Hero-Worshipping’s Lifetime Achievement Reward

Hero-Worshipping’s Lifetime Achievement Reward

I was watching the Home Run Derby the other day. The Home Run Derby is a contest Major League Baseball has the day before their all-star game in which several players compete to try and hit the most batting practice home runs. Not the most enthralling spectacle, I know, especially since I cut my baseball teeth listening to St. Louis Cardinals baseball games in 1985. The 1985 Cardinals were built for speed, not power, so I’m more of a fan of base stealing than of the long home runs. But the Home Run Derby was, as Burt said in Mary Poppins, “better than a finger in the eye.”

So I watched the Home Run Derby. But before the Derby, they had a special ceremony for the folks who are still alive who have hit 500 or more home runs in real MLB games. 20 have hit 500; 14 are still alive. (Yes, I know Babe Ruth is still alive in our hearts, but, until he can climb out of our hearts, he’s not able to make public appearances.) One such player is Mike Schmidt. After the ceremony, Mr. Schmidt was being interviewed by the folks announcing the derby. During that interview, he mentioned how great it was to be out there being hugged by his childhood baseball hero. I think it was Willie Mays, but I’m not sure. Whoever Mike Schmidt’s hero was, the comment made me think.

Let’s do a run-down of my favorite players, or heroes, in several sports and why I chose them.

Football: Rufus Bess -- He had the coolest name on the Vikings roster when I was looking for a favorite player.
Baseball: Keith Atherton -- He had such a goofy pose on his baseball card I had to look at it every day just to reaffirm that it was truly that goofy. One day I decided that I had become so familiar with him I might as well root for him.
Basketball: Michael Cooper -- Cooper had long socks that he pulled up to his armpits. Also, he never seemed to remember to tuck the strings into his basketball shorts. Now THAT is a dual threat!

If you look at those descriptions, there is one thing missing from each--any regard for talent. Actually, Michael Cooper was relatively talented, but that never got in my way.

So, how does this relate to Mike Schmidt at the Home Run Derby? Mike Schmidt is a baseball great whose image is on a plaque in the baseball Hall of Fame. I am a nobody who, for several years, had trouble getting my parents to put my picture on the wall.

Mike Schmidt’s heroes are people who are honored at functions and are introduced with the phrase “who needs no introduction.” My heroes are rarely introduced or at functions.

If you’ll join me on a leap of logic, it stands to reason that had I chose more qualified sports heroes I, too, could be on my way or at 500 home runs and I could be among 20 elite people in history. If I had chosen a Mike Schmidt or a Wade Boggs or a Nolan Ryan or a John Elway or a Michael Jordan or an Earl Anthony, who knows where I’d be today and what kinds of functions I’d be attending. But as the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said about Walter Donovan, “he chose poorly.”

So here’s my advice to all of you graduates, you … wait … that would have been a month or so ago.

So here’s my advice to all of you young sports fans: choose your heroes not by their appearance, not by their character, not by their contribution to the community, or by any other arbitrary trait. Choose your heroes by their talent alone. You’ll be a more successful person for it.

Let me put it this way. Some people meet their sports heroes by hitting 500 home runs. Some people meet their sports heroes by purchasing insurance. Which kind do you want to be?

Of course, there are worse options. Like those who meet their sports heroes by going to prison.

You are what you root for.

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The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer and do not neccessarily reflect those of the rest of the family.

mark@wentzmania.com.