The 2010 Major League Baseball season began Sunday, which to most locals means rooting passionately for the wealthy yet heroic and wholesome Boston Red Sox while simultaneously resenting the inevitable successes of their uber-rich, pinstriped, pharmaceutically-enhanced rivals from the Bronx.
Most people born in northern New England don't have a choice when it comes to their favorite baseball team. Those who take their first breaths in Biddeford, Sanford, or Portland are genetically predestined to love the Red Sox just as surely as babies born in northern Scandinavia are to have blonde hair. There are more seven-foot Pygmies than there are native Mainers who root for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
News flash: there are 28 major league teams besides the Sox and the New York Yankees. For variety's sake it would be nice if a few discerning local fans adopted one of them, and those adventurous enough to do so could do a whole lot worse than choosing the San Diego Padres. While it's true that actually attending many of their games would be inconvenient, it might be that driving to the west coast and back is actually cheaper than purchasing four tickets to a game at Fenway Park.
Besides, the Padres have some local connections. Pitcher Tim Stauffer, a Portland native, will start the season on San Diego's disabled list. And the Padres top pinch-hitter, at least for now, is Bangor resident Matt Stairs. While the venerable (42-year-old), well-traveled (11 big league teams prior to San Diego) left-handed hitter was born and raised in New Brunswick, he and his family are now fulltime denizens of Maine's Queen City, where Stairs has coached high school hockey for the past several off-seasons.
But there are two other significant reasons to root for San Diego this year.
Full disclosure: prior to settling in southern Maine I spent 14 years as a radio announcer for a series of minor league professional baseball teams. During that time I crossed paths with Barry Bonds, Jim Leyland, Bo Jackson, Jim Thome, Mariano Rivera, Aaron Boone, Carlos Delgado, Felipe Alou, Michael Jordan (when he was a Birmingham Barons outfielder for manager Terry Francona), and scores of others whose names have appeared numerous times in the headlines. But I also met a slew of less famous individuals, including two quality, ordinary, extraordinary former major league infielders who will be wearing San Diego uniforms this season.
New Englanders who recognize Glenn Hoffman's name remember him as one of the many shortstops the Red Sox used in between Rick Burleson's 1980 departure and Nomar Garciaparra's 1996 arrival. But when I met him he was skippering the 1992 Vero Beach Dodgers, for whom I did the radio broadcasts. Most of the few dozen spectators at Dodger games that year went home after the 5th inning or when the temperature dipped below 80 degrees, whichever came first. The only thing potentially lonelier than a season in the Florida State League is one with a team that loses 29 more games than it wins. Those five months could have been dreadful ones for the 39 players who spent all or part of that forgettable summer in Vero Beach. But they weren't, and the reason was that Glenn Hoffman wouldn't allow them to be. He treated every person he encountered that summer with respect, patience, and kindness, regardless of the situation. He understood innately the value of leading by example. How can any of the crew complain or panic if the fellow steering the ship remains steadfastly focused, upbeat, and honest?
Neither of the last two Portland Sea Dog squads I traveled with won championships, but everyone associated with them was better for having spent quality time with the team's field boss, Rick Renteria. Fluent in two languages, he too was a skilled communicator who always had time for everyone. And he didn't just listen to others when they spoke; he heard them.
Glenn Hoffman and Rick Renteria have each been employed by professional baseball teams since graduating from high school, and neither one has ever been outworked. Somewhere along the line both inherently decent men learned the unquestionable value of hard work, sincerity, and fairness. It's impossible to estimate how many people these two have positively impacted over their years of quiet service to the game they love. Hoffman and Renteria were both skilled performers. But subsequent events have shown they're even better at teaching and learning than they were at playing.
Rick Renteria will occupy the first base coaching box for the San Diego Padres this season, and when he looks across the diamond he'll see Glenn Hoffman coaching at third.
You can have the Red Sox. In my only slightly biased opinion there cannot be a major league team more deserving of success in 2010 than San Diego's.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
Font size: