“The Boston Red Sox recently completed a disastrous collapse that dropped them from first place in the American League East to third. As they went into battle with the two teams now ahead of them, their hottest hitter, Alex Verdugo, vanished on a four game paternity leave. Shortly thereafter, another hot hitter, Hunter Renfroe, was lost for five days on bereavement leave after his father died of cancer. T’was not always thus: in the days before the Players’ Union bargained to add such mid-season leave as a new benefit, if a player’s wife was in labor or a loved on died, it was at the team’s discretion whether he would be permitted to leave the team. OK, I can appreciate the need for the benefit, but both players abused the right. These guys both earn millions of dollars a year. They both routinely talk about the team’s quest to win the World Series, yet when their team really needed them, they absented themselves for many days because they could. That’s a betrayal of the team, team mates, and fans. I’ve been there. My grandmother, a major influence in my life, died while I was in tech week for a major production I was directing. I flew to Boston for the wake, and flew back early the next morning. I couldn’t do anything for my grandmother. My family didn’t need me as much as the show did.And I wasn’t being paid a cent for directing that show, never mind millions of dollars.”

I have it on good authority that the manager, Alex Cora, and his team mates soured on Verdugo, who made the enmity easier by getting progressively worse. He was dumped two years later, and is now out of the game. Coming to his rescue, however, was Sarah B., who authored this impressive Comment of the Day in rebuttal. Key section:

“Sure, a lot of us rely on other family members for that second (or third or fourth week), but the dad has to be there in the beginning if he wants to start himself off on a good foot of proper prioritization of responsibility. Most marriages I have seen where a dad does not give totally of himself for 1-2 weeks after a baby are at best strained. The mother needs support, and who is best able and most desired to give that support, but the father of the baby? If MLB cannot give new fathers a week away at minimum, they need to require that their players are celibate while on contract, so no babies come about. If a multimillion dollar contract is enough to abandon a wife and kid for at a time of great need, it should be enough to abandon sex for. Family is the primary responsibility, and all the more so at the birth of a baby. I wouldn’t give this MLB player an Ethics Hero award, but he’s close. He behaved nearly the way we should expect all men to behave. We can’t say we want present fathers and good husbands to combat major societal decline and then complain when a man actually tries to be one.”

Color me dubious regarding the substantive value of a father’s presence at birthing and subsequent days when the couple has a supportive family and no shortage of resources. Miller was simply present, and came right back. That sounds like a symbolic absence to me. Here is my entire response to Sarah B’s argument:

“The argument that family trumps all when a parent has made a commitment to others and is not a fungible factor in meeting it doesn’t stand scrutiny. If you accept the general as an exception–that’s wise, since leadership might determine the victor in a critical battle that affects millions, nations, and civilizations, then you have to accept a whole lot more. No judge would allow a lawyer to leave mid-trial with a jury because his wife was giving birth. A heart surgeon who abandoned a patient with a serious malady he was prepared to address in an operation few others could perform would be asking for a malpractice suit for himself and his hospital. A lead star actor who ditched a Broadway opening night at the last minute would risk killing the show, the investment of millions, and the livelihood of many people a lot less well-off than he is. All are not just unethical in my view, but unconscionable.

As for the husband’s post-birth role in preventing problems for the mother or the child—I assume you’re not evoking some study that claimed to find the value of the mere presence of the father, even if he just smiles, coos and takes pictures—is a bit of a cheat…. no player making the minimum salary would be considered irreplaceable. The kind of players I was writing about make a million a year, up to 30 million a year. They can and should hire top private nursing help. Nor is it unreasonable to ask a family with a father who knows or even suspects that such a conflict might arise to make plans accordingly—like having a family member ready to provide necessary support.

Now, “if a job is so important to society that a man needs to not be distracted by the needs of fatherhood then it should be expected that he be unmarried and practice celibacy” is a bad case of moving the goal-posts. I didn’t argue that men don’t need to be “distracted by the needs of fatherhood.” One need of fatherhood is supporting the family. Another is being available as a father as much as possible. An argument could be made that being an MLB player is per se a breach of fatherly duties, since players have to be away from home and children for about half the year. But a baseball wife consents to that when she agrees to marry a baseball player.

The key word here is “need.” Men with important responsibilities that could not be transferred have had to miss the births of their children for generations, with no harm to child or mother in the vast majority of cases, whereas the harm to their employers, institutions and organizations had they left would have been substantial and certain. If there was an equal “need” for the father’s presence, I would agree with your priorities.”

Three years after that post, I faced a similar professional ethics conflict when I discovered by wife Grace dead in the living room at 7:30 am, when I had a 9:00 am ethics seminar to teach. I asked my son if he could handle everything, and he said he could, and did. Later he told me, “I knew you would insist on fulfilling your commitment.”