Read: Johan Santana, The Uncomplicated Leader
In a must-read report for the New York Times, Charlie Devereux followed Johan Santana to Tovar, Venezuela, Santana’s home town, where he visited with his parents, and handed out Christmas presents to local children, while organizing soccer and baseball tournaments.
According to Devereux, “Traffic essentially came to a standstill as people from neighboring towns crowded in to welcome Santana home. At the town’s soccer stadium, hundreds of children were lined up around the block, each receiving gifts — action figures for the boys, dolls and makeup sets for the girls.”
In September, Santana had season-ending surgery to remove bone chips from his left elbow.
He told Devereux he is ‘100 percent recovered,’ and looking to forward to Spring Training.
…he is without question my favorite player on the team, and becoming one of my favorite players of all time… i will always be a big fan of players who work hard, who are intense, and who not only out-perform, but tend to out-will the opposition… it just so happens, it seems, that he is a leader and role-model to so many people, not just in the clubhouse, but off field as well…
…i never know how i feel about this sorts of stories, though… on one hand, i want to not care, because i want my appreciation for the player to be about on field work only… i don’t want to know they are nice or bad people, because i do not want that to influence how i view the game and their on-field results… this is one of the big reasons, despite having access, that i avoid the clubhouse and talking with players… i don’t want to like a particular person, or be friends with them, because i don’t want it to cloud my desire to yell at me television when he drops a pop up… that said, i am happy to hear people like johan, and so many others in professional sports, use their money and influence to do things to give back to the community… that’s important, and has nothing to do with baseball…
To read more about Santana’s trip, including an outstanding series of photographs, go here.
