MELVIN Mora played shortstop for the Mets in place of Rey Ordonez last night, and aside from the improvement, nobody could tell the difference.
I know, that is a sentence. If only it were true.
The Mets, who beat the Reds, 6-5, for their ninth straight victory last night, were not better without Ordonez in the lineup. In fact, his absence contributed to letting the Reds back into a game in which they were trailing, 4-1.
Everything turned out all right for the home team but still, I have a problem with the choice Rey Ordonez made last night.
Ordonez decided to take the night off in compliance with the work stoppage organized by Miami-area Cuban Americans in protest of the government’s forceful seizure of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez Saturday morning.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the field, Alex Ochoa, also of Cuban descent, played leftfield for the Reds, in apparent defiance of the same protest.
In both cases, there is reason to believe the players were, er, influenced by older men, Ordonez by Mets’ third base coach Cookie Rojas, who felt strongly that neither man should go to work last night, and Ochoa by Jack McKeon, the Reds’ manager, who felt just as strongly that Ochoa should.
Ordonez left the ballpark well before the press arrived for last night’s game, but it probably didn’t matter since, according to Mets GM Steve Phillips, he allowed Rojas to do his talking for him in their closed-door meeting yesterday afternoon.
“We support Rey,” Phillips said. “They (Rojas and Ordonez) felt they needed to do this, and we stand behind it.”
Ochoa spoke for himself last night, and even if he did not quite tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, one thought was clear: In the final analysis, Alex Ochoa realized he is a ballplayer, not a politician, and his place was on the field, doing what he gets paid to do, which is help his team win ballgames.
Now, the question is, was Ordonez right to give in to the peer pressure and skip out on his obligation to an organization that will pay him $19 million to play baseball over the next four years?
And, was Ochoa wrong to spurn the wishes of his community and cave in to the demands of his employers, who pay him about one-third of what Ordonez makes?
Far be it from me to dictate anyone’s political views, but as a father I must say that Elian Gonzalez’ place is back in Cuba, with his biological father, until such time as he is old enough to decide for himself where he wants to live.
And as a wage-earner, although on a slightly more modest scale than either Ordonez or Ochoa, it seems clear that a man’s first obligation is to his family and his second is to the employer upon whom his family’s welfare depends.
True, these are only baseball games, and, as such, mean less than nothing. But at the same time, they are a source of fabulous wealth for gifted young men who are asked to do little more than show up and give an effort for three hours every night.
They are playing a different brand of hardball in Miami, and last night, that game sucked Rey Ordonez away from the one he gets paid handsomely to play.
As political protests go, this one falls somewhat short of Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising gloved fists on the medal platform at the 1968 Olympics, and as personal protests go, it is a lot less dramatic than Sandy Koufax deciding to sit out Game One of the World Series on Yom Kippur.
It doesn’t even stack up besides the truly noble stance of professional athletes who have chosen to leave their teams in order to witness the birth of their children.
In fact, by comparison with any of those, it all seems rather pointless.
It seems to me that the best kind of gesture Ordonez could have made would have been to play – and donate his paycheck for last night’s game to an anti-Castro Cuban group.
The undeniable passion behind the Miami protest aside, you have to wonder what taking the day off from work was supposed to accomplish. Take that, Janet Reno. And you, too, Fidel.
Truth is, nobody liked seeing a federal agent sticking an AK-47 under the nose of a six-year-old kid. But it is also true that the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez were using the kid as a political football, and probably, seeing him as a cash cow as well. Imagine the windfall they could have reaped selling the little guy on the trailer-trash talk show circuit and to the supermarket tabloids.
In fact, there is something distasteful about an entire community outraged over a first-grader being reunited with his father.
Presumably, Rey Ordonez did not want to be an outcast in his adopted
hometown of Miami, so he allowed that politically-charged corner of the country to force him into a corner last night, the consequences to his team notwithstanding.
And the Mets, riding an eight-game winning streak, made it easy for him to take a stand that on the surface appears to be noble but in fact may be rooted more in saving face in his community.
As one Mets observer remarked last night, “So Ordonez remembered he was Cuban, huh?”
Meanwhile, Ochoa, facing the same consequences as Ordonez but under more pressure from his team to fulfill his obligations, comes off looking as if he cares about nothing and no one but himself.
But when you put aside emotion and view the situation rationally, whose purposes would it have served for Alex Ochoa to take himself out of the lineup last night?
“It was a very tough decision for me,” he said, “but I have an obligation to the team. They need me to play. That’s the great thing about this country, we have the freedom to do what is right.”
Clearly, Ochoa believed the right thing to do was to go to work. No doubt, he went under some prodding from his manager – right now, the Reds have Barry Larkin, Sean Casey and Deion Sanders out with injuries – but at least he went.
“I wouldn’t say I was forced to play,” Ochoa said. “But I know Jack needs me. It’s kind of a sensitive situation.”
In the bottom of the second inning of last night’s game, Ochoa, the man who chose to play, and Mora, the man who played in Ordonez’ stead, came together on a play that changed the early course of the game.
Batting with two men on, Mora hit a drive to deep left that had three-run homer written all over it. Ochoa went back to the wall, leaped, and brought the ball back into the park. The Mets, who had scored earlier on doubles by Mike Piazza and Robin Ventura, had to settle for just one run.
An inning later, Ochoa drove in the tying run with a ground out to – guess who? – Mora.
And when Al Leiter wound up giving back a 4-1 lead in the sixth, it was on a fly ball that Rickey Henderson couldn’t handle – perhaps Mora could have? – and a double play that the Ordonez-less Mets infield couldn’t turn.
“I don’t get to play every day,” Ochoa said. “But I’m getting to play tonight, against a left-hander (Al Leiter). I hope there’s no repercussions. I hope everybody understands.”
Alex Ochoa understands that his job is to play ball with the Cincinnati Reds, not with a political faction that plays hardball with the emotions of its constituency.
