The Cincinnati Reds just clinched their first post-season playoff appearance since my son was born, and he’s 15. Understandably, the triumph set off the traditional and familiar sports team celebratory nonsense, with grown men shouting and jumping on each other and spraying everyone with champagne. Some of the Reds, led by Reds owner Bob Castellini, lit “victory cigars,” a guy-thing ritual that dates back beyond memory, though it was made especially famous by Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach, who would light a cigar from his perch on the Celtics bench as soon as he was certain a game had been won. (Yes, upon reflection, it was obnoxious. They loved it in Boston, though.)
No sooner had some of the Reds taken their victory drag on the stogies than several Cincinnati citizens hit the phones, complaining the Reds had broken the law. Ohio has a public building smoking ban, and the Reds locker room is inside The Great American Ballpark, a public place. The Reds celebration was against the law. Now, because of the five Ohioans who called to complain, the health inspector has to investigate. If he sees the Reds smoking cigars again (say, if they win the World Series), they will get a letter announcing that there has been a violation. There is no fine for that, but the next offense costs $100, and the one after that costs $500. The average Reds player makes about 5 million dollars a year. That maximum fine has the same deterrent value to a pro baseball player as a 50 cent fine has to the average Ohio citizen. It will cost the state much more to handle the investigation than it can ever recoup in fines. What exactly were the Indignant Five trying to accomplish?
My guess? To be indignant, that’s all; to do as all zealots do, ignore common sense and basic empathy in order to pursue a single-minded cause. When a sports team wins a championship and the whole city goes nuts celebrating, these are the people who call in “disturbing the peace” complaints. Probably someone did the same during the celebrations of V-J Day. Yes, the Reds were breaking the law by smoking victory cigars, but anyone with any sense knows that the law wasn’t passed to stop celebrations. There are times in all of our lives when human nature makes us cross some lines we normally wouldn’t cross, and fairness and empathy should cause those around us, friend or not, to scale back their vigilance and disapproval accordingly. It is called knowing when to make exceptions. Good police do it; fair public officials do it; ethical people do it.
Then there are the kind of people who live by the “gotcha,” and express their need for power by making trouble for others, even when nothing good can possibly result from it, even when a technical misdeed harms no one. In the case of the Reds celebration, the officious intermeddlers didn’t strike a blow for law enforcement. They caused people to question the wisdom of the law, and the cold water on a spontaneous expression of joy and satisfaction by a team and its fans.
We can only hope a lot of people let them know what jerks they are, and why.
Ethics Alarms 
I think you missed one other kind of person who probably called in: the violent anti-smoker. The ones who cringe when they see smokers outside of a building; who recoil in distaste at the sight of a cigar or cigarrette; who consider smoking a social disease; who think that all smokers — in this case, especially baseball players who are supposed to be role models — are going to corrupt their children; who think all smokers deserve to die, if not from lung cancer, perhaps by execution because they pollute society, environmentally and morally.
Their tactics are unethical as well.
They could have just been Astro’s fans.