12 sports shout-outs for 2013

A tip of the cap to the individuals, teams, and organizations whose actions in 2013 put sports in a more positive light in various ways.

1. To Mariano Rivera, the Yankees record-setting relief pitcher…

DAVE KAUP/REUTERS
New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera gave a thumbs-up sign to a fan after he was honored before the last regular season MLB baseball game he played against the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, May 12, 2013.

…for arranging the classiest big-league retirement tour ever.  Rivera sat down with groups of people who work behind the baseball scenes at every ballpark the Yankees visited – vendors, equipment managers, secretaries, etc. He thanked them for their service to the game he loves during pregame conversation circles.

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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