MLB’s new security chief understands danger — and baseball
https://dervishcom.blogspot.com/2011/12/mlbs-new-security-chief-understands.html
NEW YORK – It’s actually a boring job for the most part, being Major League Baseball’s vice president for security. A lot of chasing after counterfeiters and licensing violators. A lot of crafting of memos and standardizing of procedure across all 30 teams. But for dramatic purposes, let’s imagine the job is always like it was the night of Nov. 9, when Bill Bordley, on the job for just 3½ weeks, got a call telling him that a Washington Nationals player, catcher Wilson Ramos, had been kidnapped at gunpoint in Venezuela.
Over the tension-packed 48 hours that followed, Bordley worked his old embassy contacts for information, monitored the situation through MLB’s department of investigations and, like the rest of baseball, breathed a sigh of relief when Ramos was rescued, unharmed, two days after being abducted.
“I told my wife [when the job started] that things would be slow until the players get to spring training,” Bordley said. “But it’s been anything but slow.”
For that matter, being a Secret Service agent, as Bordley was for 20 years, is also a mostly boring gig. For the majority of those 20 years, he worked in far-flung offices, investigating electronic crimes, identity theft and Internet fraud, and administering polygraphs. They don’t make many thrillers about that.
So once again, for dramatic purposes, let’s pretend the job was always as intense and full of intrigue as the 5½ years he spent on President Clinton’s protection detail — when, by solemn vow, he would have taken a bullet for the leader of the free world, when, for a time, he headed the team assigned to first daughter Chelsea Clinton during her Stanford years, and when, one day in late 1995 or early 1996, he denied entrance to the Oval Office to a raven-haired young lady who did not have the proper credential.
Yes, the young lady was Monica Lewinsky, and yes, as Bordley himself would be quoted in Sect. IV (A) of the Report of the Independent Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, the president eventually interceded and told Bordley it was okay for her to come in. According to the report, Bordley noted that she exited the Oval Office an hour later.
“When that incident happened, I was relatively new to the detail,” Bordley said one afternoon this month over lunch a couple of blocks from MLB’s Park Avenue headquarters. “They tell you anyone who gets anywhere near the Oval Office obviously has to be credentialed and have a pass. And this person, she did not have it on. I thought someone was playing a joke on me, trying to test me — the new guy. I stopped her.”
And so it was that William C. Bordley became the only ex-big leaguer to be quoted in the Starr Report.
Playing career derailed
That’s right — before he was a Secret Service agent, and long, long before he was MLB’s chief of security, Bill Bordley was a major league pitcher.
Truth be told, his big league career, totaling eight appearances for the San Francisco Giants in 1980, was mostly forgettable — three losses, three elbow surgeries, two wins.
But for — what else? — dramatic purposes, let’s pretend Bordley’s career was always as exhilarating as it was on June 30, 1980, when the highly touted lefty made his big league debut at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park against the Cincinnati Reds, starting and pitching six innings in an 8-4 win.
Over the tension-packed 48 hours that followed, Bordley worked his old embassy contacts for information, monitored the situation through MLB’s department of investigations and, like the rest of baseball, breathed a sigh of relief when Ramos was rescued, unharmed, two days after being abducted.
“I told my wife [when the job started] that things would be slow until the players get to spring training,” Bordley said. “But it’s been anything but slow.”
For that matter, being a Secret Service agent, as Bordley was for 20 years, is also a mostly boring gig. For the majority of those 20 years, he worked in far-flung offices, investigating electronic crimes, identity theft and Internet fraud, and administering polygraphs. They don’t make many thrillers about that.
So once again, for dramatic purposes, let’s pretend the job was always as intense and full of intrigue as the 5½ years he spent on President Clinton’s protection detail — when, by solemn vow, he would have taken a bullet for the leader of the free world, when, for a time, he headed the team assigned to first daughter Chelsea Clinton during her Stanford years, and when, one day in late 1995 or early 1996, he denied entrance to the Oval Office to a raven-haired young lady who did not have the proper credential.
Yes, the young lady was Monica Lewinsky, and yes, as Bordley himself would be quoted in Sect. IV (A) of the Report of the Independent Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives, the president eventually interceded and told Bordley it was okay for her to come in. According to the report, Bordley noted that she exited the Oval Office an hour later.
“When that incident happened, I was relatively new to the detail,” Bordley said one afternoon this month over lunch a couple of blocks from MLB’s Park Avenue headquarters. “They tell you anyone who gets anywhere near the Oval Office obviously has to be credentialed and have a pass. And this person, she did not have it on. I thought someone was playing a joke on me, trying to test me — the new guy. I stopped her.”
And so it was that William C. Bordley became the only ex-big leaguer to be quoted in the Starr Report.
Playing career derailed
That’s right — before he was a Secret Service agent, and long, long before he was MLB’s chief of security, Bill Bordley was a major league pitcher.
Truth be told, his big league career, totaling eight appearances for the San Francisco Giants in 1980, was mostly forgettable — three losses, three elbow surgeries, two wins.
But for — what else? — dramatic purposes, let’s pretend Bordley’s career was always as exhilarating as it was on June 30, 1980, when the highly touted lefty made his big league debut at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park against the Cincinnati Reds, starting and pitching six innings in an 8-4 win.
