Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Gordon stealing for charity
Marlin helping poor Dominicans, one stolen base at a time
Dee Gordon, antsy as always on first base, took off for second. In a matter of a few steps and even fewer seconds, he not only swiped second but also moved to third when an errant throw sailed into center.
The sequence was a productive one for Gordon on two fronts. For the Miami Marlins, he moved closer to scoring the first run of the team’s win Tuesday. And for some of the poorest communities in the Dominican Republic, he earned another $200.
The latter is a pledge from Gordon to personally donate that amount for every base he steals this season, part of his relatively new commitment to and interest in fighting extreme poverty in the Dominican. He teamed up with Food for the Hungry, which has worked to help the world’s poorest people for decades, and its newer baseball-themed, D.R.-centric “Striking Out Poverty” program last year.
It started for Gordon after he hit his first big-time payday: a five-year, $50 million contract extension in January 2016. He was doing well on the field, and he wanted to do good off of it.
“I could’ve went in the inner cities and just handed out money, but I didn’t want to do that,” said Gordon, 29. “I wanted to help on a broader scale.
“I just thought it was the best way to humble myself and show myself I was grateful for what I’ve gotten, by helping
somebody I didn’t know.”
In January, Gordon visited the Dominican with Gregory Polanco, an outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Gordon had been to the island country before — he played in the Dominican Winter League during two offseasons — but he hadn’t quite seen these parts.
Among the villages Gordon visited was the remote Camaron, two hours by car northwest of capital Santo Domingo. In Gordon’s words: “To get to Camaron, we had to go up a mountain, down a mountain, over a creek and over another mountain, with goats tied up to fence posts and stuff.
“It was crazy,” Gordon said, “but when we got here, it was so beautiful, so green.”
Gordon played ball with kids and chatted with locals. Camaron had only recently gotten running water, an exciting and critical development. Then Gordon learned it wasn’t clean.
“This guy was bathing in it, his kids were in it. And their translator said, ‘But it’s not clean,’” Gordon said. “And that’s when the light bulb went off in my head. That’s when I knew what I had to do; I had to help that community.”
Gordon’s solution: footing the bill, of more than $15,000, for the village’s water treatment facility. Clean water shouldn’t be a problem anymore in Camaron.
Food for the Hungry brought Gordon to another town, one it had been helping for years. The successes impressed — and inspired — him.
“It’s not ‘hey, here’s money’ and then [nothing]. Food for Hunger stays there 10 years to establish a good thing for those people to follow,” Gordon said. “We saw a community that was … flourishing. They were looking at us — they asked the [Food for the Hungry] people like, ‘Are you guys going to finally leave now? We good. We got it.’ I was like, that’s sick. They got it. They’re doing pretty good then.”
“Being in baseball, you have to be humble, you have to be grateful.” Dee Gordon
Gordon is carrying that excitement into the season with his monetary commitment tied to his stolen bases. Others can get involved with Gordon’s fundraising at pledgeit.org/deegordon.
Don’t expect Gordon to run wild, however, for the sake of a good cause. He learned that lesson the hard way. In April 2015, when his steals turned into money for another charity, he tried too hard, stealing eight bases and getting caught six times. That 57 percent success rate was far below his career 74 percent clip.
Striking Out Poverty, Gordon said, is a topic of conversation in the Marlins clubhouse whenever he can find an excuse to bring it up. A few teammates have expressed an interest in getting involved.
“Y’all can come,” Gordon tells them.
For Gordon, there is also a personal benefit to this charitable endeavor. He lives the luxurious life of a major leaguer, and this is a way to remind himself it’s a great one, even if things sometimes feel like they’re going poorly.
He admits it is not always easy to keep that perspective.
“Being in baseball, you have to be humble, you have to be grateful,” said Gordon, a Central Florida native and the son of former big league pitcher Tom Gordon. “I’m grateful, I’m humble. We all struggle with it because, ‘Oh, we play baseball.’ We all struggle with it. But the more I can be humble and help somebody I don’t know, I should be able to do pretty good.
“I do stuff in my hometown, I do stuff in Miami. But it’s a little different when you’re helping people you don’t know. As Americans, we’re blessed. You see that bottle of water right there? They don’t have that.”