"We need to share"

Now that we're considering identity in the light of sports fandom, this is entirely relevant (and not just self-indulgent):

It's Hall of Fame weekend in Cooperstown, New York, the annual July induction ceremony and related rituals of passage for the elite of professional baseball. You can tune in Sunday afternoon on the MLB channel (1634 on my cable system), as I always do.

A feel-good story about two of this year's inductees, former Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera and the late Blue Jay/Phillie starter Roy Halladay (who died tragically, before his time), is in today's Times.

...Rivera was famously generous with his wisdom. In 2008, at another All-Star Game, he counseled Halladay, then with the division-rival Toronto Blue Jays, on the proper finger placement on the cutter. Rivera’s teammates fined him in kangaroo court, but he did not care.

“I don’t regret moments like that or times when I was able to teach others,” Rivera recently told WFAN’s Sweeny Murti, “because we need to share.”

That tip, and Halladay’s ability to apply it, became another gift Rivera gave to the game. Halladay used the cutter to produce three more elite seasons and several indelible moments with the Philadelphia Phillies, including a perfect game and a playoff no-hitter.

All the while, Halladay kept a practice ball in his locker with a tracing of Rivera’s grip in ballpoint pen. Whenever he slipped back to old habits, he would grab that ball and right himself.

Halladay’s widow, Brandy, found the ball and lent it to the Hall of Fame for her husband’s display case. It is up on the third floor now, far from the gift shop, a symbol of a gesture that is truly priceless.

And btw, to connect with my other obsession this weekend: Do you know the first thing Nixon asked Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins (behind glass in their decontamination chamber) when they returned to earth? He asked if they'd gotten news of the All-Star game, and if they were NL or AL guys. Seriously.