Second Chances

There was a story in the paper today about longtime first baseman Mark Grace, who’s joining the Diamondbacks’ TV broadcast team.  Arizona has been the best and worst of places for Grace, who started the bottom-of-the-ninth, game-seven World-Series winning rally for the D-backs against the Yankees in 2001 and more recently served four months in a “tent city” for DUI issues.  They do things old school in Arizona, short of prison stripes and chain gangs.

I met Grace once, on the eve of the 1994 MLB strike.  A month earlier, we had taken Clare to her first professional baseball game, with the Kane County Cougars; our daughter came away fascinated by…blimps, after seeing one buzz the field that afternoon.  The not-yet four-year old probably loved baseball already from sitting on her daddy’s lap and watching TV as Frank Thomas hit.     

I happened to be part of a WGN Radio panel that included David Halberstam, who had written a book about the 1964 World Series, and a team announcer who shall not be named here; he no longer works locally but can be heard shilling for another NL Central team, so you figure it out.  During a news break, Grace walked in, shook hands and shot the breeze.  His face was flush, his eyes bloodshot, so I had an idea that he’d been drinking a good deal.  When he left, Mr. Announcer got all brave and said, “That’s what’s wrong with baseball, a $4 million singles’ hitter.”

Maybe so, but what’s right with humanity is someone making use of a second chance.  Grace is sober now and doesn’t hide from his past.  That far outweighs any lack of power from a power position.