This is a breath of fresh air. I tip my hat to integrity and honesty. “When I signed my contract, my main goal was to earn it,” Meche said this week by phone from Lafayette, La. “Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again.”
3 Comments
Joe Haefner
I would also like to add that he voluntarily forfeited 12 million dollars on his final year. He could have easily sat back and earned the money.
Dave Brown
I definitely respect this athlete for having the integrity to be concerned that he is actually producing results to earn his salary. But I am concerned that he seems to being coming from a guilt focus which has him thinking more about what he is not doing than about what he can do to earn his millions (if anyone can really “earn” tens of millions of dollars).
I am also have to say that there is double standard in our society wherein we let CEOs take tens and hundreds of millions of dollars after they have failed to perform for the corporations that hired them and people some how think they deserve that money. And with athletes, we piss and moan, about huge salaries and sub-par performances.
Paul
Thinking some readers might not be familiar with hometown pitcher Gil Meche, provide details from NYT coverpage article …
from New York Times website – published January 27, 2011 New York edition page A1
Pitcher Spurns $12 Million, to Keep Self-Respect
By TYLER KEPNER
The guaranteed contract is a fundamental principle of Major League Baseball, as much a part of the game as balls, strikes and outs. No matter how a player performs, or how his body holds up, he must be paid in full. Only in rare cases — an injury sustained off the field, gross personal misconduct — does a player forfeit his paycheck.
But the case of Gil Meche is rare for an entirely different reason. Meche, a 32-year-old right-handed pitcher, had a contract that called for a $12 million salary in 2011. Yet he will not report to Surprise, Ariz., with the rest of the Kansas City Royals for spring training next month. He will not have surgery to repair his chronically aching right shoulder. He will not pitch in relief, which involves a lighter workload.
Meche retired last week, which means he will not be paid at all.
“When I signed my contract, my main goal was to earn it,” Meche said this week by phone from Lafayette, La. “Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad. I was making a crazy amount of money for not even pitching. Honestly, I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again.”
Meche’s decision plays against type — the modern athlete out for every last dollar. There have been, over the years, athletes who took less money to play for one team over another, Cliff Lee being the latest when he agreed to pitch for the Philadelphia Phillies. And yes, Ryne Sandberg retired from the Chicago Cubs in 1994, forgoing nearly $16 million.
But there are very few parallels to what Meche did.
Instead, it is much more common for an injured player to report to spring training, go through the motions of rehabilitation and collect his paycheck. Lenny Dykstra played his last game in 1996 but did not announce his retirement until after the 1998 season, when the Philadelphia Phillies paid him $5.5 million. Mo Vaughn of the Mets made $15 million in 2004, even though an arthritic knee had ended his career the year before.
“In no way is it assumed that at the end of a deal a guy is expected to walk away if he can’t play,” said Jim Duquette, the former Mets general manager. “It’s just so odd and so rare. There was no way that we would have ever had a conversation like, ‘Hey, Mo, listen, you’re not able to play, so you should retire.’ ”
Sandberg, it turned out, returned in 1996 and essentially earned back some of the money he had left behind. And the novelty of Mark McGwire’s decision to retire from the St. Louis Cardinals with two years left on a contract worth $30 million was tarnished by his subsequent admission of steroid use.
“This isn’t about being a hero — that’s not even close to what it’s about,” Meche said this week. “It’s just me getting back to a point in my life where I’m comfortable. Making that amount of money from a team that’s already given me over $40 million for my life and for my kids, it just wasn’t the right thing to do.”
click NYT URL for article remainder …
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/sports/baseball/27meche.html?src=me&ref=sports