It was the spring of 1993 when Cal Ripken Jr. was introduced to a skinny 17-year-old kid. The teen would become the overall top pick in that summer’s draft and he had asked to meet with his boyhood idol. They had a brief and cordial meeting. They stayed in touch through the years.

Much has happened since.

Ripken continued to redefine the position of shortstop, proving that big guys could handle it defensively and also hit home runs. He became a celebrated baseball icon and a first ballot Hall of Famer. His dedication to preparation and a vigilant work ethic still are referenced more than 10 years after he retired.

Ripken took pride in representing the Orioles. He stressed that the focus always should be on his team. The many programs and charities that he supported as a young player remain important to the Ripken family legacy.

As predicted, that teenager who idolized Ripken did make it to the big leagues. He became a tremendous player with natural talent, but he also became alienated from many fans and fellow players.

Plenty of scouts said that he was the best young player they ever saw. But, maybe the budding star thought otherwise. Maybe he lacked confidence. Or, maybe he wanted to be greater than great, the greatest of all time, and he thought the only way to accomplish this was to use performance-enhancing drugs.

Alex Rodriguez had the right idea when he idolized Cal Ripken, but his train derailed badly along the way. Rather than following Ripken on the right track to success, A-Rod attempted to cheat the game for his personal gain. He also hurt future players, sending a message to athletes with considerably less natural talent in the minor leagues, on college and high school teams, and playing for fun in little league somewhere that they could grab an advantage by cheating.

A-Rod may still be a productive player when he returns, if he returns, for the 2015 season. He also will collect more money than just about any other ballplayer ever will see. But there is nothing he can do that will repair the self-inflicted damage to his reputation. Maybe he doesn’t care now, but in sports as in business reputation stays with you and your family long after your playing days are over.

Jim

I didn’t see Bob Turley pitch in the major leagues. He played from 1951 until 1963. He was with the Yankees from 1955 until 1962, earning his nickname of “Bullet Bob” and winning the 1958 Cy Young Award with a 21-7 record.

Turley won that award when only one pitcher in all of major league baseball was presented with the honor. That same year, he also won the prestigious Hickok Belt that is awarded to the top athlete in all of sports.

Bob’s roots were in sports. So are mine. But not until he passed away a year ago this month did I realize how much we had in common on the business side of life.

After his playing career ended following a season split between the Los Angeles Angels and Boston Red Sox, Turley became successful in the insurance industry. He joined with Arthur L. Williams, Jr. and five others to found A. L. Williams & Associates. They advised clients to purchase short-term rather than long-term life insurance and invest the savings in mutual funds. The company became Primerica Financial Services and it later was purchased by Citigroup.

Turley earned considerably more money in financial services than he did as a professional baseball player. He also invested in real estate, purchasing and selling homes on Florida’s Marco Island and in Naples.

At an Old Timers’ Day gathering at Yankee Stadium during the 2010 season, Turley half-jokingly stated that he probably was better in business than baseball.

“It takes a little while when you get out of baseball,” he said, “but all the principles of baseball carry over into business. So, I was highly successful.”

I would add that all the principles of football, basketball, hockey and lacrosse, along with all other competitive sports, carry over into business and into every aspect of life.

Jim

“Although this sounds corny, it’s true: I was born in the Bronx, and my mother actually wheeled me in a carriage on the campus [of Fordham University]. “That was years ago. Little did I know, or she, that God would be so kind as to allow me to get into the Prep.”

Vin Scully, legendary broadcaster for the Brooklyn and now Los Angeles Dodgers, uttered these words a few months ago when he was honored by his alma mater for his achievements in his professional field and for the many years of support for his school.

Following graduation from Fordham Preparatory School, Scully served in the U.S. Navy. When he returned home, he quickly enrolled at the university and he became involved in the beginning stages of FM radio in New York. At the school’s radio station, Scully honed his broadcasting style by calling Fordham baseball, basketball and football games. A month before his 1949 graduation, he landed a job with a CBS Radio station in Washington, D.C. Soon after, he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers.

When he was a student, Scully also played two seasons on the university baseball team. He was Fordham’s center fielder in one game against Yale. The first baseman during that game was George Herbert Walker Bush. Fordham lost and both Bush and Scully went hitless.

“Years later,” Scully said at the award presentation, “I’m playing golf with the president, and we eventually got to talking about the game. I said to him, ‘Mr. President, as long as you’re in office, you can say anything you want about your baseball career (he was captain of the team). But remember, the day you walk out of the White House, we both went 0 for 3.’”

Only Vin Scully could say that to a president of the United States! I would have enjoyed playing in that foursome to hear Scully’s lyrical delivery of that line, gauge the president’s reaction and then enjoy what no doubt had to be a hardy laugh. I wouldn’t be surprised if President Bush often repeats that story. After all, he received a personalized oral box score report from a baseball broadcasting legend.

While Scully has met the cream of the crop in sports, broadcasting, politics and entertainment since he left Fordham, one story that he told at the Fordham gathering tells us so much more about the man—the kid in the stroller, the high school and college student at Fordham, the service veteran and the friendly professional broadcaster. His story began by remembering a day at the prep school when he sat in the auditorium next to classmate Larry Miggins.

“We were talking about what we hoped to do when we finished school,” said Scully. “Larry said I’d love to be a major league ballplayer, and I said I’d love to be a major league broadcaster. And we both kind of chuckled.”

Years later, on May 13, 1952, Scully was behind the microphone in the broadcast booth at Ebbets Field. Miggins approached the plate to bat for the Cardinals.

“It was so hard to speak. The Dodgers had a left-handed pitcher named Preacher Roe from Ash Flat, Arkansas. Preacher Roe was going to face my buddy Larry Miggins, and I’m going to describe whatever happens,” added Scully. “And Larry Miggins hit a home run!

“You can imagine what an emotional moment it was. First, the shock that the ball was going to go so far, then the realization that it’s a home run and I have to talk about him running around, and it hits me—that back row in the auditorium at Fordham Prep. Somehow it all came to pass.”

Jim

Just prior to this past Thanksgiving Day we lost Lou Brissie. The name may not be familiar to anyone who was not around when he played Major League Baseball during the late 1940s and early 1950s. That doesn’t matter. It is what he did outside of baseball that is the true measure of this man.

Let’s begin with a little inside baseball. Brissie was a star semipro southpaw pitcher from South Carolina who caught the eye of Philadelphia Athletics owner and manager Connie Mack. He encouraged Brissie to go to college, and he even paid for it, with a guarantee that the pitcher would be invited to spring training in a couple of years. Eventually, Brissie pitched three years for the Athletics and then three years for the Cleveland Indians. He threw three innings during the 1949 All-Star game at Ebbets Field.

Brissie, though, had some business to address before he finished college and played for Mack. He enlisted in the U.S. Army during 1942, trading a college classroom and mound for the battlefield and his position as a combat infantryman. On December 7, 1944, while on patrol with his unit in northern Italy, a shell exploded. Brissie broke his right foot, injured his right shoulder. The shinbone in his left leg was shattered into more than 30 pieces.

Brissie was evacuated to a hospital in Naples. Doctors were ready to remove the leg when Brissie told them about his baseball dream. The doctors wired together the bone fragments and Brissie recovered with the help of a new wonder drug—penicillin. Over the next two years, he had 23 more operations.

During his post-war baseball life and after, Brissie realized that he had become a symbol of success to many veterans who tried to overcome various personal problems. At first, he had been hesitant to talk about his war wounds. Then, upon hearing from so many people with disabilities who found their encouragement through Brissie’s accomplishments, he realized that his situation could help others.

Brissie vowed not to let them down. Even as he got older, Brissie, walking with crutches with a left leg scarred, misshapen and still prone to infection, often visited a local Veterans Affairs hospital. He talked with soldiers who had been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Until the day he passed away, Brissie kept a steel watch he had purchased at an Army PX. The watch was frozen at 10:47:53 a.m., the moment the shell burst near him. It was his reminder of bad luck but of his eventual good fortune.

“The thing that I got out of all this,” he said during 2001, “is even the things that look impossible aren’t.”

Jim

Baseball is all about records. Sacred records. That is why so many hardcore American fans are angry that steroid users have shattered milestones held by baseball’s icons.

Our baseball records aren’t the only statistics that are tumbling. It has occurred in Japan, too. Performance enhancing drugs, though, are not involved, and some fans there just don’t mind that a sacred record or two is broken.

For decades, the Japanese have called Sadaharu Oh the world’s home run king. With 868 of them and many other records, he is worshiped in Japan as much as Babe Ruth is revered in America. Over the years, a few foreign players in Japan’s elite league threatened Oh’s hallowed single season home run mark of 55. Each time, opposing pitchers deliberately refused to throw balls near the strike zone, allowing Japan to protect Oh’s milestone.

But the culture of deference to Oh has ended. As this past season progressed, many Japanese fans rooted for the single season record to fall as its latest challenger, Wladimir Balentien, continued to hit balls out of the park. Balentien is not Japanese, but from Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles, and he once played for the Seattle Mariners and the Cincinnati Reds.

During Balentien’s chase, Japan experienced a gradual change in its version of the game of baseball. Commentary about Oh’s record included discussion about the realization that the country cannot continue to remain isolated, in its baseball and other ways of life, from the rest of the world. Japan needed to embrace outsiders.

In one survey, 69 percent of 1,300 respondents said they were enthusiastic about Balentien’s bid to pass Oh. Many fans showered boos on pitchers who did not throw strikes to him during the record chase. Eventually, on September 15, Balentien shattered the record.

The times, even for Japanese baseball, sure are changing, as they do every day in our personal lives and in the business world. The successful person, and possibly even the happier one, is the individual who learns to adapt to these changes.

Postscript: The tumbling of the single season home run record created additional buzz as other components of the overall story were publically acknowledged.

While born in Japan, Oh is a Taiwanese national. Even though he is a foreigner, Oh’s career was protected for years by Japanese players and fans. Maybe today’s fan, who has cheered the success of Japanese players in American baseball, has accepted the possibility that anyone, even a player from Curaçao, can hold a baseball record in the Japanese elite league.

More important is the scandal revealed earlier this season that involved the ball used in Japan’s games. The Nippon Professional Baseball league admitted that it had quietly juiced the ball to create a greater bounce off the bat, and players used that ball for about 60 games. Home runs increased by more than 40 percent from the previous year. While the players weren’t juiced, the balls certainly were marked with performance enhancement issues. Is Balentien’s new record tainted? The debate will continue.

I guess nothing comes easy, nor is anything really what it seems. That goes for life, business and the great game of baseball.

Jim

Al Itallia pitched and played first base on Catholic Youth Organization teams that won league championship during the 1940s and 1950s. He said the wins and losses pale in comparison to the lifelong friendships among the ballplayers.

Itallia now is 80 years old. Once a month, he gets together with men from his old Nebraska neighborhood to talk about family, sports and current events. CYO stories always come up, and the players have fond memories of their baseball days.

John Stellar, who is 78, meets weekly with another group of former players. He’s grateful for the baseball friendships that eventually led him to the Nebraska Baseball Hall of Fame.

The friendships enjoyed by Itallia, Stellar and younger players who participated in CYO baseball through the 1970s were forged during a simpler time. Lacking today’s tech toys, generations of boys were drawn to neighborhood ball fields through their parish schools or summer camps.

CYO baseball was about competition, and bringing people together through friendship and mutual interests. Many of the ballplayers enjoyed their time in CYO so much that they became high school, college, or sandlot players. Stella even coached in the San Francisco Giants minor league system.

After all these years, friendships from CYO baseball continue to thrive. According to Stella: “If it wasn’t for baseball, I probably wouldn’t know anyone.”

We all start somewhere. Many of us can point to the sports field as the place where we began our journey that led to lifelong achievements at work and many wonderful memories with family and close friends.

Jim

During my childhood, baseball relief pitchers didn’t dramatically thrust their uniform shirts from their pants after nailing down a save. They didn’t let out wild yells, or show-up the other team by symbolically shooting an arrow into the air.

One of the few acts of emotion that I recall involved the late Steve Hamilton. This Yankees reliever would come in around the seventh or eighth inning. When he succeeded, he just “pulled the chain.” As he walked from the mound, Hamilton extended his pitching arm in front of him, made a fist and yanked his arm back to his body as he turned over his forearm. Practically unnoticeable to fans, this gesture never caused embarrassment to his opponents.

For another Yankee relief pitcher, we now are seeing the last few days of a Hall of Fame career. For 19 years, Mariano Rivera has been a classy teammate, soft spoken and humble. He let his work ethic, and his cutter, do all the talking. Antics on the mound never have been part of his game.

With rare exceptions, Mo performed his job perfectly during exhibition games, the season, the playoffs and the World Series. With pressure high, he remained cool on the mound. He rarely showed emotion. If he failed, he accepted it and vowed to do better the next day. When a teammate failed, he was the first to provide encouragement.

This final year has been a celebration for Mo as he appears with the Yankees in ballparks around the country. He has been honored by the opposing teams, and he meets with their fans and long-time employees. He even is cheered and applauded by opposing fans as he enters games to shut down the home team.

All baseball fans appreciate a winner and this year they have celebrated the respect Mo has for his craft, for the game, for other players, for them, and for his God and his family. It is the rare athlete who can take a bow at center stage and receive good wishes from everyone.

We all can learn from the great Mariano!

Jim

Doc Edwards is a baseball lifer. He has spent 57 years in the game, and his bench is deep with stories.

Look at your baseball card collection, if mom didn’t toss it, to find a Doc Edwards card. He played with the Indians (managed them, too), Kansas City Athletics, the Yankees and the Phillies. Before and after that, he has played and managed (and traveled on the bus) with the Wichita Aeros, the Charleston Charlies, the Sioux Falls Canaries and teams in North Platte, Nebraska, and Burlington, North Carolina. He is famous in Rochester, New York, where he served as manager of the Red Wings when the team, during 1981, lost to the Pawtucket Red Sox in the longest professional baseball game (33 innings).

His stories feature just about everyone he has met in baseball from Mickey Mantle to the kid playing second base for him today—and whose name keeps slipping from memory. Doc once hit a home run in Fenway Park that barely scraped the top part of the fence while The Mick, as Doc tells it, “then…hit one to center field. One handed. More than 420 feet.”

Since his last day in the big leagues, Doc has become dedicated to teaching young players about the game, and he just loves when they are determined to pursue the nearly unachievable to become the next Mantle. Realistically, each player has a greater chance to become the next Doc Edwards. But, he prays for them and encourages them to never give up their dreams to play in the big leagues.

The rewards for all Doc’s years in baseball mostly come when one of his players successfully battles through a tough time on the field and then improves his game. But, once in a while, kudos have come his way. Doc remembered one game, in upstate New York, when hundreds of Orthodox Jews greeted him as he stepped on the field. This puzzled him, because he was never that good a ballplayer. He soon learned that when the rabbi was a kid, Doc talked to him from the Yankee Stadium bullpen, and now this was the rabbi’s way to show his gratitude.

Doc Edwards was good enough to play and manage in the major leagues. But for most of his baseball life, his role has included bumpy bus rides, cheap motels and little fanfare. Along for the ride has been the daily opportunity for Doc to guide many young players as each tries to find his position in the business of baseball.

Jim

After baseball’s spring training, David Adams, a second baseman, was released by the Yankees. Then came a roster of injuries, and Adams was resigned by the team as infield insurance. He played in the minor leagues until he was eligible for promotion to the big team during mid-May.

A chain of unusual events put Adams in the Yankee lineup at third base. Alex Rodriquez had off-season hip surgery. His replacement, Kevin Youkilis, was injured and eventually required back surgery that has disabled him for about four months. Other utility players were moved around the infield due to a disabling injury to the shortstop, Eduardo Nunez, who was keeping the position warm until the injured Derek Jeter could return from a twice broken bone.

Eventually the task at third was thrust upon Adams. His fielding was good, and his hitting started well—a .323 batting average with a couple of home runs and a handful of RBI in his first eight games. Then, things changed on the offensive side. His average plummeted to .191 and he still had two home runs and only a few more RBI after 26 games.

According to his manager, opposing teams studied him. Pitchers made adjustments on how they threw to him. Fielders were positioned to catch any ball he put in play. Adams never made the counter-adjustment, and he eventually realized the problem.

He put pressure on himself. He tried to accomplish too much and he shifted away from his strengths and what he could execute well. He realized he needed to simplify his approach to the game and again trust his plan.

The Yankees continued to juggle players as a few returned from their injuries. Adams was sent back to the minor leagues to work through his struggles.

Similar situations occur all the time in business. A company often must call upon an employee to fill a void. When that call comes, a worker must continue to make adjustments to a variety of unfamiliar conditions. A person who has confidence and can adapt well to new situations will, more often than not, remain with the top team.

Jim

During a Little League playoff game last summer, a boy with the Brewster team of Putnam County had to leave the dugout. An opponent protested his presence since he was not a roster player, and because his wheelchair created a liability issue.

Evan Sussman has had cerebral palsy since infancy. While he and the team were disappointed by the ruling, matters have turned out just fine for him and other players.

Soon after, Evan was allowed back in the dugout. He threw out the first pitch for the team’s next game. He and his teammates, and their families, received 20 tickets to a Yankees game from the local Stop & Shop supermarket, and then they received a matching donation of tickets from the Yankees.

Before the game, Evan was on the field during batting practice. He met the players and he fired strategic questions at manager Joe Girardi. “Can you tell me why,” asked Evan about a previous game, “you decided to switch the pitcher?”

The surprises didn’t end there. Rawlings heard about the story and sent Evan a personalized glove. Some things, though, had to wait for this season.

Evan’s mom, Karen Kushnir, is a special education advisor. When this all began, she was saddened by the circumstances. Then she spoke with officials of the Brewster Little League. The conversations led to the creation of the Brewster Challenger League for special-needs players. Many parents and students who wanted to help Evan and others like him in the community contributed their time to create two Challenger League teams.

Evan, his mom and others did not become discouraged on that day when Evan had to leave the dugout. Instead, they turned a disappointing situation into a new opportunity. Now baseball is providing more children in Brewster with the opportunity to have fun.

Jim