Banco de Anthony Santander

This post is dedicated to Malcolm D. Griggs, Esq., fast friend and fellow law student, recently retired as Chief Risk Officer of Citizens Financial Group.  He is about the only baseball fan I know, and technically he left the law for the banking industry.  He knows just about everything about everything from physics to philosophy to Scots history and culture and still remains humble and about the nicest guy I know.

(Editor’s Note: this post is the author’s fever dream.  We have no evidence that Mr. Santander has ever had any thoughts or participated in any acts remotely like these.)

Mr. Anthony Santander (pronounced “San-tan-DARE” or “SAHN-tan-der” depending on your source) is a major league baseball player.  He has played for the Baltimore Orioles and currently with the Toronto Blue Jays.  He is a rightfielder.  Though a somewhat mediocre hitter, he has earned $40 million dollars to date and is scheduled to make another $ 71 million through the course of his career.  Note that I was a mediocre hitter as well.  Where’s my $111 million dollars?

One year, the Baltimore Orioles won enough regular season and then playoff games to make it into the World Series, which is a best of seven series for the championship of American baseball.   It is not actually for the championship of the world; the term was created when only Americans played convincingly world-class baseball. 

Since then, Japan, Taiwan, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Venezuela, and the Netherlands can challenge American teams.  Several other Asian and Central and South American and European teams are beginning to work up to snuff as well.  (I dare not mention an Asian team whose landmass dominates Asia for fear of having my laptop confiscated and my coffee machine broken; you know whom I mean. ANYWAY THEY AREN’T ALL THAT GOOD.  YET.)

The point is that the series isn’t actually for the championship of the world anymore.  The Americans just like to think it is.  American baseball players, who used to come chiefly from red states, would have trouble accepting the proposition.  The influx of California boys might be making a difference.  Anyway it’s a subject best not broached among American baseball executives, scouts, coaches, or some pockets of increasingly retrograde fans.

Ahem.  Anyway, one year the Orioles made it into the World Series.  Anthony Santander was playing right field, and a member of the opposing team, probably the Los Angeles Dodgers for they were the dominant team from the National League, sometimes hereinafter “the Senior Circuit” hit a long fly ball down the right field foul line, Mr. Santander’s responsibility and territory.  He ran over, and, approaching the outfield fence, slowed down and reached over the fence and caught the ball.

Immediately a fan sitting in the front row seized Mr. Santander’s left wrist with his right hand and then reached into Mr. Santander’s glove with his left hand for the ball.  Mr. Santander, rightfully outraged, tried to pull his gloved hand away, but the fan was obdurate.

“Hey,” the chubby fan demanded.  “Are you related to the dudes who founded Banco Santander, you know, the big Spanish bank?”

As the question was completely unrelated to the dispute at hand, Mr. Santander only said, “Get out of my glove, leave the ball alone!”

The fan, who must have been severely deranged, continued:  “No, dude, Banco Santander, are you related to the dudes who started it?”

It must be admitted that at this point in his life, Mr. Santander had been entirely focused on baseball, for otherwise how was a lad from Venezuela supposed to crack the baseball major leagues?

“I don’t know what you mean and you need to give me that baseball!”

Finally a security guard arrived on the field and wrenched the fan’s hand off of Santander’s glove with such ease that the professionally strong Santander wished he had the man’s strength.

More security men arrived and with equal ease lifted the pudgy miscreant out of his seat. “Sir,” one with an old-fashioned crew cut said, “that behavior is strictly forbidden.   You’re being ejected from the game.”

“Hey,” the fan objected in a squeaky voice that would have fit in a 40’s mobster movie, “I was just playing around!”  And when he was lifted out of his seat, he announced, “Why I oughta.”

The security fellows didn’t respond but simply marched him up the aisle, his feet just brushing the steps.

The remaining security fellow remained and asked him, “Mr. Santander, do you need aid?”

Santander responded, “Thanks, no.”  He was aware of the legend of Lou Gehrig, who, when on June 2, 1925, Wally Pipp sat out a game with a headache, Gehrig took his place and never relinquished it until he had a more colossal headache, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or “ALS”, which became known as Gehrig’s disease.  One shall never know how many players suffered through how many injuries with that story in mind.  “I’m fine.”

“OK,” responded the security guard.  “Hey, if you don’t mind my asking, are you related to the guys who started Banco Santander?”

Asking among his teammates, coaches, and team staff members, he finally learned from an Orioles’ beat journalist what Banco Santander was.  It is a bank, mainly a retail bank, centered in Madid.  Due to globalization or otherwise, Banco Santander has expanded globally by acquisition to become a global player: Europe, Africa, what we blithely used to call “the Asias.” Banco Santander is everywhere.

It seems weird but perhaps appropriate that the chubby fan spawned many imitators: fans, journalists, even a few financially savvy players, who began asking him what his relationship was to Banco Santander.  Mostly he demurred.

But then one day, in an annoyed pique, he snapped at a journalist, “My good man, yes, if you must know, I am a great grandson of the founder.”

The journalist ran with the story, too excited to do any more than trust Santander and not checking with the bank.  It was just too good of a story, and who at the bank would care?  He downplayed it at that; as a beat writer, he can add little notes at the end of his column that no one would be likely to check. He could always aver that Santander was joking.

A couple of other journalists asked Santander about the connection, and after some thought, no genealogist, he decided that it would be prudent to add another layer: he is the founder’s great great grandson.  Researching, he found that the bank had been founded in 1857, so that sounded about right.

As these things do, the story became more popular, and more journalists and money-savvy players inquired about the connection.  The players, he figured, just wanted loans from the bank, though considering their balance sheets in truth they could be lending to the bank.  Santander mainly ignored them.

But the thought nagged at him, and one day when someone from a paper covering the Minnesota Twins asked him about the connection, he snapped, “Yes.  In fact remember when Banco Santander determined to buy ABN AMRO with Bank of Scotland and Fortis?  They asked me for a capital contribution, which I could hardly deny them, considering my roots.”

Banco Santander acquired ABN AMRO in 2007, when little Anthony was only 13 and a decade away from debuting in the major leagues.  Dutifully the scribe jotted Santander’s claim in a notebook and later published it:  “Orioles Outfielder Capitalizes Spanish Bank” with the subheading “Slugger is Scion of Bank’s Founder.”

The story became, of course, a classic American legal dispute.  One day Santander was standing in the team’s players’ parking lot when he was approached by a trim, grim fellow in a grey suit with slicked back black hair; he was, of course, a lawyer employed by Banco Santander.

“Here,” he said, “this is a cease and desist letter from Banco Santander.”  The banker was young, and he looked around nervously.  “Look, man, you gotta quit claiming that you’re a great grandson of the founder.

“Great great grandson,” Santander corrected him, at least according to Santander’s narrative.

The lawyer urged the letter upon him, jabbing him in the chest with it.  “Please make our lives easier and just fucking take the letter.”

“I’ll do you a favor then,” Santander said, taking it and simultaneously tearing it in half once, then once again.  Then he flung the letter into the nearby gutter.

“Oh man,” the lawyer said, closing his eyes, “you know I have to tell them you did that.”

“It is of no moment to me,” he said, and turned and started away.

“Hey Santander,” the lawyer called after him. “I always love the way you swing the bat.  I volunteered for this gig because I wanted to meet you.”

Santander waved his hand over his shoulder at the kid.  The silly boy would never know what it was like to stand in there against Gerrit Cole; what did Santander care about a letter from a law firm?

Santander continued his crusade, appearing in ads for financial services corporations (though how these confirmed his connection to Banco Santander isn’t clear), skin care products, and fly fishing accessories.  In the ads, he appears increasingly comfortable, even smug.  He must have made millions off of these, which must have helped him fund his various lawsuits.

For this story descends into the drink, madness, and drudgery of most American litigation; it’s possible that Santander didn’t know what he was getting himself into: defamation among celebrities and politicians, copyright among songwriters, domestic assault among athletes and their partners (though in fairness Santander has never been a party to that particular sadness), and Miley Cyrus’ conservatorship litigation. 

There were claims back and forth:  Banco Santander for defamation (which smacked of classism: how dare a mere American baseball player claim a connection to this august bank?) as well as the usual fraud claims though how the bank was damaged was never clear; and Santander’s  claims back against the bank for interference with contract (excuse me?) and intentional infliction of severe emotional distress (come on, he always seemed to be enjoying the fight.)

There are a few amusing highlights: a New York court held that venue was proper where the publisher of the alleged defamatory statement either resides, which was either Toronto during the season or Venezuela in the offseason but also any location where he published the defamatory statement, e.g., Chicago.  Santander had said that he said that he had offered to supply all of the bank’s breakrooms with sunflower seeds, a perennial favorite of baseball players as a substitute for the cancer-causing chewing tobacco.  ( Banco Santander v. Anthony Santander, 434 F.3d 233 (S.D. NY 2022).  But as usual nothing of any import.

Anthony Santander, like a lot of baseball players of Caribbean origin, simply wanted to immerse himself in his chosen country.  Indeed he does immerse but not through playing professional baseball, which is nothing like being a typical American: Anthony Santander becomes an American fellow who, to his eternal shame and regret learns all about the drink, madness, drudgery of American litigation.

Mr. Anthony Santander