Ben Christensen

       

Profile

Ben Christensen was a pitcher in the Chicago Cubs organization, drafted in the 1st round of the 1999 MLB Draft* out of Wichita State.  He was born in Waterloo** before moving to Kansas.  Ben topped out at AA before being released by Chicago.

* Iowa connections in 1999 Draft: Wes Obermueller (2nd UofI), Jason Cromer (11th Des Moines), Kevin Ciarrachi (17th UNI), Nathan Hilton (28th ISU), Orlando Roman (31st Indian Hills), Eric Langill (34th DMACC), Brian Mitchell (40th UofI),William Vazquez (44th Indian Hills), Manases Pabon (48th Indian Hills)

** Some other professional athletes from Waterloo: MLB: Rick Folkers, Jack Bruner   NFL: Darren Sproles, Reggie Roby, MarTay Jenkins, David Barrett, Mike Haffner, J.J. Moses, Don Perkins

Personal Notes

Ok.  It is impossible to talk about Ben without bringing up the incident in 1999.  The short version, Ben struck an opposing player in the head with a warm-up pitch causing the player to lose some functionality in that eye.  

This is a simple situation with so many difficult layers, as most of life is.  The simplest version is that Ben injured a person in a non-game situation and deserves punishment.  However, that is way too simple.

There is the tragedy of an inch.  If the ball is an inch or two one direction, the ball misses and maybe Ben misses a game.  Another way and it hits the batting helmet and he is fine.  Or maybe it cracks his skull and he dies.  

Then there is the tragedy of leadership.  Ben claims that he was following orders from a coach about brushing back a players who was creeping too close to the plate.  We trust the structure of leadership and weep at the failure of it.  

The failure of the "unwritten" rules of baseball.  The brush back is meant to exact baseball justice, but comes with a cost.  Don Zimmer was knocked unconscious by one as a minor leaguer and was semi-conscious for 13 days.  Others have dies.  Bob Feller refused to do it because he was afraid he kill someone.

Lastly the failure of justice and remorse.  There is no justice for a player who lost his chance to play ball, and thus there is no court ruling, act of contrition or apology that will ever be right.  Our justice system take these things and assigns monetary value to them, but its never right.  

So, I don't have much to add to this.  It was a terrible thing, and it just made me think.  I don't have solutions now, or great insights but sometimes you just need to sit in the uncomfortableness and really think about things.  

Collection Notes

I have 8/69 (12%) cards in my collection.