Mad Hatters

The New York Time

February 13, 2010

By Doug Glanville

I remember the veteran pitcher Mike Jackson telling me that “by the time you finish with this ...

Not to be.

(Come to think of it, even during my six years as a Philadelphia Phillie, I wore a lot of hats. The Major League Baseball marketing gurus had found that breaking out a new hat for special occasions stimulated the concessions economy, so I had a road hat, an interleague hat, a batting practice hat, a home hat, a St. Patrick’s Day hat, a turn-back-that-clock hat that honored past uniforms and a turn-up-the-clock hat designed to look like the future of baseball. Our poor equipment manager practically had to ask Saks Fifth Avenue for advice on how to manage inventory for 25 players and many more coaches.)

When it was first announced that newly elected Hall of Famer Andre Dawson would be enshrined wearing a Montreal Expos hat instead of the more familiar and historical Chicago Cubs hat, a lot of people asked questions, and it wasn’t just Cubs fans.“The Hawk” had a few of his own.

Hawk meant a lot to the Cubs, not just the Expos. I knew about his numbers, his Gold Gloves, his bad knees. But there’s an even more remarkable story about him: In 1987, the owners and players were negotiating for a new collective bargaining agreement, and collusion was in the air. Hawk hadn’t signed yet, so he went to the Cubs, gave them a blank contract that he’d signed at the bottom, and said “Fill it in.” They gave him $500,000, and he went on to be M.V.P. (49 homers, 137 R.B.I.’s) for a dismal team.

But the Hall also knew that Hawk had earned six of his eight Gold Gloves in Montreal, and had the majority of his major league hits there. He also put “across the border” baseball on the map, carrying the Expos to their first playoff victory, in 1981 over the Phillies. Chicago has a rich history, and Hawk is part of it; but in Montreal, Hawk is a bigger part of it.

So why the hesitation on Hawk’s part?

Let me take a crack at it.

Players’ emotions at the end of their careers can get complicated, especially if things don’t end as they would have liked. Tom Glavine’s story is typical; after 16 years with the Braves and then five with the Mets, the future Hall of Famer returned to Atlanta in 2008. An injury sidelined him in 2009 and upon his return, despite having shown improved health, he was given
his walking papers by the Braves. That can leave a bad taste and make a player contemplate going up to Cooperstown wearing his first Little League hat or a favorite John Deere cap, just to make a statement.

Players used to be allowed to decide what hat they’d wear, a privilege the Hall decided to end in 2001 in part because of rumors that in 1999, the legendary hitter Wade Boggs had been offered cash by his final team, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, to enter the Hall of Fame as a Devil Ray — a franchise then only a year old. Boggs had spent the bulk of his career on the Red Sox,and it made sense — not just for him, but for the game and how it would remember him — that he entered wearing a Boston hat. The rumors were vehemently refuted, but the hat rule was nevertheless implemented.

Another factor is loyalty — a word that gets thrown around a lot in baseball. Players use it often in the context of how they are treated by their organization. When I fought and scrapped my way through the minor leagues, shaking off doubts, biases, labels and curveballs, I was sure the Cubs would say, “Wow, this guy stuck with it, he embodies Cubs baseball, we will make sure he will be with us forever.”

But that was the thinking of a naïve ballplayer who believed that he could play forever in the same city. I wasn’t wearing my Business 101 hat.

So, when I was traded in the middle of the night by the Cubs, I felt disowned, shunned, misunderstood. It didn’t matter that where I was going was a better place for my career. It didn’t matter that I was going to my favorite team from childhood, or that I would be driving distance from my family. At least it didn’t matter at that moment. What mattered was that I’d lost faith in the possibility of loyalty in baseball. The game was no longer the game I had in my mind as a young fan.

As in any other relationship, the moment you realize the game’s nature is transient, you can get defensive. It can turn into “I will break up with you before you break up with me,” propelling players to leave during free agency before even knowing for sure whether the team they’re with might be preparing them to be a pillar of the organization. And you learn by watching: How are your teammates treated when they come back from an injury? How does the team deal with a player who took a short leave to deal with a personal issue? How do they handle a player who just hit 25 points below his career batting average?

No matter how irrational or un-businesslike it may seem, players expect loyalty. At least my generation did; we watched the game in the ‘80s, an era where your favorite players didn’t go very far from the team you loved. And when, as a player, you got loyalty, it was special. The Phillies kept me at home for six years, and the only time I wasn’t in Philadelphia was when I chose to leave during free agency to go someplace where I could start again — it wasn’t because they didn’t invite me back.

I am older now, and I understand that loyalty is a two-way street. You may want to wear the same hat forever, but then the team can rip it off your head anyway. Even so — as Hawk now knows — there are places that are special to you, that you look back at with fondness. And naturally, if you’re receiving the sport’s highest honor, you find that you want that place to be recognized. But whether Hawk wore a Cubs hat, Expos hat, Red Sox hat or Marlins hat, it didn’t change who he was: a champion, a survivor — heart, soul and history.

So it doesn’t really matter, Hawk: put on that Expos hat and give Montreal some love. The hat doesn’t matter — it’s your shoes that no one will be able to fill.

[Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Andre Dawson would be the first player induced into the Hall of fame wearing an Expos hat. Gary Carter was inducted as an Expo in 2003.]

New York Times 02/13/2010
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