one of the main themes in the Torah, and there is evidence everywhere you look.
For example: the other night I was relaxing in my living room and I happened to turn on a new sitcom called “Samantha Who?” In it, the lead actresses behaved with a remarkable disregard for truth, for propriety, and for the traditional male-centered household. Yet every single man on the show fell for every snare put out by Samantha Newly and her friends Andrea and Dena. Just a situation comedy, you say? I can only remind you that where there’s smoke, there’s fire; and if there is any kind of smoke on the landscape, it can be found on ABC at 9:30 PM on Monday nights.
Let’s just imagine a young and handsome millionaire from Trailer Park, Florida, just a rookie trying to make his way as a professional ballplayer. He is nothing more than a baby, really, a tabula rasa if you will. To such an innocent, a visible magenta bra strap on a waitress or a flirtatious comment by a Baseball Annie might as well be black tar heroin injected straight into his heart. We need only look at the dating “career” of actress Alyssa Milano, and the effect it has had on the careers of her temporary paramours. Sure, she is now well-known as a personable — and knowledgeable — baseball fan. But was it worth the shattered careers of Carl Pavano, Barry Zito, and Brad Penny? (UPDATE: She says she’s changed. But can we believe her?)
Other examples abound. Here, a player is assaulted by his formerly famous wife. There, a woman takes control of a young player’s life, reminding us all of the story of Delilah. It is clear that even the strongest and most athletic of us all must only wilt under the steady gaze of what is usually called, ironically, “the weaker sex.”
But that is not to say that men should react to this domination with anger or violence. It is clear that Brett Myers, for example, should not have punched his wife Kim in the face on a Boston street. Hitting a woman is a deplorable act. Threatening to kill one’s ex-wife, as did Elijah Dukes last year, is also a deplorable act, for which we must surely condemn him also. But one wonders if this sort of behavior would even exist in a world where men were not constantly exposed to violent images, in the form of video games and Civil War re-enactments. And, I must point out, good things CAN come from bad — the Myers seem to have worked out their differences, to everyone’s satisfaction.
Ultimately, what I am saying is that these athletes are really just another example of what I call “The Broken American Male.” (Now on sale!) They have been raised in a world of pornography, drugs, and shoulders exposed, “Flashdance”-style; they have been told how wonderful they are by everyone, which is not real praise at all; they have had millions of dollars thrust at them for playing a children’s game, instead of for doing important things like debating famous atheists at Oxford. Their lives are neither holistic nor satisfying. I guess all the acclaim in the world doesn’t help broken souls become magically healed.
So I guess it’s a good thing that I never learned to hit a slider after all!
SHMULEYISM OF THE DAY: I am better than baseball players, because I don’t beat my wife, nor have I been beaten by her.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” has been the host of TLC’s “Shalom in the Home” and can currently be heard on the Oprah & Friends XM radio channel. He usually has great taste in his choice of mentors, but sometimes not so much. Such is life.
