Walking Away

The Athletic has a nice interview with former Mariner starting pitcher Gil Meche, framed around his decision to walk away from the last year of his contract with the Kansas City Royals and forego $12 million. That’s a theme (“how much more money do you really need?” that we often revisit here…

I’m still learning that when you have nice things, what is really needed and what isn’t needed?

I’ve bought a beach house down in Florida. I bought a nice boat at one point. All these things that I’ve bought, that I really wanted in my lifetime, you still realize those are really things you don’t need.

Actually, I’m currently trying to sell the house I’m in. It’s in a nice neighborhood on a golf course, but it’s a little too big for what I need now. The kids are getting older and they’re in college. I have some land, about 42 acres with a beautiful pond, and that’s also something I’m selling.

You kind of get to a point in your life where you realize: Did I really need this or was that something I purchased just to make me feel good? And they did! I had a great time with some of the things I’ve owned. But they’re just not needed.

The older I get, I want to simplify my life more and more.

But looking back at the amount of money it was, trust me, now that my kids are in college and wanting to graduate and get jobs, there are many times I think: “OK, if they start making $200,000 a year and have extremely good jobs, that’s going to take them a while to make $12 million. …”

So I do think that way sometimes. It’s like: “Man, was that the right decision for my children?” For me, it definitely was. But then again, I also want my kids to have their own lives and make their own money and achieve their own dreams and goals.

Meche made about $50 million over the course of his career, certainly enough to find a degree of comfort and security (although we should recall that plenty of pro athletes who earn money in that range end up bankrupt). The ins and outs of how he assessed his responsibility to himself and to the people around him (not just family, but also others, like his agent, who had invested themselves in his career) are certainly worthwhile reading.

Photo Credit: By John H. Kim on Flickr (Original version)User UCinternational (Crop) – Originally posted to Flickr as “Gil Meche”Cropped by UCinternational, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4857927