When have you given, received or been witness to an unexpected act of kindness, large or small? What do you think was the motivation behind the act?
Three days after Christmas, Michael Gartner summoned the employees of the Iowa Cubs minor league baseball team to a staff meeting at Principal Park, the team’s stadium in Des Moines.
The team’s sale to a global sports and entertainment company had closed that day, and Mr. Gartner, 83, said he wanted to give the employees their new business cards.
But there were no business cards in the envelopes that he handed out. Instead, inside were checks worth $2,000 for every year each employee had worked for the team — $600,000 in total for the 23 full-time workers.
Employees who work in maintenance, accounting, marketing and other areas received checks for $4,000 to $70,000, said Mr. Gartner, who was the team’s majority owner for 22 years, until the sale closed last Tuesday.
“My jaw dropped,” said Alex Cohen, 33, who has been the team’s radio broadcaster since 2018 and has worked in professional baseball since 2009. “It’s an industry where you work really hard, and sometimes you don’t get compensated like that.”
Mr. Cohen described the checks as “a life-changing gesture” for some longtime staff members.
“Seeing all the people who had been there for two decades, three decades, tears streaming down their faces, it was a very special, emotional day,” he said.
Mr. Gartner said on Saturday that sharing proceeds from the sale “was the right thing to do.”
“A lot of those people have worked for us for over 20 years, and they’ve helped us build a successful team,” said Mr. Gartner, whose gesture was reported by Yahoo! Sports. “They’re just fantastic people.”
Mr. Gartner, who had owned the team with his son and three other partners, added: “They need the money more than we do. A lot of them still have mortgages and car payments and college payments.”
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