Long story short: Chicago White Sox first baseman, Adam LaRoche abruptly retires from baseball after 12 years in the majors, citing personal reasons. It’s revealed that the White Sox asked LaRoche to cut back how much time his son, Drake, was allowed to be in the team clubhouse and exposure to the team. Instead of complying, LaRoche instead retired, and forfeited the remaining $13 million dollars he was due for the 2016 season.
I know that there are going to be a ton of baseball geeks on the internet who will be quick to call Adam LaRoche “stupid,” and other pejoratives meant to put him down, for his decision to walk away from a guaranteed $13 million dollars to play a kid’s game. And absolutely, $13 million dollars is a tremendous amount of money, even for a professional athlete.
However, all these people who are/will be quick to fling stones, also are incapable of occasionally seeing the big picture in life, and the importance of things that matter that aren’t money.
The bottom line is that Adam LaRoche clearly values his son, more than baseball. I’m not a parent, but even I think that that’s kind of a no-brainer, and I have nothing but support and admiration for Roachy for making the decision he made.
For the record, LaRoche has earned somewhere around $70 million dollars throughout his career. Sure, taxes may as well slash that number in half, but still $35 million is more money than most everyone will ever see in their entire lives, so it’s safe to assume that a pretty modest blue-collar, hunting-loving redneck like Adam LaRoche just might be fine on the financial front. His brother as well as his father were also professional baseball players, so the entire LaRoche clan is probably okay.
Leaving $13 million on the table is certainly a lot of money, but for a guy who’s earned over five times that already, his son’s teenage years clearly are far more valuable to him.
It goes without saying that I love that Roachy did this, because ultimately, it’s got to be an embarrassment to the White Sox organization for a player to prefer leaving millions of dollars on the table to go home to his family, rather than suit up and play for their team. Sure, the barring of Drake might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but there has to be a lot of unmentioned prior incidents that have escalated to lead to Roachy’s quick decision to bail at this latest infraction.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the White Sox anyway, so nothing about hearing that the organization pissed off a player so badly he decided to retire is really that much of a surprise. I base my disdain for the franchise based on my visit to U.S. Cellular Field back in 2010, when all I really wanted to do was enjoy an evening at a ballpark I’d never been to before, only to arrive at a dungeon with the most Draconian attendance policies I’d ever seen in my life. Sure, it was the ballpark and its restrictive policies that pissed me off, but I’ve associated that dislike for the White Sox franchise itself. Frankly, the White Sox barely exist in my book, and they should be fortunate that they haven’t reached San Francisco Giants-level of dislike, and a desire to see them lose, to no matter whom.
Anyway, like I said, there’s more to this story than Roachy using solely the barring of his son, as reason to spontaneously retire. After 12 years in the big leagues, maybe Roachy was just done, and just needed a reason to call it quits. Or maybe the White Sox organization really is that shitty, and this has been a conflict waiting to boil over throughout the last year and change, since he signed with the team.
The thing is, Roachy is walking away from the game at a point in his career where he probably still had something left in the tank. Sure, 2015 was a down year for him, but it wasn’t the worst year in his career, and he’s never had two consecutive seasons where he’s been measured in the negatives when it comes to WAR (wins over replacement), the veritable tell-all stat that frequently used to comprehensively measure a player’s value. Ultimately, in that measurement, Roachy can say that he’s basically had an entire career where he earned every dollar he made, and gave it back in terms of baseball production.
Such, are not the kinds of players who retire on a whim, and typically try to eke out a season or two or more where they’ll get paid way more than they will actually contribute. I’m glad to see a guy like Adam LaRoche not end up with such a dubious distinction.
I’m happy for Adam LaRoche for choosing to leave money on the table in lieu of leaving what’s likely a toxic environment, and alternatively opting to head home and be a family man. There’s also a part of me that he’ll renege on retirement, and come back to the Braves at some point this year, since he made most of his career in Atlanta, and be a good fallback to Freddie Freeman, so he doesn’t feel like he has to play all 162 full games, to carry an otherwise dead weight team all season.
