When superheroes are actual heroes. 17 comments


Sometimes it’s easy to forget these players are humans. When you are a kid, they are your superheroes. They can do no wrong, even if they strike out four times a game or give up ten runs in the first. You love them, you defend them, you live and die with them.

Then you grow up. You temper your hero worship, but still you are in awe of their abilities. What they do is pretty incredible.

Until they do something so amazingly unselfish, that they are back to being superheroes for a totally different reason.

This story is a few days late, but it’s no less worthy of recalling. On Tuesday, Cole Hamels and his wife, Heidi, decided to give away their 32,000 square-foot home near Branson, Missouri, worth nearly $10 million, to charity. To the Barnabus Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to bettering the lives of kids with special needs and chronic illnesses, and their siblings.

I am not ashamed to say, when I heard this, it made a fluid of water, mucin, lipids, lysozyme, lactoferrin, lipocalin, lacritin, immunoglobulins, glucose, urea, sodium, and potassium escape from my eyes. I have a soft spot for kids. Especially for kids that don’t deserve the fate life dealt them.

“Barnabas makes dreams come true, and we felt called to help them in a big way,” Hamels explained.

On a day that Darryl Strawberry publically admitted to doing despicable things between innings of games, it’s more important to focus on the other, positive end of the human spectrum.

Cole Hamels was a World Series MVP in 2008.

Big deal.

Cole Hamels and his wife just went into the Hall of Fame of Humanity. Even if he goes 0-20 this season, he should be your favorite Ranger of 2018.