Raul Ibanez’s influence on and off the field
Raul Ibanez has certainly learned his fair share of things on the baseball diamond, and he has learned a lot away from it as well.
After a stint with the Kansas City Royals, Ibanez returned to the Seattle Mariners – the team that drafted him in 2004 – and took note of the notable charitable efforts of teammates Jamie Moyer, Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner. Since then, Ibanez has done as much as he can when he’s not on the field to use his status as a professional baseball player to help various communities and charitable organizations.
“There are a lot of different things you can do. I like to get on a personal level with people, be able to visit kids that might not being doing too well,” he said. “Cystic Fibrosis has been something that has been close to my heart for a while, too.”
Ibanez is a supporter of Esperanza, a non-profit organization that provides aid in multiple areas to families throughout Latin America, and he has served as the spokesman for the “Refuse to Abuse” campaign, a program that tackles the prevention of violence in intimate relationships. While with the Mariners, he and his wife worked with the Page Ahead Children’s Literacy Program, which helps at-risk youth obtain valuable reading materials.
Ibanez, a member of the Phillies since 2009, hasn’t changed his approach to helping others, and reuniting with Moyer in Philadelphia has increased his fondness of The Moyer Foundation, an organization that has really weighed on his heart for some time.
“They do a lot of great things, and with Camp Erin they do a lot of tremendous work for raising funds for cancer research, as well as bereavement camps for children who have lost loved ones,” Ibanez said. “They can go to these camps and participate in an environment where other kids have lost loved ones too, and I think that’s a tremendous endeavor and I love that.”
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Owner of a career .282/.345/.474 slash line across parts of 15 Major League seasons, Ibanez is a valuable member of the Phillies on the field. Though he started off the season on the wrong foot with a .161 average and .466 OPS in April, he has turned things around so far in May, going 24-for-72 (.333) with a .943 OPS in 20 games. More importantly, he snapped a nasty 0-for-35 skid this month, and seems to be heading in the right direction.
He is perhaps even more valuable to the Phillies in the clubhouse considering the kind of person he is, and the advice he gives to other players regarding baseball is clear.
“Work hard, take care of what you can control, stay hyper-focused on what you need to do to become a better player, and forget about everything else,” he said. “Keep your priorities in order, God and your family come first, and then your career. If you get that out of whack, then your profession or something will suffer for it.”
It doesn’t stop there. There are many advantages to being a professional baseball player, but to Ibanez, no advantage is greater than being able to use it to help others, and every player should understand that.
“When you walk into a classroom to help and talk to kids about not doing drugs, they’ll listen to you just because you’re wearing a uniform. It’s a really powerful tool and a heavy responsibility that you should take seriously,” he said. “Whether you like it or not you’re a role model, take that seriously and run with it, do some good in the world.”
Being the oldest player on a charismatic Phillies team, Ibanez, 38, is a veteran presence virtually by default. With the Phillies, there are no boundaries between older and younger players, though, and he feels that that is something special, considering he has seen and heard about those boundaries existing between players elsewhere.
That being said, just because Ibanez is the oldest player on the team and has been in the league the longest, doesn’t mean he isn’t open to constructive criticism from teammates, even if they are younger than him.
“A younger player may walk up to me and say ‘hey I see you’re doing this wrong at the plate’ and I’m greatly appreciative of that,” the New York native said. “[We’re] just a bunch of guys that really try to help each other, and the goal in mind is to win.”
Though his 39th birthday is approaching and he’s in the final year of the three-year, $31.5 million contract that he signed prior to the 2009 season, Ibanez is showing no signs of letting up and has every intent of playing next year.
Like every other player in baseball, Ibanez is after a championship ring, and it’s easy to see why Philadelphia is the team that gives him the best chance at it. On top of earning the first All-Star appearance of his career in a Phillies uniform in 2009, he got a taste of the World Series that year as well. The Phillies made it to the NLCS last year, and currently sit atop the NL East, largely in part to their starting rotation, which is easily one of the best in baseball.
On top of the team’s success, Ibanez has fallen in love with the city, and it’s obvious that a return to Philadelphia next season would be ideal for him.
“I love it here, the organization is first class, the fans are first class, and the team, what better team can you ask for?” he said. “Playing in Philadelphia and being a part of these fans is amazing. They’re super-passionate, really intense, very supportive, and they live and die by through what you do on the field so it’s a lot of fun.”
After his slow start to the season, Ibanez was widely criticized and some people had even hinted that it was time for him to call it a career. With his impressive showing in May, however, retirement is something that hasn’t even crossed his mind, since he is focusing on only one thing this season.
“If you focus on the end, you’re going to miss what’s going on right in front of you. If you focus on what’s right in front of you, the end takes care of itself,” he said.
“My first goal and the only goal in my mind is to help this team win a World Series.”
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