I seldom have the opportunity to incorporate America’s pastime into a political piece, but it recently dawned upon me that a notable parallel exists between Major League slugger Jim Thome and Republican Presidential candidate, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.): the media tends to undervalue their respective accomplishments.
Jim Thome is a victim of bad timing, according to MLB.com columnist Alden Gonzalez. The past two decades have been an era of hyper-inflated power numbers, purportedly a result of performance-enhancing drugs, which have tainted the records of Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and company. Between 1996 and 2004, Jim Thome maintained a remarkably consistent .285 batting average and averaged 41 home runs and 111 runs batted in; yet, he did not finish once in the Top 3 in Most Valuable Player voting over that span.
He has never sulked or taken issue with this lack of fame, though. Nor has he ever bragged about his statistics or stirred up controversy for his conduct on or off the field. It simply is not part of Thome’s DNA to ruffle the proverbial feathers. Minnesota Twins outfielder Michael Cuddyer has nothing but the best to say of his teammate: “He is the nicest, gentlest, kindest guy you will ever meet.”
On Aug. 15, Jim Thome became the eighth player in MLB history to join the prestigious 600-home run club, placing him in league with Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron, and essentially punching his ticket to the Hall of Fame. The moment was a special one for the fans in attendance and for baseball, but the media did not treat it as such. Sure, the Minnesota papers gave it ample coverage and ESPN spent about five minutes on it, but when juxtaposed to the same coverage afforded to Alex Rodriguez when he was on the mere precipice of the historic feat in 2010, the difference is striking.
As an avid New York Yankees fan, I was somewhat immersed in Rodriguez’s chase for 600. The national media was, too. ESPN interrupted programming to provide live footage of at-bats for A-Rod, sporting goods stores rolled out displays honoring him, and articles chronicling each and every game while he was at 599 were ubiquitous. All this for a man who, in essence, stuck with the status quo of his generation, and resorted to steroids to gain a competitive advantage. That man was honored, while someone else who has eluded all controversy in 20 years of Major League service, received nothing but a short burst of applause.
Coincidentally, on the same night as Thome etched his name in history (without much attention paid to him), The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart ripped the media for its lax coverage of Rep. Ron Paul’s campaign successes. This specifically in light of his impressive performance at the Iowa Ames Straw Poll, in which he came within 0.9% of Michele Bachmann for first place. That is almost a fourfold improvement from his performance in 2007, when he came in fifth place. Regardless, a number of GOP figures preferred Bachmann’s victory over Paul on the grounds that a Paul triumph “would have hurt the credibility and future of the straw poll.”
It is not only straw polls that show Rep. Paul making inroads among the GOP field, though. On May 5, a CNN poll revealed that if Rep. Paul became the Republican nominee, he would cut most into President Obama’s lead, trailing 47% to 52%. Even this scientific poll was discredited, though, as CNN Polling Director Keating Holland added to the piece, “It should be obvious to any political observer that hypothetical general election match-ups at this stage of the game have relatively little predictive value.”
To be fair, straw polls are scarcely an accurate barometer of an entire state or national population’s voting predilections, and hypothetical match-ups more than a year in advance of an actual showdown cannot be taken at face value, but can we give Rep. Paul just one break and acknowledge all he has accomplished in four years?
A strong showing at any straw poll indicates campaign prowess at mobilizing supporters on a large scale, something Rep. Paul has improved upon immensely from 2007. Instead of simply conducting town hall seminars on libertarian intellectual thought around the country, there is a serious effort being put forth to concentrate on traditional campaigning, along with an allocation of considerable resources on doing it well by hiring individuals such as top GOP ad man Jon Downs.
Most impressively, like Jim Thome, Rep. Paul has left a lasting mark on his profession. How else could issues dear to Rep. Paul have become so central to the candidates’ platforms? Auditing the Federal Reserve is now a mainstream topic most recently embraced by Newt Ginrich at the Iowa debate. Texas Governor Rick Perry denounced the Fed for putting another round of quantitative easing on the table, even calling it “treasonous.” Heck, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who in 2007 sparred with Sen. John McCain (R-Ari.) over who supported military interventionism more, is now talking about getting us out of the Iraq “mess.” Somewhere Robert A. Taft is smiling at Rep. Paul’s achievement at planting the seeds of limited government and taking up the mantle as the intellectual godfather of the GOP.
For accomplishing so much, one would expect Rep. Paul to expound his prescience in predicting the 2008 economic meltdown and admonitions of unsustainable levels of debt, but that is not who he is. He recently told reporters that he was not raised to claim any “personal vindication” for his forecasts, to which his son, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) disagreed: “We should do some gloating. The slogan for the campaign should be ‘Ron Paul was right.’”
Instead of building a formidable campaign around how right he was, however, Rep. Paul has taken the path less traveled in running an ideology-based approach, indeed radical for our times. Meanwhile, the others around him are pointing fingers at others, casting blame as if our country were not partisan enough, and reaping the fruits of another man’s labor. They are the one’s capturing national headlines, while Rep. Paul is content with sticking to the same message and having the “mainstream swim to him.”
Minnesota Twins closer Joe Nathan said of Thome, “He is so genuine. There are other players that will be forgotten when they leave, but he will not be. We will be talking about him for years to come.” Today’s media may disregard Jim Thome and Ron Paul, but the historians will be unable to write off their legacies.
Photo Credits: ESPN/Vanity Fair