Author: Jack Marshall

Baseball Ethics Batting Practice, Part 2: The Bad And The Ugly

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

[Part 1, “The Good,” is here.]

The Bad

If it weren’t that I was emulating the Sergio Leone spaghetti Western, the title here would be, “The Terrible.”

This week, Los Angeles Dodgers Hall of Fame-lock Clayton Kershaw was pitching a perfect game against the Minnesota Twins with just two innings and six outs remaining. There have only been 23 perfect games—no men on base at all, no hits, no runs, no walks, no errors— in baseball’s 150 year+ history. Kershaw has never pitched one, and at 34 he’s closer to the end of his career than the beginning. He had only thrown 80 pitches, meaning that he was likely to finish a perfect game, if he succeeded at pitching one, with less than 110 pitches thrown, well under what is considered risky for starters. Yet Dodger manager Dave Roberts took Kershaw out of the game. He’s done this before with pitchers in the midst of no-hitters, usually when their pitch count was high, but this time there were no reasons, just excuses.

What’s going on here? It’s the corporate approach to baseball. Roberts used a utilitarian argument, saying that what mattered most was getting to the World Series, not any single game. In other words, the fans don’t count; even if the chances of our ace being hurt by pitching two more innings is remote, the decision has been made organizationally that protecting long-term investments like superstars with multi-year guaranteed contracts has a higher priority than the game itself.

Watching a pitcher try for a perfect game or even an ordinary no-hitter is any fan’s dream; not only is it pitch-to-pitch suspenseful, but if you witness one, you have been a part of history. Your ticket and program become collector’s items. Baseball’s priorities as demonstrated by this sickening episode are literally upside down. In recent years, it has eliminated two of the most exciting plays in the game, take-out slide at second base to break up a double play and the collisions at home plate, and all but eliminated the prominence of star starting pitchers by reducing their workloads drastically. It’s a professional sport where its athletes are all millionaires, but as Roberts’ decision proves, it is unwilling to take any risks to keep the game exciting and memorable.

Utilitarian trade-offs only are ethical if competing factors are assigned the right values.

The Ugly

Then there are the MLB teams that don’t even try to win or field a competitive product. The strategy is called tanking. After World Series title runs first by the perennial cellar-dwelling Chicago Cubs and then the Houston Astros, tanking has become a popular way to rebuild. Instead of accepting mediocre play that holds little chance of pots-season glory, a tanking team will trade away high-priced veteran players for unproven prospects and, to be blunt, stink for season after season, with small payrolls and a series of 100-loss seasons. Such teams do not reduce the price of tickets or ballpark food, though what they are selling has lost much of its value. The practice alienates fans and enriches tanking owners. Players hate it, because in any season at least four or five teams have taken themselves out of the market for the best free agents.

The new, contentiously-negotiated agreement between the players and the teams was supposed to address tanking, which can only be effectively addressed by a mandatory minimum payroll rule. When ethics fail, law or rules have to step in. Baseball teams are supposed to serve their communities, but the contagion of elevating profit and single-goal success over integrity and concern for stake-holders has taken hold of baseball’s culture. Days after the owners ended the lock-out to allow the season to begin, two franchises with grand traditions of fielding exiting teams held fire sales, slashing their budgets and signaling that they were joining the tankers: the Oakland A’s and the Cincinnati Reds. Good job, everybody!

In Cincinnati, fans and sportswriters were vocal in expressing their anger, so last week the team president, Phil Castellini, told them to stuff it, saying in part,

Well, where are you going to go? Let’s start there. I mean, sell the team to who? That’s the other thing — you want to have this debate? If you want to look at what would you do with this team to have it be more profitable, make more money, compete more in the current economic system that this game exists? It would be to pick it up and move it somewhere else. And so be careful what you ask for…I think we’re doing the best we can do with the resources that we have. We’re no more pleased with the results than the fans. I’m not sitting here saying anybody should be happy. I’m not polishing trophies in the office right now, and that’s what we’re here to do. 

His rant did not go over well.

Later the same day, after the team’s PR director had grabbed him by the throat and screamed, “What the hell’s’ the matter with you?” the Reds CEO issued a pro forma apology:

I apologize to Reds fans and regret the comments that I made earlier today,” he said. “We love this city, we love this team and we love our fans. I understand how our fans feel and I am sorry.

Right.

An Ethics Alarms Motto: “You Can’t Trust The Science If You Can’t Trust The Scientist”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I would hope the whole Wuhan virus fiasco would have hammered that principle home by now like a high-grade nail gun, but no. The progressives who want to use “follow the science” as their ploy to inflict the Green New Deal on America aren’t yet willing to try something else, like, say, honesty and responsible policy. So here is another case study…

A peer reviewed University of Washington study called“Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care” was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and immediately became the favorite weapon of the crowd. (The same group holds that questioning the wisdom of this marks one as “transphobic.”) The study instantly made the euphemisms “gender affirming medicine” and “gender affirming care” catch-phrases for pro-trans activists, and it was widely cited or referred to in the media and in political battles over schools’ handling of students with gender issues, real, imagined, or imposed.

The conclusion of the study, we were told, was that the students who received “gender affirming medicine” had significantly better mental health outcomes at the end of the study than they did at the beginning. The news release accompanying the study’s publication stated that “UW Medicine researchers recently found that gender-affirming care for transgender and nonbinary adolescents caused rates of depression to plummet.”

The study’s release was accompanied by a flashy video that claimed researchers found “gender-affirming care made a big difference in reducing depression levels for transgender youth.”

Well then! Follow the science!

Except that the study didn’t show that. Researchers with an agenda misrepresented the findings to satisfy trans advocates and activists, knowing, I assume, that 99% of those who would exploit the study wouldn’t read it. Unfortunately for them, a few did. One was journalist Jesse Singal, who looked carefully into the researchers’ numbers and couldn’t find convincing data to suggest the mental health of the transgender and nonbinary teens improved over with treatment the course of the research. Thus caught rainbow-handed, The University of Washington this week edited online materials “to more directly reflect the findings as reported in the study.”

Continue reading →

Rueful Observations On The Grand Rapids, Mich. Police Shooting

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

…and reactions to it so far.

So occupied was the  news media with crowding out all other news events with the Ukraine war that you may have missed the latest justification for a Black Lives Matter protest, and the latest reason we may have to use robots to police the streets soon, since no sane human being would want the job.

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Patrick Lyoya, black and 26, was pulled over on April 4 after a police officer saw that the license plate on his car did not match the automobile he was driving. Lyoya tried to run away after the officer questioned him and asked for his driver’s license.

The officer quickly caught up to him, and there was a struggle. The Grand Rapids police department said that the officer’s body camera was deactivated during physical contact. Video from a bystander’s cellphone shows the officer trying to control Loyoya and kneeing him in the back while shouting at him to let go of the stun gun. (The officer appeared to have tried to use the stungun on Loyoya, without success. Finally the officer reaches for his gun and shoots once, killing the motorist. As day follows night, Black Lives Matter and other activists organized a protest, and the usual parties issued the predictable statements.

Rueful Observations: Continue reading →

It’s Come To This: Desperation To Discredit Any “Facts” That Don’t Bolster Biden’s Image

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Once again, we have a real story that looks like a Babylon Bee satire.

Earlier this week, viral video provoked forgettable jokes because it appeared to show something icky falling onto U.S. President Joe Biden’s shoulder as he was speaking at an event in Iowa. Naturally, the assumption was that the gunk was bird droppings, since that’s what such episodes usually entail. (It’s happened to me!) Obviously having a bird poop on you isn’t a reason for shame, but the two most partisan and unreliable U.S. “factcheckers” felt that it essential, as the loyal, progressive patriots that they are, to debunk the notion that Joe Biden had been forced to live through a recreation of the scene from “High Anxiety,” Mel Brooks’ Hitchcock spoof.

Here’s Snopes:

On April 12, 2022, a video went viral on social media that supposedly showed bird poop falling onto U.S. President Joe Biden’s shoulder as he was speaking at an event in Iowa. We examined that video and photographs from the event, and collected statements from White House officials and journalists. Here’s what we learned: What landed on Biden’s lapel was more likely a corn byproduct than bird poop. We examined photographs from Reuters, The Associated Press, and Getty Images to get a closer look at this corn/bird poop. Upon closer examination, the “bird poop” appears to be somewhat yellowish in color (like corn) and looks more like dust (i.e., from corn processing) than a liquid (i.e., bird poop).

Of course, absent chemical analysis, the Snopes conclusion is still opinion, not “fact.” But them most “factchecks” are opinions. Continue reading →

Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

I know I can’t keep up with all the ethics stories and controversies, so I’m assuming the commentariat will have a lot to offer in this race for ethical enlightenment.

Start your ethics engines!

Baseball Ethics Batting Practice, Part 1: The Historic and The Good

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The Historic

Not only is April 15, 2022, Opening Day for the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, it is also MLB’s Jackie Robinson Day, commemorating the date  baseball’s apartheid was ended forever when Jack Roosevelt Robinson (1919-1972) took the field for the National League’s Brooklyn Dodgers. It was the most important of baseball’s many influences on the national culture and society at large, by far. As for Robinson, a remarkable man and exactly the athlete for the difficult role assigned to him, he was among the first admittees to the Ethics Alarms Heroes’ Hall of Honor, with this post from 2012.

In 1997, Major League Baseball retired Robinson’s number, 42, and has dedicated all games on April 15 to Robinson. On this date all players wear 42 instead of their usual number, making for mass confusion for fans who don’t know the individual players on sight. It will be especially strange in Fenway Park today, for Opening Day and Jackie Robinson Day have never coincided before. The tradition individual introductions in the pre-game ceremonies, as the whole Red Sox team lines up along the first base foul line—“Playing left field, #8, Carl Yastrzemski!”—will be weird, as every player will be wearing 42.

There have been a lot of posts here about or relating to Jackie Robinson, which you will find at the Jackie Robinson tag.

The Good (and also historic!)

Alyssa Nakken became the first woman to take the field as a coach in a Major League baseball game this week. She coached first base after one of the San Francisco Giants coaches was ejected in a game against the San Diego Padres. The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York now has her helmet, which will soon go on display.  Continue reading →

Ethics Breezes And Gales, 4/14/2022: The End Of A Conspiracy And The Beginning Of Conspiracy Theories [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

April 14 will always be the date that I associate above all else with Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, which occurred 157 years ago.  Lincoln and the audience at Ford’s Theater laughed uproariously, as John Wilkes Booth knew they would, at the line “Why you sockdologizing old man-trap!” in the play the Lincolns and their guests were watching, “Our American Cousin.” Booth fired a single-shot derringer into the back of Lincoln’s skull, dreew a dagger and stabbed Major Rathbone, also in Lincoln’s box along with Mrs. Lincoln and Rathbone’s fiancee, in the arm, and dramatically leaped down onto the stage, shouting Virginia’s motto,“Sic semper tyrannis! (Thus ever to tyrants!) The South is avenged!”  Booth caught his spur on a draped flag on the way down and broke his leg, but limped across the stage and out to waiting horse through a back stage exit. Lincoln never regained consciousness.

Not only was it the first and still most spectacular of the four Presidential assassinations [Notice of Correction: I originally wrote “five,” not because I can’t count, which is what usually happens, but because I was counting Reagan, because he was actually shot. Moron. Thanks to Steve-O-in NJ for alerting me, or I’d have to ban myself from the blog for passing on “misinformation”], Booth’s act and subsequent events, oddities and coincidences launched perhaps the first widespread political conspiracy theory. I wrote in 2010,

[A]s a teenager, I became fascinated by the Lincoln assassination conspiracy. A best-seller at the time was “Web of Conspiracy,” an over-heated brief for the theory that Lincoln’s War Secretary, Edwin Stanton, and others in the military were in league with John Wilkes Booth. The author, a mystery writer named Theodore Roscoe, was constantly suggesting sinister motives by asking questions like “The sealed records of the official assassination investigation were destroyed in a mysterious fire. Was the War Department afraid of what the documents would prove? Would they have implicated Stanton? We will never know.”  This tactic is on view regularly today, used generously by the purveyors of modern conspiracies…

Then again, sometimes conspiracy theories, even unlikely ones, turn out to be true. There was sure a lot of smoke around Lincoln’s assassination (after all, there really was a conspiracy, as Booth had at least five co-conspirators working on his plot for months), and it didn’t help when Robert Lincoln, Abe’s son, was caught burning his papers and told the man who interrupted him (allegedly) that he was doing so because the contained proof that a member of his father’s own cabinet was involved in his assassination. Yet none of the components of the Lincoln conspiracy narrative have held up to scrutiny, except as tantalizing suspicions.

1. First, the rest of a story...Two weeks ago Ethics Alarms covered the story of Kychelle Del Rosario, a fourth-year medical student at Wake Forest School of Medicine, who appeared to admit in a tweet that she deliberately caused pain and discomfort to a patient because he had mocked her  “preferred pronoun” pin. After her tweet was seen, circulated and attacked on social media, she deleted it in an attempted cover-up. Wake Forest suspended her pending an investigation, which is now complete. It’s conclusion: Del Rosario was grandstanding, implying that she stuck the patient a second time when she had turned the job over to a supervisor. “Our documentation verifies that after the student physician was unsuccessful in obtaining the blood draw, the student appropriately deferred a second attempt to one of our certified professionals. The student did not attempt to draw blood again,” the university stated. 

But had she deliberately missed the vein the first time to punish the “transphobic” patient? Wake Forest believed her statements that she had not, saying, “Our review revealed that the description of the patient encounter on social media does not reflect what actually occurred. We also determined that all of our procedures were followed while caring for this patient.” For her part, Del Rosarion, who expects to be reinstated, said,

“For the event mentioned in the tweet, I was performing a blood draw on a patient and during our conversation they had shown dismay at my pronoun pin,” she said. “I calmly shared my thoughts about pronouns and did not escalate the situation further. When I was doing the blood draw, I missed the first time due to my inexperience as a student, and per our policy, my supervisor performed the successful blood draw the second time….[I] never intended to harm the patient.”

She also wrote an apology to the school for her inflammatory tweet, admitting   to “poorly representing” the school and the healthcare system. [Source: Campus Reform] Continue reading →

One Small Step For South Dakota Toward Justice For Its Despicable Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg, With Two Big Steps To Go

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

If you only skim the daily (well, almost daily) ethics warm-ups here, you might have missed this disgusting story, brought to you by the corrupt legal and political system in South Dakota. I’ve posted about it twice, so here is a summary to bring you up to date. On September 14, 2020, I wrote in part,

South Dakota’s Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg–he’s a Republican— reported hitting a deer over the weekend. In fact, his car hit and killed a man whose body wasn’t discovered until the next morning, the Department of Public Safety said today. Governor Kristi Noem confirmed that the Attorney General had been involved in a fatal crash. Ravnsborg told the Hyde County Sheriff’s Office that he hit a deer on the highway. At this time it is not known if Ravnsborg stopped to confirm that he hit a deer…It is unknown as of now whether if Ravnsborg called 911 or someone else, but the press has requested recordings of all calls related to the accident The body of 55-year-old Joe Boever was discovered the next morning.

On Feb. 26, 2021, I posted this update:

South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg was engaged in a fatal hit-and-run accident as discussed briefly on Ethics Alarms last September. He told law enforcement that he thought he had hit a deer on his way home from a social event. Prosecutors announced that they were only pursuing misdemeanor charges against him, which is beyond outrageous, especially since detectives found a pair of broken reading glasses inside Ravnsborg’s Ford Taurus.

They belonged to the man he killed, though Ravnsborg said he didn’t know he had hit a man until the following day, when he returned to the scene and found the body of Joseph Boever, 55, in a ditch. This means that either 1) he then took the glasses as a souvenir, which is creepy 2) the deer he hit was wearing…no, that doesn’t work, never mind, or 3) the dead man’s head came through the windshield, as one of the detectives concluded in an interview released by the South Dakota Department of Public Safety on Tuesday.

Incredibly, Ravnsborg says that he will not step down! “At no time has this issue impeded his ability to do the work of the office,” his spokesman said in a statement. WHAT? The fact that the public now knows that its top law enforcement officer is a liar, a drunk driver (this was why he didn’t stop, of course), guilty of manslaughter and a coward doesn’t undermine his ability to do his job? If he really thinks that, let’s add “idiot” to the list.

This week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers filed two articles of impeachment against Ravnsborg and South Dakota Governor Kristi L. Noem (R) called for his resignation. That’s a start. Now let’s see the hacks that only charged Ravnsborg with three misdemeanors for conduct that would have anyone else facing homicide charges lose their jobs and law licenses.

Continue reading →

Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.); Ethics Dunces: GOP House Members Who Listened To Him

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I know the maxim is that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, but how do you explain this? It appears to be an example of a total fool leading the slightly less foolish.

What’s going on here? Continue reading →

Ethics Heroes: Philadelphia Phillies Fans

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Now there’s something I thought I’d never write.

The baseball fans in Philadelphia have long had the reputation of being among the most brutal and unforgiving in all of baseball, which is quite an accomplishment. I am, as you know if you visit here often, a born-‘n’-bred Boston Red Sox fan. In the Fifties, fans literally ran a butter-fingered shortstop, Don Buddin, out of town by booing him so hard that he reportedly was moved to tears (and there’s no crying in baseball). After the 2004 World Champion Sox’s spiritual leader and centerfield star Johnny Damon defied his own professed love for the city and the team by signing with the Yankees. He was viciously jeered at Fenway Park for the rest of his career. Still, Philly fans are supposedly tougher.

Thus Philly third baseman Alec Bohm had every reason to dread his next home game after a personal and professional disaster two nights ago. He made three errors in the first three innings Monday in a 5-4 win over the Mets, and after the last, was caught on camera screaming, “I fucking hate this place!” to nobody in particular. Expressing similar sentiments in the Sixties caused the great Dick Allen to be so abused by Philly fans he once wrote “BOO!” in the dirt to jeer back at them. Allen had to be traded too.

Continue reading →