Harp Helú presents his autobiography ‘Living and dying playing baseball’

Mexico City. As a child, Alfredo Harp Helú only had one toy. A ball. Nothing more than that because his family’s economic situation did not allow more. But that sphere allowed him to play everything that his imagination suggested with friends and sisters. And there perhaps was born an early connection with one of his strongest passions in life: baseball. He told this on Thursday night at the Lebanese Center in the Benito Juárez mayor’s office, where he presented his autobiography. Live and die playing baseball. In search of more championships.

If he had to choose between baseball or life, Harp Helú would not face a decisive dilemma. For this Mexican businessman who was born eighty years ago, these are images that correspond to the fidelity of a mirror, they are one thing and the same. There is no need to choose between one and the other, as his biography reveals, woven like a textile in which the threads intersect to offer a tapestry that is best appreciated in perspective, as he writes in his book.

Photo Marco Peláez

For Harp Helú, the diamond and its game logic is a metaphor for life. Or if you prefer, life is a metaphor for baseball. An approach with its pauses and moments of reflection, its moments to act and to seek the objective, always with the clear awareness that it is a collective act and that each of the individual actions affects or benefits the whole. Or what else is a sacrificial out, but the most honest example of offering oneself so that another, or others, achieve their goals, in the ball reaching a base or home plate, but as Harp himself says in his book. Life or society itself like a ball park.

Because the other great passion of the Mexican businessman is philanthropy, that commitment so that wealth serves to encourage those who have less to improve their living conditions. In his presentation, with the eye of a public accountant, the profession he studied at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, he recounted the immensity of the universe, planets, constellations and years required to move in space.

“Compared to what happens in the universe, the things that I do for the benefit of Oaxaca, where I live, and Mexico, my country, are nothing. But we have to continue doing it and it is the only order I gave to my children, my grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” he said in the presentation.

Photo Marco Peláez

“For me, the greatest happiness lies in helping others, that is why my key maneuver is to capitalize on my foundations and do more works for the community,” writes Harp Helú, who through his foundations promotes education, culture, and arts projects. , archaeological rescues and historical collections, and sports, with baseball as its flagship.

“My dedication to others comes from my heart and my most important wish is for people to achieve a better standard of living or to become professionals and thus be able to modify their reality for the better, and with it, the reality of many others.” ”, he adds in a chapter.

And to begin with the origin, with a recount of his Lebanese roots, a source of pride that he speaks about with the same passion as he does when mentioning Oaxaca, Mexico or baseball.

“My grandfather chose Mexico to live because it reminded him of Lebanon. He was a subscriber, I’m not ashamed to say, that is, he sold in the towns that he traveled on a donkey and then went to collect without getting anything signed. Just the word. Years later when I operated in the Stock Market I moved millions of pesos that I had to pay from one day to the next, without signing anything either, just my word and we always fulfilled,” he said.

Photo Marco Peláez

During the presentation of the book, for example, there was a moment of reflection on the suffering of civilian populations in the Middle East. Lebanese and Mexican roots are significant pieces in the identity of Harp Helú, who contributes one peso for every peso raised to an emergency fund for people currently suffering in Lebanon due to the devastation undertaken by Israel.

And baseball, that game that is so similar to life or that for Harp Helú is life itself. Owner of the Red Devils of Mexico, brand new champion of the Mexican League, whose stadium is a jewel of architecture, he also represented a synthesis of passion and generosity, because thanks to that the ball in this circuit did not disappear in Mexico City.

“I have decided to have my foundations well capitalized. By the beginning of 2024 they had an asset, in round numbers, of nineteen thousand six hundred million pesos, and we have granted more than ten thousand nine hundred million pesos to more than six thousand specific projects.”

Photo Marco Peláez

The businessman detailed much of the philanthropic activity in education and the arts, natural disasters, among others. For example, it awards one hundred thousand scholarships annually at UNAM. And he does the same at the Polytechnic and La Salle.

“I went to the Luis Enrique Erro planetarium and now we modernize it. We are going to build a planetarium in Oaxaca, there we have libraries, many mobile ones, where they can request books and we go get them. “Many children read to their grandparents who don’t know how to read,” said the businessman, who has also restored historical monuments in the Mixtec area.