Hurd By The Bay

As the sports world reacts to the two-year sentence given former Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress on Tuesday, a question for all of you to contemplate:

What would’ve become of your life had you $2.1 million in your pocket --- GUAR-ON-TEED!! --- at age 16?

Excuse me while I think about my own life and shudder!

This, boys and girls, is our question today, because just as a Super Bowl hero with a daughter and family couldn’t handle his fame and fortune, neither, too, could a poor kid from the Dominican Republic who never really did a thing to earn it.

This Giant goes by the name Angel Villalona, and if you haven’t heard of him, don’t worry, you will. Villalona could turn out to be the first notable athlete in this sports-meets-entertainment-equals-unfettered-mess era to go down as a murderer. Even if he’s not convicted of the charges he faces in the death of 25-year-old Mario Felix de Jesus Velete, Villalona has shown himself incapable of making smart decisions.

And just to review: When a professional sports team is paying an athlete $2.1 million before he takes a step on a professional field, it's the athlete's responsibility to be smart and to be safe. If only teams gave money out based on clued-in vs. clue-less.

Then again, what should we expect?

When I was 16, I was ready to fly the nest, my parents knew nothing, I had all the skills necessary to navigate life and I made only wise decisions. I never drove fast, never did reckless things, never thought about what I said or to whom I said it and always assumed the sun would shine on my you-know-where the next day.

Guess I’m funny that way.

OK, back to reality. I think we’d all agree --- at least those of us who have lived a little --- that none of us really knows anything at 16, much less when were sidled with the responsibility that comes with $2.1 million. And especially were we sidled with the responsibility that comes with trying to lift an entire family out of the poverty in the Dominican Republic and other downtrodden environments from which more and more athletes come?

Don’t get me wrong. Some of us do understand by then that the world is not about us. Some of us would realize by then just what would come with gifts such as the ones Villalona possesses.

But most of us come into the world saying, “Mine, mine, mine,” and have not, by 16 figured out that life was not intended to be lived that way. With that selfishness comes a gigantic stage for doing some really dumb, life-ruining things.

Which is why the arrest of Villalona and the punishment of Burress really don’t have to be viewed as a “sad day,” as the football Giants termed it, but rather as a hopeful one. Burress represents a cautionary tale that star athletes really can go to jail, and Villalona is the living example of why nobody should get millions until they’ve “earned” their millions.

Too bad we’ve forgotten that somewhere along the way. Otherwise, Burress and Villalona probably would have much brighter futures.

Every so often, my almost-7-year-old son, Clayton, says or does something that makes me wonder whether he, indeed, has part of my gene pool. Example: He showed up for a recent overnight visit wearing a New York Yankees hat.

Seriously made me wonder whether the kid should remain in the will, lol.

Now you gotta understand, my mother and her side of the family all hail from a small town in Connecticut that's the halfway point where Yankee and Red Sox nations collide. So I've spent a lifetime listening to the obnoxiousness that results in rooting for the Microsoft's of the world. I choose not to partake.

If I had my druthers, I'd rather my children not drink the juice (no pun intended), either. So I asked this child of mine, "Clayton, how can you possibly root for the Yankees."

He says, "I like Derek Jeter."

Kid's pretty smart for 6. Tonight or sometime this weekend, Jeter will become the most prolific hitter in Yankees history, and there's no player I'd rather have my son emulate.

I was blessed enough to cover baseball during the Great Shortstop Debate earlier this decade. And I remember specifically a conversation I had while watching Miguel Tejada wreak havoc on the Bombers at the old Yankee Stadium while a member of the A's. And I remember specifically telling my uncle that Jeter was the least effective shortstop from a group that included Tejada, A-Rod and Nomar Garciaparra.

"You'll see who the last one standing is," he said.

Boy, I wish he had been wrong. But what fueled my uncle's argument, and he was dead right, was that Jeter "does it the right way," and that "those guys outlast the others."

Let's see. Jeter has never been arrested. Never had shady pics show up on the Internet. Never has incurred the wrath of his peers.

I interviewed Jeter on a couple of occasions, but only once in one-on-one. It was amazing how he steered every question about his own individual accomplishments into a topic about the greater good --- namely, winning games and winning championships. Jeter already has won four of them, and No. 5 is there for the taking in October.

Now, almost every player will say that it's all about the winning. But in reality, only a handful really mean it. If in actuality, Jeter is one of those, then he not only is the greatest shortstop in Yankees history, he's the greatest actor in the history of American theatre.

I choose to believe that he is, quite simply, the antithesis of the modern athlete, someone who's old school in motivation and actions. There's a reason he's the heart and soul of America's most famous franchise, and thank goodness he measures up to the expectation in every way.

So it is that Clayton is off to a great start in making sound judgements. His Yankees hat? Hanging nicely on the door.