My Hero: Jamie Moyer

My Hero: Jamie Moyer 

For kids growing up on my block in Philadelphia during the 50’s and early 60’s, two facts of life were predetermined: going to Catholic school and rooting for the Phillies, the hometown baseball team.  I long ago parted ways with the church, but, at sixty-three, I am still a loyal fan, even though I’ve lived in California for almost thirty-three years. I’m the guy wearing the red hat with the ‘P’ on it at Dodgers and Giants games.

The Phillies were dreadful for most of my youth and for most of their one-hundred-twenty-nine year history.  Not long ago they became the first professional sports franchise to lose ten thousand games. Ten thousand!  But no matter what happens between now and when my time comes, the fan in me will die happy because the Phillies won the World Series twice during my adult years, 1980 and 2008, the only times they’ve ever been champions. 

That means fans born in 1883, the team’s first season, had to live until they were ninety-seven to see them win. If you don’t think that’s a tragedy for an avid baseball fan, talk to Cubs fans who have been waiting since 1908, one-hundred-and-four seasons, for a winner. In recent years Phillies fans have been spoiled silly: five division titles, two trips to the World Series and one championship since 2007.  The Cubs have not even played in the Series since 1945.

So now that I’ve established my credentials as a die-hard baseball fan, here’s what this article is really about: last night, April 17, 2012, Jamie Moyer, a former Phillie who now plays for the Colorado Rockies, won his 268^th big league game, tying him with Hall of Famer Jim Palmer for 34^th on the all-time wins list. He gave up two unearned runs in seven innings and his fastball never broke seventy-eighty-miles-per-hour. If you’ve ever been on the freeway doing seventy-five and had a car roar by at ninety, then you understand the difference between Moyer’s fastball and the fastball of most major league pitchers. And here’s the truly amazing fact: Jamie Moyer is forty-nine years old, the oldest pitcher to win a game in major league history!

Jamie Moyer has pitched for eight teams over twenty-five seasons. He attended St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, signed a contract for a bonus of $13,000 and made it to the majors when he was twenty-three. Despite a poor record over his first few years, he hung on, mastered the art of slow, slower, slowest and won most of his games after he turned thirty-five. In 2010 he was the oldest pitcher to throw a complete game shutout.  Even after missing 2011 with a complete tear of an elbow ligament, he battled back this spring to earn a spot in the Rockies rotation.

Now for the best part.  Jamie Moyer and his wife Karen have eight children. They adopted their two youngest daughters from Guatemala. Jamie has won every possible philanthropic and community service award given by Major League Baseball. Karen and Jamie started the Moyer Foundation and established Camp Erin, a bereavement camp for children who have lost someone close to them, in every MLB city in the country; Camp Mariposa, for children whose parents suffer from alcohol and/or drug addiction; and they partner with other programs to fund countless community grants, all of which support children. They have done all of this while raising their children, moving from city to city, and having Jamie on the road for half of each season.

When he was trying out for the Rockies this spring, Moyer said he came to camp to find out if he had the desire and the stuff to continue playing. “If I didn’t try it, I think I’d always be wondering. And I don’t like living my life that way.”

Somehow I think that last statement applies to everything Jamie Moyer does.  And as he proved once again on Tuesday night, he has the stuff.  Jamie Moyer is my hero.