Wow.
Kansas City Royals' pitcher, Gil Meche, is a man of honor, and I want to recognize that.
Meche, who had a contract guaranteeing him $12 million this baseball season, whether he played or not, has retired.
This retirement cost him that $12 million.
He said it was the right thing to do.
Meche has been injured, and was struggling in his position.
Still, he could have reported to spring training, he could have gone on the disabled list, he could have pitched sporatically -- and he could have been paid one million dollars for each month of 2011.
According to the New York Times,
"When I signed my contract, my main goal was to earn it," Meche said this week, by phone from Lafayette, La. "Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again."
Kansas City Star sports columnist Sam Mellinger:
Baseball people are stunned. This is worth noting, because baseball people aren’t often stunned. Their game is the ultimate grind, 162 games, day after day after day, and their responses to remarkable events often start with, "That’s baseball."
But this? Royals general manager Dayton Moore is among three longtime baseball men to say they’ve never heard of anything like it. Sometimes players will sign for slightly less money to play on a contender or in a place they’re comfortable. Sometimes they’ll offer to defer money in order for the team to sign other players.
What Meche did is different. Moore figured Meche would ask for a settlement. Maybe they’d split the remaining money. Meche never mentioned it.
"I think it reinforces what we thought when we signed him," Moore says. "We signed the right guy."
So, just a short diary here, to note a good athlete doing the right thing. And sure, he's had a successful career and likely has already earned all the money he'll ever need in his life.
To you, and to me, we could not conceive giving up a paycheck like this. Maybe this is chump change to a major-leaguer.
Still, I'll bet that Meche sat down at some point and thought to himself: What in the world am I about to pass up?
In too many cases it would have been easy to just simply take the check. How much harder must this decision have been?
I hope that good things happen to Meche in the rest of his life.