In the August before my sophomore year of high school, I had neck-length hair. I can’t remember why. It wasn’t stylish or particularly well maintained, just hair. Thick, straight, longish hair that had very little to do with my fledgling 15-year-old identity.
And when the sophomores on the football team got whisked away with the varsity squad to football camp in Pennsylvania for a week, my hair made me an obvious target for Luis, the 300-pound senior with the hair clippers eager to leave his mark on all his youngest teammates.
Everyone else submitted pretty quickly, but something about the idea of showing up to the first day of school with the same closely shaven head as every other football player in my grade bothered me. I resisted; slipping through the cracks at first, then verbally bucking, then, finally — near the end of the week when Luis grabbed me and held me down — punching him six inches deep in his fat, sweaty gut and running like hell.
I avoided the clippers, then – to add insult to insubordination – proved better than Luis at his own position and wound up playing on the varsity team that year, my hair pouring out the back of my helmet, garnering smirks from my more mild-mannered teammates and no shortage of predictable hippie-themed comments from our mostly Army-vet coaching staff. I cut it after the season, once it would no longer seem like giving in.
I’m four paragraphs deep and haven’t gotten to the Jose Reyes part of this post yet, which is bad. And though I suspect the memory of Luis and his clippers acted on my subconscious when I read that Reyes would have to cut his hair before playing for the Marlins – the way that tidbit stung me in my soul — the story is a poor analogy for the shortstop’s situation.
Jeffrey Loria will never stand over Reyes, force him to the ground and shave the awesome braids that in some ways seem apt to symbolize the bouncing, flowing, ebullient, intricately woven spectacle of his 2011 season. Reyes chose to join the Marlins. He was a free agent, as we all are. He made a decision based on a variety of factors, many of which we have likely considered and plenty of which we will probably never know because we are not Jose Reyes.
When such a thing happens – as it did with Reyes and Albert Pujols, and as it once did rather triumphantly when the hirsute Red Sock Johnny Damon became the clean-cut Yankee Johnny Damon – a couple of dominant sentiments typically emerge.
The rational responders say, “Oh well you can’t blame him for taking $XX more money. Everyone does it, and you’d do it too.” The emotional say, “what a sellout! I should have known he was all about the money all along! How could he do this?”
Neither seems entirely fair.
For one thing, it’s a free country and you can blame anyone for anything. Ask Carlos Beltran. And there are plenty of examples of people acting quite rationally giving up the opportunity to earn more money in favor of some other reward.
That doesn’t make it necessarily reasonable to blame Reyes in this case, considering the disparity between the deal he was offered by the Marlins and the one he never quite received from the Mets — not to mention his former club’s nasty habit of mishandling his injuries, its obvious financial woes preventing further player additions, its current reputation, the time it made him bat only right-handed for a couple weeks, the time it tried to re-teach him how to run, the time it had a manager that threatened to stab him, and so on. All of that might very well appear rather gloomy in Reyes’ eyes in contrast with the chance at a fresh start with a new-look franchise with a ballooning payroll in a new-car-fresh stadium for a lot more money. But you can blame him regardless if you so choose.
If you do, and you’re among that second, more emotional group of responders, I suspect you’re enduring some fallout from a reasonably interesting phenomenon that most fans – myself certainly included – experience at some point or another. It may seem extreme to deem departing free-agents “sellouts” or “traitors,” but I don’t think it’s all that different from when we assume every member of the Mets hates Oliver Perez because we hate Oliver Perez. It seems we project onto our favorite players the things we want to believe about them, and I wonder if it’s almost like weird some corollary to the idea in dream interpretation that every person in a dream actually represents the dreamer: The characteristics we attribute to baseball players often reflect some aspects of our selves. Does that make any sense?
My wife and I had a conversation recently about where Reyes and Beltran would land. We concluded that it would be nice if Reyes could win a World Series with his new team, but it’s especially important that Beltran win one because, we determined, Reyes seems to enjoy playing baseball and having fun, but Beltran is fueled by a burning desire to succeed that won’t be quenched until he reaches his ultimate goal.
And though I’ve met and talked to Reyes and Beltran, neither I nor my wife has any idea if those things are true. They’re just guesses based on body language and what little of themselves they reveal to the public. Maybe when the doors close Reyes quietly studies film and prepares himself for his next opponent and Beltran is a happy-go-lucky dance machine. But we see in Reyes our own youthful exuberance and in Beltran our drive, and so we wish for them those things that would satisfy those parts of ourselves.
I think that’s why the haircut thing messed with me. I wanted Reyes to hear about the Marlins’ policy and punch Loria in the gut and run like hell, because the young punky kid version of me would never let anyone force me to cut my hair and make me fit in, and I want to project that onto Reyes. But he’s his own grown-ass man. He’s not that version of me or any other one. And of course I know that.
We all know that, just like we know Johnny Damon’s obligations lie with his family more so than they do with the Red Sox or their fans or his once-awesome beard. But every year we dive in again headlong, doing the same damn thing. Maybe it’s some odd relic of tribalism, or maybe all that projecting – watching these various idealized, compartmentalized parts of ourselves compete against enemies – is somehow important and therapeutic to us. Or most likely sports are just fun, regardless of how frequently and vigorously our hearts are broken when the players with whom we think we share loyalty prove otherwise.
But not that Lucas Duda. Lucas Duda will be a Met for life. And Ike Davis wouldn’t shave his beard for anyone.
For what it’s worth, I spent plenty of time around the clubhouse this year and never noticed anything vile out of Paulino. He seemed quiet, perhaps aloof — content to sit at his locker and entertain himself with whatever it is ballplayers do on their portable electronic devices (presumably the same thing I do: NBA Jam). I spotted him sharing important-seeming scouting-type stuff with Mike Nickeas a couple of times, and Paulino obliged whenever I asked him about catching various pitchers. (If I recall correctly, he did not participate in the team’s late-developing Hawaiian-shirt day, but don’t quote me on that.)
And we could again go through how weird and pathetic and desperate a guy like Braun must be to jeopardize his long-term health to attempt to make himself ever-so-slightly more awesome at baseball, but at this point I’m certain every single baseball fan in the world is firm in his or her opinions about steroids. People still seem to care a whole lot, but I’m finding it difficult. It sucks, but mostly it sucks to have to think about and listen to anymore.
Tedquarters 