Thoughts on A-Rod vs. Jeter, the music at Yankee Stadium, and the ballhog dude

Team-first captain Derek Jeter (r.) with Christian Lopez

I had a few other thoughts about Friday night's game, in which I got to see Alex Rodriguez hit #3000.

Here is a link to Alex's post-game presser. He really seems as relaxed as I can ever remember him. But he is wearing a simple light blue button-down shirt. Doesn't he know that when you hit 3000, you are supposed to wear a hat and shirt with a logo featuring an image of yourself and your achievement? That is what a team-first guy like Derek Jeter did after getting his 3000th hit!

Jeter, of course, had Christian (Sap) Lopez willing to give up the HR ball for a few trinkets. On the other hand, A-Rod is being shaken down by D-lister and professional ball hog Zack Hample, who said earlier this week that he would give Alex a dummy ball back if he happened to catch #3000. What class, what integrity!

Look, I think that if you catch such a momentous ball, you ought to be fairly compensated for it, with real money. That being said, Hample sounds like a real jerk. It was charming when he was a teenager going around catching balls. But he is 37 now, and I find it a little sad. (Then again, I am 48 and got so excited when I met Mr. Met that I gave him a hug!)  IMHO, you need to leave the glove at home when attending games once you graduate high school.

Hample brags about having snagged 8,000 balls. Reportedly, he has also knocked down little kids to do so. He denies it, but there are way too many witnesses who saw him do such things to believe him.

Anyhow, I also noticed that Michael Kay made a big deal about how the Detroit players did not go on the field to celebrate A-Rod, the way Tampa Bay players did with Jeter. I think this is much ado about nothing. But I don't remember Yankee players doing this post-game tribute to their captain that CC Sabathia arranged for Rodriguez:

Upon arriving in the clubhouse after the game, Rodriguez found a few dozen champagne glasses set up for a toast, courtesy of a six-liter bottle of Armand de Brignac “Ace of Spades” purchased by CC Sabathia to celebrate A-Rod’s milestone. “I completely broke down,” A-Rod told the Daily News before he left the ballpark. “I was not expecting that at all. It was amazing; overwhelming.”

That stuff is pretty pricey -- I think it's at least $6,500 for one bottle, if not more! I will be lucky if somebody opens up a bottle of Ripple (Fred Sanford's favorite drink!) to toast my being in the Washington Post!

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I noticed that the music played Friday when the Yankees came on the field was "Pour Some Sugar on Me," by Def Leppard. But where is the stripper pole? That is what I associate that song with! That and getting ready to go out to college parties. "Pour Some Sugar on Me" was the primping and preening song we used to play. At any rate, I don't associate it with baseball!

Also, I noticed that after A-Rod hit #3000, the Stadium played Eminem's "Lose Yourself." I kvelled over this! My Facebook friends know that I was very angsty after getting the opportunity to write for the Washington Post. That song was pretty much how I felt, with lyrics like this:

Look, if you had, one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted.
In one moment
Would you capture it, or just let it slip? 

So to hear it played after AROD3K was just too much! Amazing!

Thoughts on Christian Lopez, Derek Jeter, and "Doing the Right Thing"

So, it looks like Christian Lopez, the starry-eyed Yankee fan who caught Derek Jeter's 3000th hit, is going to get bailed out of the whole mess the Yanks put him in by giving him $50,000 or so worth of "free" tickets and memorabilia. (And by the way, given that players and coaches have to pay taxes on the complimentary tickets the team lets them have, the team should have known in the first place that this was going to be an issue for Lopez. Just saying.)

Anyhow, Miller High Life has offered to pay his taxes, saying "you should be rewarded for doing the right thing, not penalized." Modell Sporting Goods and Steiner Sports are giving him a minimum of $25,000 each, and he also is getting a 2009 World Series ring out of it, among other things. Topps is putting him on a baseball card, saying that "We thought what he did captures the essence of what baseball and the Topps company is about." (Is that what baseball is all about -- giving away an item worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for free to an millionaire MLB player? Just saying!)

How much the fan will end up with is unclear; some say he won't have to pay taxes on the money, but Ed Behrens, a CPA who lives near Lopez, told the Times Herald-Record Lopez would likely have to pay 28 percent federal tax, and 7 percent city tax, on the money and merchandise the companies gave him. But he did say that the fan "can enjoy his fame and maybe break even in this."

You know, I'm glad Lopez is getting some help for the financial mess he is in, and I hope he does enjoy his 15 minutes of fame. And this damage control on the part of Yankee/MLB sponsors will make his life better. (That's what it is -- damage control. I kinda doubt Lopez would have gotten anything from them if it weren't for 1) the tax stories, and 2) the news about his crazy-expensive student loans!)But I will never believe that giving away a ball worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars for free to a guy worth hundreds of millions is somehow a moral obligation, or the right thing to do. I will never think that a guy still living at home with his parents, who has over $100K in student loans, owed the baseball he rightfully caught to somebody who just built a house the square footage of a supermarket. It's not "classy" to do that -- it's ridiculous. It's the equivalent of scratching off a winning lottery ticket and giving it away to Jeter, just because.

"Doing the right thing" would be returning Jeter's wallet to him if you stumbled upon it without expecting a thing in return. But this ain't it.

Is this what our celebrity-crazed society has become? That Derek Jeter is entitled to a ball for free that his estate could eventually sell for $1 million just because he's famous and people admire him? Puh-lease. Guess what? The 3,000 hit achievement stands, with or without the baseball. I accept that baseball is a business, and everything that goes with it. But don't tell me it's a business, then, that when a fan catches a ball fair and square, he should somehow be expected to to turn it over for free, without expecting a thing in return. There would have been nothing greedy or wrong whatsoever about Lopez selling what he caught, or in giving the captain right of first refusal to pay for the ball.

Oh, and by the way, all Derek Jeter himself has so far personally given to Lopez is a "grip and grin" photo op and a hat with the Captain's picture on it, although he is supposed to sign some memorabilia for him. He certainly didn't help with the tax mess. That's gratitude for you. Will moths will fly out of No. 2's wallet the next time he opens it?


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