The hubbub all over social media involving Daniel Murphy’s absence for two New York Mets major league baseball games continues.
I’ve said already my piece on the second baseman’s decision to skip those two games to be at his wife’s side as she gave birth to their first child. To sum up that earlier post: You go, boy!
But I have thought for a bit about how he can parlay his status now as every red-blooded American father’s role model into something constructive. Well, I think he just did. He has shown that at least one high-priced professional athlete — and I know there are many others — can place family above the sport he plays for lots of money.
Professional basketball hall of famer Charles Barkley once declared (in)famously, “I am not a role model.” Perhaps he didn’t see himself in that light, but others did, given his remarkable talent on the basketball court. He’s since backed off a bit from that comment made many years ago.
The late baseball hall of famer Mickey Mantle once said as he was dying of cancer that he considered himself a sort of role model, despite all the bad behavior — the drinking and carousing — that many believe resulted in the liver cancer that would kill him. “Don’t be like me,” he told young Americans as he was bidding farewell to this world.
The world cries out for fathers to do the right thing. It cries out for them to take pride in bringing children into this world. Too many of them — sadly, many of them are professional athletes — don’t do that. They produce children, all right, but those acts of conception too often are the result of one-night stands or “hookups” with young women. The kids are born and these men are nowhere to be seen or heard.
Daniel Murphy’s story is quite the opposite. So what if he missed a couple of games? He gets paid enough money to keep food on the table. He was there for his wife and he was there for his first-born child, a son.
Every father in the country ought to look to this young athlete as someone who has set a refreshing standard for all men to follow.