I appended the title so that the many readers here who skip my baseball posts don’t skip this one entirely. It’s not mostly about baseball. But the introduction is.

You see, now it really gets hard for me. Grace, my wife of 43 years, dropped dead on Leap Year. March 1 is when baseball’s Spring Training becomes serious, and baseball is one of my most consuming passions. I taught Grace to love the game; during the seasons we watched the Red Sox almost every day (until they frustrated her too much, which happened frequently). Today, the 2024 season ends. It didn’t save me from being depressed, overwhelmed, guilty, angry and frustrated, but it sure helped a lot. The games also were virtually my only respite from work, as I try to resuscitate our, now my, struggling business after it was savaged by what I bitterly call “the Stupid Lockdown.” I’d watch a game with Spuds sprawled across my lap, then, when it ended, usually around 9:30 pm or so, I would head up to the office to go back to work, either in the throes of the joy of victory or the agony of defeat.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll have neither Grace nor the the Red Sox. Wish me luck.

Meanwhile, yesterday was an ethics milestone in Red Sox, baseball and sports history.

On September 28, 1941, the last day of Major League Baseball’s regular season, the Ted Williams became the first player since 1930 to hit .400 as well as quite probably the last player to do so as well. “I guess I’ll be satisfied with that thrill out there today,” he told the Boston Globe of his quest for .400. “I never wanted anything harder in my life.” He never wanted anything harder, but he refused to get it on a technicality. Going into the final day, a double-header, “The Splendid Splinter” as he was called by some writers sported a .399 average that had enough numerals after it to be rounded up to .400. The Red Sox manager, Joe Cronin, told Ted to sit out the last two games. They were meaningless (the Yankees had already clinched the pennant, just like they’ve already clinched the American League East title this year, and the games were meaningless to the Red Sox. Cronin told Williams that nobody would blame him for protecting his historic batting average.

But Ted Williams didn’t care about other people (this was something of a problem for him); it was meeting his own standards that mattered. He felt that “backing in” to a .400 average would be cowardly and would tarnish the achievement in his own eyes. So he risked his .400 average by playing both games…and got six hits in eight at-bats to raise his average to .406.

The ethics password for this weekend is “integrity.“

Meanwhile, in non-baseball ethics news…

1. Remember, reverse racism isn’t racist…Mykela ‘Keiko’ Jackson used a Minnesota State grant to launch the Food Trap Project Bodega, created to help poor people living in the north Minneapolis. The pantry opened its doors on July 27 but was forced to close after Jackson attempted to block poor, hungry whites from getting food. A sign on the door to the pantry stated that the food inside was only for people of color—you know, the good people: “The resources found in here are for Black & Indigenous Folx. Please refrain from taking anything if you’re not.” (In addition to the civil rights complaints against the place, there were also spelling complaints. Well, maybe not, but there should have been…) . After a civil rights complaint was made against the pantry by a local pastor, Mykela “doubled down.” “[Whites] felt entitled to the resources that were not for their demographic,” she said. “White privilege is real.” Any guesses as to who Tim Walz supports in this controversy? [Pointer: Alicia]

2. Building a society without hate and division…In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, an Airbnb host discovered that his guests were part of Citizens Alliance’s PA CHASE program, a pro-Trump operation that knocks on 500,000 doors across the Keystone state to get out the vote. He kicked them out, despite their having paid $5,000 up front to reserve the place.

“This is how you know the PA CHASE is over the target — being discriminated against in Philadelphia is nothing new for conservatives,” Cliff Maloney, PA CHASE founder said. “Democrats are furious that we are finally fighting fire with fire and beating them at their own game.” Airbnb is investigating. Professor Turley : “It is worth noting that many of the same individuals supporting this owner likely opposed the right of business owners in cases like Masterpiece Cake Shop and 303 Creative. In those cases, the owners refused to make products for celebrations that conflicted with their religious views.”

Yeah, but the Democrats are trying to save democracy!

3. The Year of the Cat: Here’s a feline Ethics Hero. Rayne Beau, a 2-year-old male cat, ran off into the woods of Yellowstone National Park when his owners, Benny and Susanne Anguiano, were camping there in June. The couple searched the cat for five days but finally gave up. Less than two months later, Rayne Beau was found wandering the streets of Roseville, California, about three hours north of where the Anguianos live and over 800 miles from Yellowstone. A local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals notified the couple that Rayne Beau was back, thanks to the data in his microchip.

I have no doubt that the cat would have made it all the way back home if he hadn’t been picked up. As usual with these stories, nobody knows how the cat did it.

4. Just to irritate “A Friend,” EA’s self-banned New York Times apologist, I want to note two headlines in today’s paper. One is “How Katie Couric Spends Her Sundays: When Ms. Couric, the veteran journalist, is at her home in East Hampton, she spends her days at the beach, playing pickleball and FaceTiming with her baby grandson.” I will think of this headline every time the paper mysteriously leaves out news that might undermine its progressive agenda as long as it possibly can. How does this conceivably qualify as “news that’s fit to print”? The other headline of note is “What Eric Adams and Donald Trump Have in Common.” The indictment of the NYC mayor has nothing to do with Trump, but the Times uses the news to bash Trump anyway. Next headline: “What Vlad the Impaler and Donald Trump Have in Common.”

5. Speaking of news that the mainstream media never adequately reported for what it was…The New York Times  published detailed accounts of the internal deliberations of the U.S. Supreme Court in three cases: Trump v. Anderson, Fischer v. United States, and Trump v. United States. The account was leaked from inside SCOTUS, and the clear attempt was to impugn the conservatives on the Court. Unlike the earlier leak in 2022 regarding the Dobbs opinion, this one had to come at least in part from a Justice, since it involved meetings where only Justices were present. The disclosure of this information to third parties violates Canon 4(D)(5) of judicial ethics: “A judge should not disclose or use nonpublic information acquired in a judicial capacity for any purpose unrelated to the judge’s official duties.” It would be grounds for impeachment. That both of the leaks, unprecedented before the Biden Administration and both unquestionably from Democrats—they cheat, you know—is a damning scandal that Justice Roberts has to address emphatically, even at the risk of unsettling SCOTUS. If a Justice is involved, there are only three suspects; it shouldn’t require Columbo to find the mole.  Justice Kagan has supported enforcing an ethics code on the Justices: if she’s the leaker, that would be quite a display of hypocrisy. Yet she has been the suspect most mentioned in the conservative media. That leaves the other two left-leaning women on the Court. Nice.

Then there’s this.