You don’t expect me to pass up a chance to chide the New York Yankees, do you? Especially when they really deserve it…and this episode has larger significance, I think, although I always think baseball has larger significance.

When I saw the video of the play above, I didn’t believe it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a major league player loaf like that on a play. The culprit was Yankee center fielder Trent Grisham, who is no callow rookie; in fact, he has won a couple Gold Gloves for his fielding. It occurred during the ninth inning of Friday’s eventual 8-4 Yankee loss to Cincinnati; the Pinstripes have been losing a lot lately, indeed they appear to be in free-fall after a spectacular start. (Good.)

Yankee fans noticed, and booed Grisham lustily. Yankee social media commenters, already upset because of the team’s recent losing ways, piled on after the game. Best-selling author and podcaster Eric Sherman probably summed it up best, tweeting, “What in the world was [Manager] Aaron Boone waiting for there in the dugout? Trent Grisham should have been yanked from the game immediately. A missed opportunity for Boone to set an example for a team that has underachieved the last month. Wow.”

Bingo. Coach Walter Matthau would have yanked one of the Bad News Bears from the field if the kid showed such a lack of hustle during a game, and the Bears weren’t being paid millions of dollars while their fans had to hock watches and silverware to afford tickets.

In baseball’s good ol’ days, behavior like Grisham’s would get a player fined, benched and even sent to the minors or suspended. Yankee manager Billy Martin once humiliated his team’s biggest star at the time, Reggie Jackson, by pulling him off the field mid-inning during a nationally televised game in Fenway Park. Reggie had definitely lacked urgency in fielding a single in the outfield, but compared to Grisham, he looked like Pete Rose. Martin could be seen telling Jackson what he thought of his poor play in the dugout, and the two almost came to blows.

And today’s kinder, gentler Yankee manager? Not only did he not pull the loafing player off the field, he defended his outfielder, blathering,

“I mean, that’s one of those that looks bad in the moment, especially going through what we’re going through as a team right now. It’s also the way Trent Grisham, a Gold Glover, plays center field — like that relaxed, easy nature … Do I want him to square up to it and tackle it like you and I might in a side game? Not really. I want him to catch the ball and get it in and keep that guy off second base, but he has a track record of outstanding play out there and that’s kind of the way he does — kind of a slow heartbeat, motor and that when you’re through it doesn’t look great. I understand that.”

It’s an unethical rationalization cornucopia! Mostly it’s another example of #11, The King’s Pass: Grisham’s a good player, see, so he gets to play like a lazy slob sometimes. But we also can whiff the odor of many other rationalizations here, like “It isn’t what it is,” “Don’t sweat the small stuff” (“The Management Shrug”), “Self-Validating Virtue,” “Ethics Accounting,” “The Miscreant’s Mulligan” plus one I realize I have missed ( “It Looks Worse Than It Is”) and a variation of the biggest rationalization of them all, Numero Uno, “Everybody does it”: “He does this a lot, so it’s OK”

Of course, if Grisham’s torpor had lost the game or led to another run, Boone’s reaction might have been different, and that would be based on consequentialism, a logical fallacy as well as a rationalization. The unethical play wasn’t worth complaining about, apparently, because nothing bad happened as a result of it. Admittedly, baseball managers are especially prone to being confused by appeals to consequentialism, but still: the outfielder’s lazy display was inexcusable regardless of what happened (or didn’t happen) afterwards.

I’d fire a manager who reacted to such a play like Boone did. How can the messages of his excuse-fest not have an adverse effect on other players? “You can dog it in the field if you’re a big enough star”? “Hustle is nice, but it’s over-rated”? “Hey, it’s just one play”? Even in baseball, professionalism is supposed to matter, and poor performance is supposed to have consequences. For Boone to react to such loafing with a shrug is especially obnoxious at a time when his struggling team needs more effort on the field, not less.

Or are Boone, the Yankees and baseball just mirroring the rotting culture of the nation they belong to? A national movement is afoot to eschew negative consequences for poor conduct across our institutions. Sports are supposed to remind us of exemplary values and model them, but it is difficult to maintain ethical values in an increasingly unethical culture.