REGULAR folks, people like you and me, we can never understand what motivates the rich, the famous, the young, the impenetrable, from doing some of the things they do. Why was it so important for Cory Lidle to fly his own plane? Why was it so important for John F.
Kennedy Jr.? Why in the world, if you’re Tiger Woods, would you take up bungee jumping as a hobby?
Years ago, back when he was still a virtually unknown and soft-spoken outfielder for the Kansas City Royals, I had the opportunity to visit with Johnny Damon at the Overland Park, Kan., home he was having built for himself by the Royals. In those days, the Royals thought it might be a cutting-edge idea to finance houses for their young players, as a way of possibly convincing them to plant roots in the city and bypass the big bucks of pending free agency.
Sure, it was a loopy idea, and it certainly didn’t do anything to convince Damon, Jermaine Dye and Carlos Beltran, among others, that a $150,000 house was a fair exchange for $12 million a year, but hey, at least it was something. Anyway, Damon was pointing out where all his stuff was going to go once the walls were built and the roof affixed.
“What do you want most when it’s your turn to make the big money?” I asked him.
“You know what I want?” Damon replied, a conspiratorial grin on his face. “I don’t have a specific number in mind, I really don’t. I just want to be in a position where I can do whatever I want to do, as long as it’s legal, as long as it won’t embarrass my parents, as long as I don’t have to worry about someone saying, ‘You can’t do that, or I’m taking it all away.’ ” Maybe it really is that simple. Maybe once you reach a certain place in life, or in your career, you start looking for other things, other challenges, other adventures. Lidle’s friends tell us about the “passion” he had for flying, and that’s a wonderful thing to have and to channel, passion. But there’s also a reason why certain things are forbidden in the basic players contract that all athletes agree to, in order to attain the kind of wealth that allows them to pursue all those forbidden and dangerous hobbies.
Lidle wasn’t the only athlete to wink at those provisions and move on with their desires. Jim Lonborg spent one fleeting season as the most dominant pitcher in the American League, then decided to go skiing, broke his leg, and was never the same again.
Aaron Boone spent a few fleeting months as the toast of New York City celebrated far and wide for a well-timed home run hit off Tim Wakefield in the 11th inning of a deciding game against the Red Sox. If ever an athlete seemed in a bulletproof place, incapable of surrendering that spot, it was Boone. Wealthy, a Yankee hero, married to a Playboy playmate . . . as Jason Giambi remarked the night Boone hit his homer, “How much you think he would want if you asked to trade places with him tonight?” Yet that didn’t prevent Boone from playing basketball a few months later, in direct contradiction of his contract. Now if he’d just managed to get through a few pick-up games the way he’d surely done a thousand times before, it wouldn’t have mattered, nobody ever would have known, nobody ever would have cared. But he didn’t have a routine day.
He blew out his knee. And so not only was his contract voided by the Yankees in about five minutes, he was singularly responsible for the entire Alex Rodriguez circus that’s captured The Bronx the past three years.
Of course, none of these choices turned out as tragically as Lidle’s. And Lidle is hardly the first athlete to pilot his own plane. Phil Mickelson, who’s built a tidy reputation as a riverboat gambler both on and off the golf course, famously flies his own plane, too, although he isn’t beholden to a players contract, just his insurance carriers.
Still, it’s likely that the same gene that imbibes an athlete with a confidence so complete that they don’t even shudder at the thought of hitting a 99-mph fastball, or tapping a downhill 6-foot putt worth a quarter million dollars, or bypassing an army of onrushing 300-pound defensive linemen, is the same that allows them to ignore the dangers lurking in their extracurricular pursuits. That has to explain what Ben Roethlisberger was doing on his motorcycle, without a helmet, back in June.
The next day, Tiger Woods was preparing for the U.S. Open at Winged Foot, and someone asked him about the apparent need for athletes to find extreme outlets for their adventures.
“I look at it this way,” Woods said. “I’ll live once, and I enjoy going for par 5s in two. It’s an adrenaline rush, to compete and try and get ourselves in the biggest mix. It’s a fun thing to have. I’ve never ridden a motorcycle, so I don’t know what the rush is there, but I’m sure there is. I’ve bungee jumped and done other crazy things. I can tell you my ideas as a kid, but those are worse than what I’ve done now.” Regular folks, people like you and me, we probably wouldn’t bungee jump if we were worth half a billion dollars . . . although it might partly be that reluctance that explains why we aren’t worth half a billion dollars. Maybe if we were rich enough to afford a hundred firstclass plane tickets rather than fly our own plane we’d take the comfortable seats at the front of the plane. But the fact we wouldn’t seek the cockpit instead might say an awful lot about us – and those who would – too.
Mike Vaccaro’s e-mail address is michael.vaccaro@nypost.com. His YankeesRed Sox book, “Emperors and Idiots,” is available in paperback at bookstores.
VAC’S WHACKS
If Tony La Russa took himself any more seriously, he’d have to manage games in an ascot, a smoking jacket, and with a dog-eared copy of Proust under his arm.
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Jets-Jaguars last week was the football equivalent of Sonny Corleone beating Carlo to a pulp on the stoop. All that was missing was the trash-can lid.
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I realize that boys will be boys and all. But after drenching SNY’s Julie Donaldson during their first champagne bath, and doing the same to Ch. 7’s Jenna Wolfe after the NLDS, it might be time for someone in a suit to tell the boys in the Mets uniforms that it’s supposed to be a celebration, not a wet T-shirt contest.
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You will not find a betterreported book on any subject than “The Echoing Green,” Joshua Prager’s definitive narrative on the 1951 pennant race, the Shot Heard Round the World, and the splendid way both Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson have led their lives in the 55 years since.
