Baseball players are celebrated for their quick reflexes: amazing plays in the field with their gloves, quick reactions to tag attempts on runners, and of course, actually hitting the baseball itself. The latter is considered by many to be the hardest single act in all of the sports.
Yet, forty years ago this coming week, another quick reaction by a baseball player did something completely different – saved a life.
On August 7, 1982, at Boston’s famed Fenway Park, it was the battle of the Sox, with the Chicago White Sox visiting the Red Sox. A seemingly routine game quickly turned memorable in the fourth inning. Red Sox infielder Dave Stapleton lined a bullet of a foul ball into the seats next to the Red Sox dugout. Boston fan Tom Keane, sitting close to where the ball made impact, heard a loud crack, and figured the ball had hit the dugout. A second later, he realized what the sound actually was…
The foul ball had hit his four-year-old son, Jonathan, directly in the head. Screaming, the young boy slumped over much to the shock of his father.
In less than the time it took you to read that, Red Sox legend Jim Rice had rushed into the stands, grabbed the child in his arms, and immediately took him to the team training room. Just a few steps behind was team doctor, Arthur Pappas.
Bleeding from seemingly everywhere possible around his head, Jonathan was nonresponsive once Pappas got to him. An ambulance quickly took the boy to Boston’s Children’s Hospital, fortunately, less than a mile from the ballpark.
When asked later what made Rice react so quickly, he responded, “I saw my child. I would have wanted someone to do the same for my child if they were in that situation.”
Thanks to Rice’s quick thinking and seemingly even quicker action, Jonathan recovered fully, with just a tiny scar near his left eye. The next season, after a playful thorough checkup by Rice himself, Jonathan Keane threw out the first pitch… on Opening Day, 1983.
Rice, who played his entire 16-year career with the Red Sox, was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2009.
This story begs the question: can you spring into action when you might be needed most? The stakes hopefully won’t be as high as what faced those involved in this story, but your challenge may be every bit as critical in the scope of your efforts. Can you selflessly react to aid someone in need, immediately or otherwise, that can make a difference?
The lesson for our Jets? We never really know when we’ll be called upon to help a stranger, or be the catalyst for an important moment like this, but with Rice’s mindset of seeing a personal responsibility to help, and quickly, we all have a better chance to succeed in the moments that matter.
Stay ready Jets. Someone, somewhere in the future, will be counting on you without even knowing it!
