Educators are in the news, too. Usually that’s bad. I had a favorite college professor. He used to tell us, ‘If you make CNN as a teacher, you’re probably going to jail.

I’m not sure I ever met an American teacher in Korea that hadn’t volunteered at an orphanage at least once – even our resident idiot could be surprisingly decent on occasion – but I’ve also visited foreign countries where children are taught hatred. I’ve seen it up close and personal. It’s antithetical to everything I believe in as a teacher. The mandate for all teachers is to instill hope, not fear and hatred.

Cope? Adapt? Uh, no. These are military kids. They roll with it. I once asked a new student, ‘See any familiar faces?’ She pointed out various kids and replied, ‘Seattle, Tampa, Okinawa, New Jersey.’ For military dependents school is literally a non-stop revolving door of old and new friends.

Chipper Jones will be in the Hall of Fame. The #1 overall pick in the 1990 draft, Chipper will be remembered as the greatest switch-hitting third baseman in baseball history.

[Tony] Pérez stood out because he was a clutch hitter. And like Bench and Morgan and Rose, it was a clutch October hit that immortalized him in baseball’s postseason lore. The powerful first baseman hit three home runs against Boston during the 1975 World Series, but none bigger than his blast against Bill Lee.

It’s hard to dismiss the obvious symmetry between Longo [Evan Longoria] and the franchise for which he’s now the poster-child: for the player, Hondo Junior College to MLB All-Star … for the team, worst to first.

Seemingly every year at least one of the league’s top sluggers can be found in Boston’s lineup—and often times more than one. David Ortiz was second or third in slugging five consecutive seasons from 2003-07. Manny Ramirez was in the top five in slugging six consecutive seasons from 2001-06. Manny and Big Papi were one-two in slugging in 2004, and from 2003-06 Boston’s big bats gave the club two of the league’s top five sluggers—something no other team in the league could boast.

Big Papi placed among the top five in Most Valuable Player balloting during his first five seasons with the Red Sox. His best finish in that span was second place in 2005, just losing out to Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees. It was A-Rod, however, who suggested he’d gladly trade his hardware for the ring Ortiz won in 2004. A-Rod got the hardware for MVP again in 2007, but it was Ortiz who got another ring.

It was like the baseball gods were showing off just for him, in honor of his first day of big league baseball. And surely the baseball gods were smiling that day, because the next batter was Larry Brown, and he was a scrawny, scrappy 23-year-old kid who’d never hit a big league home run. And yet he stepped to the plate and became just the second player in baseball history to connect and give his team four consecutive home runs.

It’s one thing to win a game with a base hit, or to save a game by pitching a scoreless ninth ... it’s something altogether different to save our National Pastime by day in and day out showing up with the joy and passion of a kid playing Little League and the determined attitude and work ethic of a consummate professional bent on doing one thing and one thing only: his job.