Washington Nationals: Max Scherzer’s Wife Makes Perfect Sense
As the story goes, Max Scherzer’s wife Erica saw this dirty old Washington Nationals baseball jersey with a big number 31 on the back laying around somewhere in the house. So, she did what any self-respecting woman who keeps a clean house should do. She threw it in the trash. And maybe to her, that made perfect sense. It does to me, so here’s the story behind the story.
The first question that comes to mind is what was Max Scherzer‘s dirty old jersey doing just lying around the house with a bunch of other “stuff” if it was so treasured? Why wasn’t it encased somewhere in Cooperstown? After all, this was the jersey he wore on the night he pitched his second no-hitter of the 2015 season, striking out 17 while joining Nolan Ryan as the only other player to accomplish the feat in a single season since 1973.
Pretty heady stuff, huh? It is, except for one thing which begs another question. Is Max Scherzer one of those sentimental guys who still has a ball he’s saved from his Little League days and pictures of him and his date at the senior prom, or does he keep his “stuff” for another reason? But before we get into that, let’s understand something else about Max Scherzer.
Max Scherzer is a very rich young man. So far, he has earned $61,175,000 wearing a big league uniform. He’s also due to earn to earn $15 million for each of the next 12 years when he’ll reach a final total of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars for throwing a baseball.
The house that he lives in, and the one his wife tries to keep clean, is in the exclusive town of McLean, Virginia. Purchased for $5.2 million, it’s a 4,800-square-foot house that includes four bedrooms, five baths, and a heated indoor pool – all on a secluded three-acre spread overlooking the Potomac.
Think that would be enough? Apparently not. And that’s because there’s a market out there for his “stuff”, as well as the “stuff” of all professional athletes. It’s the sports memorabilia market and it continues to thrive for reasons that escape me.
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Now again, only Max Scherzer can answer the question of why he keeps his stuff, and we’ve can only assume that his wife was looking at a whole lot more when she picked that jersey out for the garbage, but it would seem to follow that Max Scherzer sees value in his “stuff”.
And I would suspect that some day he will have a decision to make. Do I pack everything up and have it delivered to Cooperstown where it can be displayed for everyone to enjoy next to my plaque in the Hall of Fame? Or do I dial Sotheby’s and make a deal to have it put up for auction?
Either way, Max Scherzer can’t be faulted because by then he may need every penny of those millions to pay for his grandchildren’s college education. But the real question centers around the sports memorabilia game itself.
It’s filled with shysters and con men who knowingly sell replicas of the real thing. Legitimate sellers, if there is such a creature, have to jump through forensic hoops to get something (what they call) “authenticated”. And even then, who’s to say that the following transaction is valid?
In 2012, a legendarily rare T206 Honus Wagner baseball card sold at auction to an anonymous New Jersey resident for more than $1.2 million.
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My question, though, is this. Where is that card now? And will his wife come along and see this old piece of cardboard and throw it in the trash? Or is it something that this anonymous guy from New Jersey sleeps with at night? Just what is it?
So there are my two cents for the day. What say you?