Yankees’ Joe Girardi Helps at Scene of Accident on Way Home from World Series
November 5, 2009 · PJ Ross · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
At 2:25 a.m., Joe Girardi was just hours removed from winning his first World Series Championship as manager of the New York Yankees.
Girardi was driving home on the Cross County Parkway in Westchester early this morning when he came across a woman who had crashed her car into a wall.
When Girardi came upon the accident, he exited his car to see if the driver needed any help.
Keep in mind that traffic is moving around 80-MPH at this point of the highway.
Yet he still got out, just like any regular non-World Series-winning citizen might do and inquired if the driver needed help.
“He was jumping up and down, trying to flag me down,” an officer said. “You don’t expect him standing by a car accident trying to help.”
The driver was 27-year old Marie Henry, and she didn’t even recognize who Girardi was until a police officer told her his identity because the Yankees’ manager was simply dressed in a t-shirt and jeans.
So Girardi didn’t exactly save anyone’s life, as the woman didn’t even take a trip to the hospital, but nonetheless I am extremely taken aback by Girardi’s actions.
That’s because there was a drunk driving checkpoint very nearby that Girardi had just passed through, and he would have known that police would have been on the scene at the accident within moments.
Is this a special event or headline news?
Nope.
But isn’t it refreshing to hear about someone in sports doing the right thing for once?
We are constantly bombarded by things like Tom Cable being an out of control rage-a-holic, or Brandon Spikes attempting to rip out the eyes of a Georgia running back, but this story stands up as a sports figure doing the right thing.
We can even look at the case of another former Yankees’ catcher, Jim Leyritz, who killed someone while drunk driving accident in 2007.
It might be completely coincidental, but yesterday Leyritz was quoted in an article as denying any wrongdoing in the fatal two-car DUI accident in which he was involved.
Leyritz scorned the deceased driver for not wearing her seatbelt, and said that he didn’t violate any traffic laws during the accident.
No accountability, no shame.
It shows us that the bottom line is Girardi didn’t have to stop.
He could have let the cops eventually show up and tend to the situation.
He could have kept driving and acted like he was above the situation.
But he did stop.
The man has spent the past month being grilled and skewered by the media about his pitching rotation (which worked out brilliantly by the way) and last night he reached the pinnacle of the baseball world.
I’m sure there was nothing more he wanted to do than get home and see his family, and even with that in mind he took the extra time to go out of his way and see if this stranger was in need of help.
You can talk about the Yankees “buying” World Championships all you like, or second-guess his decisions as a manager all you would like, but Girardi just demonstrated to us that we don’t always know the person behind the logo like we might think we do.
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