Doug Mientkiewicz, seen here in his Twins uniform prior to the last minute trade deal with the Red Sox. What a douche.
Doug Mientkiewicz, backup first baseman for the Boston Red Sox, is a douche. Mientkiewicz caught the ball for the final out of the 2004 World Series, ending Boston’s 86-year championship drought. With the ball in his grasp, Mientkiewicz raised his right index finger in triumph and rushed to the pile of celebrating players. In the locker room, he gave the ball to his wife, Jodi. He then promptly put it in a safe-deposit box and insisted that the ball belonged to him. The Red Sox disagree.
"He’s a backup player. It’s not like he won the game for us - pitcher Keith Foulke trotted toward first and underhanded it to Mientkiewicz after shortstop Edgar Renteria grounded it back to the mound. Mientkiewicz caught an underhanded toss and he thinks that the winning ball is his?” ranted Red Sox president Larry Lucchino.
But Mientkiewicz isn’t just souvenir-greedy, he’s cagey. He knows that Barry Bond’s 700th home run ball brought a top bid of $804,129 after a 10-day online auction. He also knows that this ball is worth so much more than that.
“I’ve got kids,” said Mientkiewicz, “I look at this ball and I see four years of Florida State.”
Critics rightly ask, "Four years at Florida State? Man, this guy might be as out of touch as they say after all." According to published figures, tuition, room and board for four years at Florida State runs $364,032. You could send four kids to Florida State for four years off that ball, especially in the hands of the right bean-towner.
But wait a minute, could it be that this poor man really needs the money and is just looking out for his children?
I don’t think so. The minimum salary for a major league baseball player is $300,000 per year. But the league salary average is $2,313,535 per year. Bo-Sox players average is $3.71 million a year. To top it off, Mientkiewicz is set to make $3.75 million in this, the final year of his two-year contract. Unless the man is an incredibly poor money manager, I think he’s got enough dough to send his kids to Florida State – or perhaps even a reputable university.
Then there’s the matter of Mientkiewicz referring to the ball as, “[his] retirement fund.” What? Oh, please! You’re making $3.75 million a year, and you’re hanging onto a ball as your retirement fund? I think you just want to make as much money as humanly possible by hanging onto (and eventually selling) that damn thing.
Mientkiewicz has said that he had a "nice conversation" with team owner John Henry. Apparently, his end of the conversation, and I believe I can quote him on this, was, “Stick it, biatch, it's my ball.”
A stupid baseball like the one seen here could be worth millions of dollars. I'm in the wrong business.
"We want it to be part of Red Sox museum so it can be shared with the fans," Lucchino told The Boston Globe. "We hope he [Mientkiewicz] understands the historical nature of it."
Oh, I think it’s pretty clear that Mientkiewicz fully understands the exact nature of that silly, leatherbound icon. In an era rife with memorabilia sellers and collectors - the New England Patriots once sold jars of Foxboro Stadium dirt for $10 – such a historic baseball is sure to command top dollar, perhaps well in to the millions of dollars.
Just how valuable is Doug Mientkiewicz to the Red Sox? Well, the Sox obtained the slick-fielding Mientkiewicz at the trading deadline from the Twins. He was a late-inning replacement in each of the four World Series games. The message: Doug, you aren’t that special. Hand over the friggin' ball before some crazed Sox fan decides to grease you just to get it.
After all, it would make just as much sense as you claiming to have rights over it, so why not?
