When New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter tagged a breaking ball for his 3,000th hit, it didn’t really surprise anyone that it was a home run. Nor did it surprise anyone that it happened during a jam-packed home game in Yankee Stadium in front of 48,103 cheering fans.
The 3,000th hit was pa
rt of a game where he batted five for five and also drove in the winning run — but that didn’t surprise anyone either. Storybook things happen to storybook people.
It really didn’t even surprise anyone when the home run ball was caught by a fan, Christian Lopez, who chose to return it to Jeter rather than sell it back to him or put it up for bid on the open market. Sure, the Yankees supplied Lopez with some tickets and some autographed items, but guys like Jeter also seem to bring out the best in people.
The decision by Lopez was a remarkable one by a young man who seems, like Jeter himself, to be a person of an earlier time with values seemingly untouched by today’s confusion and cynicism. Was it a coincidence, then, that he was there to catch the ball when it reached the left field bleachers? Or was it simply another page in the storybook?
The only thing about the story that surprised anyone was the number of people ready and willing to pronounce Christian Lopez as a total knucklehead for not keeping the baseball he had caught, which could be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on the sports memorabilia market. Apparently the idea of its being something beyond market valuation was an idea that annoyed a lot of people.
Someone once defined an economist as “Someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” But even some economists were surprised at the size of the “dumb move” crowd. Even more surprising was the intensity of their feelings about it. The attacks on Lopez’s decision resembled religious zealots pursuing an apostate.
Some of his critics said that he could have used the money to pay off his student loans. Some said that he could have used it to “provide for his family,” presumably to make Lopez feel irresponsible and guilty for not putting his family first.
Lopez replied to these criticisms by saying that he was still young and had lots of time in his life to make money. That statement made him an even more disturbing presence in today’s world of market values.
In his book, “Bought and Paid For,” author Charles Gasparino wrote that one of the reasons former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker was feared and disliked by Wall Street was that “he couldn’t be bought.”
People who possess nonmarket values, who cannot be bought, are always viewed with distrust by organizations that are based on payoff, payback and payment transactions of one sort or another. In Wall Street and, sadly, in Congress, character flaws and moral lapses are better understood and more readily ignored than adherence to values that lie outside the transactional playing field.
In the debt crisis being addressed by Congress we are seeing some of the limitations of an organization based on a free market model where self-interest and competition will theoretically produce the highest and best outcome. Without the cooling shade of other values, the heat of competing self-interests becomes almost unbearable.
One possible way out of this impasse is for Congress to do something that is simple, measurable and not made impossible by partisan rhetoric. Instead of pushing budget cuts into the future where they become imaginary numbers the lawmakers could agree to cut federal discretionary spending by 5 percent this fiscal year.
Only the most hopelessly mismanaged organizations, public or private, could not absorb a 5 percent budget cut. And calculating the reduction is something that financial markets and voters could easily do. It would make the U.S. government accountable and would demonstrate a commitment to financial responsibility.
The 5 percent cut would not reduce the deficit by that same amount. Discretionary spending represents only a portion of total government expenditures. And it would not make the government’s contractual obligations go away. The financial instability of Social Security and other entitlement programs will still have to be addressed.
What a budget cut of this type would achieve, though, is a change of direction, a sign of commitment to getting our act together. At this point that would be a victory.
One of the victories in the Jeter storybook, and in the Lopez chapter, is that even in professional sports where everything is market priced, other values can add luster to an achievement, and grace to a moment. Let’s hope Congress was watching.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. He also writes a monthly column for the Snohomish County Business Journal.
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