{"id":5218,"date":"2014-04-04T18:51:30","date_gmt":"2014-04-04T18:51:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=5218"},"modified":"2014-04-04T18:51:30","modified_gmt":"2014-04-04T18:51:30","slug":"daniel-murphy-role-model-for-dads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5218","title":{"rendered":"Daniel Murphy: role model for dads"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The hubbub all over social media involving Daniel Murphy&#8217;s absence for two New York Mets major league baseball games continues.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve said already my piece on the second baseman&#8217;s decision to skip those two games to be at his wife&#8217;s side as she gave birth to their first child. To sum up that earlier post: <em>You go, boy!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>But I have thought for a bit about how he can parlay his status now as every red-blooded American father&#8217;s role model into something constructive. Well, I think he just did. He has shown that at least one high-priced professional athlete &#8212; and I know there are many others &#8212; can place family above the sport he plays for lots of money.<\/p>\n<p>Professional basketball hall of famer Charles Barkley once declared (in)famously, &#8220;I am not a role model.&#8221; Perhaps he didn&#8217;t see himself in that light, but others did, given his remarkable talent on the basketball court. He&#8217;s since backed off a bit from that comment made many years ago.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8212; the drinking and carousing &#8212; that many believe resulted in the liver cancer that would kill him. &#8220;Don&#8217;t be like me,&#8221; he told young Americans as he was bidding farewell to this world.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8212; sadly, many of them are professional athletes &#8212; don&#8217;t do that. They produce children, all right, but those acts of conception too often are the result of one-night stands or &#8220;hookups&#8221; with young women. The kids are born and these men are nowhere to be seen or heard.<\/p>\n<p>Daniel Murphy&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The hubbub all over social media involving Daniel Murphy&#8217;s absence for two New York Mets major league baseball games continues. I&#8217;ve said already my piece on the second baseman&#8217;s decision to skip those two games to be at his wife&#8217;s side as she gave birth to their first child. To sum up that earlier post: &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=5218\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Daniel Murphy: role model for dads<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[918,1259,1690],"class_list":["post-5218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-charles-barkley","tag-daniel-murphy","tag-fatherhood"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}