Sports

Tim Tebow Hatred and the Rabbi’s Fears

/ Jack Marshall / 40 Comments

How dare he?

I have avoided weighing into the controversy over Tim Tebow, the Denver Bronco quarterback whose very public Christianity, combined with his penchant for leading miracle comeback victories for his team, has made him the most polarizing figure in sports today, and one of the most polarizing people in the culture as a whole. I have avoided commenting because I think the ethics of the controversy are obvious. Tebow is a decent, law-abiding, well-bred young man in a sector of our culture that produces profane, semi-literate, violent, or arrogant  jerks, fools, cheats and felons, not to mention arrested adolescents, by the hundreds, who are cheered, worshipped and enriched based solely on their talent to excel in stadiums and arenas. Anyone who chooses Tim Tebow, out of all these travesties of sports celebrity, to deride solely because he is vocal about his religious beliefs isn’t worth arguing about, because the verdict’s in: that critic’s priorities are backwards, inside out and warped. Tebow, unlike the NFL’s assorted felons, the NBA’s many dead-beat dads, and baseball’s steroid cheats, is a worthy role model for kids. He is humble, respectful, does his job and plays by the rules. What’s not to like?

Well, we know the answer to that question. He prays on the field, thanks God after every touchdown pass, and is prone to saying things like, “First and foremost I gotta thank my lord and savior Jesus Christ”  to reporters. Is it annoying? Oh, sure it is. This stuff is annoying from any athlete. To begin with, it is silly—the very idea that a Supreme Being gives a hoot which wins a football game is infantile—and it comes off as a commercial, like an athlete who makes sure that he says, “Well, first and foremost I have to thank the General Mills  people, because Wheaties, “The Breakfast of Champions,” has made me who I am today!”  in every interview. But Tebow’s statements aren’t  commercials, though, and anyone inclined to be fair knows it. This is a man with a deep religious faith who really believes that God guides his every move, and that it is right and responsible to thank Him when  the quarterback  is being celebrated for athletic exploits that in Tebow’s belief system are the product of his relationship with his deity. The sentiment is sincere and the motivation is virtuous. For Tebow’s displays of faith to incur hatred is an indictment of the haters. If he annoys you, don’t listen to him. If you do, the annoyance is your fault, not Tebow’s. Continue reading →

Occupy Manny

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Sing it, Manny! "You load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and a pro-rated 20 million dollars a year.."

I admit it: Manny Ramirez’s existence is a constant irritant to me. I regard him as epitomizing the worst tendencies of professional sports stars, and the attitudes of the most conscience-free who walk among us who make/ society and the culture a little bit worse every day. I was thrilled when his baseball career came to an appropriately sordid end, with his being caught using performance enhancing drugs and retiring o avoid having to serve his suspension, and nauseated when he announced the end of his retirement a few weeks ago, hoping to lure some addled team owner into paying him a million dollars or so to hit home runs and loaf.

Now, thanks to the research skills of baseball blogger Craig Calcaterra, my morning began by learning that Manny is also akin to the recording stars, Hollywood actors, rich politicians and toadying business executives who have tried to pass themselves off as Occupy Wall Street’s virtuous and harshly exploited 99% despite all reason and evidence to the contrary. In an interview in Spanish, Manny was explaining that he might have to travel to Japan to play ball again, and said,“Somos un obrero y donde quiera que haya trabajo hay que ir a trabajar;” in English: “We are the working class and must go where there is work.”

“Working class!” Continue reading →

Albert Pujols: Yes, He’s Disloyal, Greedy, and Confused.

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I'm sorry! This was supposed to be a picture of Albert Pujols, not King Midas. Well, six of one, half-dozen of the other...

Cardinal free agent first baseman Albert Pujols, generally regarded as the most talented baseball slugger alive, just jumped from his supposedly beloved St. Louis to the Los Angeles Angels because they offered him several more millions of dollars per year that he couldn’t possible spend if he tried than the Cardinals did. The attitude of most players, fans and sportswriters, not to mention the players’ union (naturally), is “Of course! Who wouldn’t?”

Who wouldn’t? A more ethical, less greedy, more thoughtful human being, that’s who.

The Angels won Pujols with an offer of $254 million dollars for ten years, making him the highest paid player on captivity. The Cardinals. on the other hand, whose fans had cheered him, embraced him and worshipped him, and which had established Pujols as one of the franchise’s icons fit to stand with Stan the Man Musial, Bob Gibson, Dizzy Dean and Lou Brock, had offered a measly $204 million for nine years, or about 23 million a year. The difference between the two offers is minimized, if not eliminated, by the cost of living disparity between the two locales: housing, for example, is about 250% more expensive in LA. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Sports Grid Blogger Dan Fogarty

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Civility is doomed. Civilization is doomed. Propriety is doomed.

What's the concerned father of the injured cheerleader thinking about? Why, what any cool dad would think about---how good her butt looks!

And Taylor Young, a cheerleader for the Michigan State Spartans, may well be doomed, as it is impossible to tell how badly her character, values and common sense have been warped by being brought up in a household containing her father, Charles. After Young took a hard fall during the halftime show in a game against Florida State, requiring her to receive medical attention (she was OK), her father posted this astounding Facebook comment, which, naturally, has gone viral:

“I’m glad to see your booty isn’t gettin big ….. no one likes a chick with a big butt ….. love you.”

Idiotic? Check. Sexist? Check. Insulting to women? Check. Embarrassing to his daughter? Double check. Demonstrating a stunning lack of understanding of the internet? Check. Displaying a disturbing tendency to sexualize his own daughter?

Check, and Yuck.

But to Dan Fogarty, writing on Sports Grid, this offensive post proves that Young is a “cool Dad,” and Young goes on to cite other “experts” who believe this is “quite possibly the funniest ‘Dad Moment’ in Facebook history.”

Really? Is this really the current state of the culture? A father makes salacious comments about his daughter’s “booty,” suggests that “chicks” without similar booty quality are unloved and unlovable, and that’s cool?

If Fogarty is in step with the culture and I’m not, 1) then American society is coarsening faster than I thought, and 2) which way to Mars?

My condolences to Taylor Young for the boorish conduct of her father, and if she sees nothing wrong with it either, she has my intense condolences—because she has been severely damaged.

As, perhaps, have we all, if Fogarty is right.

Ethics Dunces: Homestead-Miami Speedway NASCAR Fans

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

"Why, welcome, Mrs. Obama, and thank you for making time in your busy schedule to grace our community's event!"

NASCAR fans at Homestead-Miami Speedway yesterday booed first lady Michelle Obama when she was introduced as one of the grand marshals for the race. This isn’t a tough call: that was mean-spirited and rude.

I’ve seen elected officials booed at sporting events, and sometimes it comes off as funny. I remember Vice-President Hubert Humphrey being booed at a Red Sox game, because the fans knew he was there to root for the Minnesota Twins, then playing the Sox for the pennant on the next-to-last day of the 1967 season. Hubert laughed it off. Other examples of booing officials have not been so benign, as when President Herbert Hoover was jeered at a Washington Senators game. Booing a politician, however, is always part demonstration and part entertainment; I wouldn’t do it, but it’s political speech. with a long, long tradition behind it.

Michelle Obama, however, isn’t a politician or elected official. Booing a family member to show disapproval of a politician who isn’t present is not just rude, it’s unfair and cowardly. Mrs. Obama came to the event as a  guest, and should have been treated as one. She also deserves a modicum of respect as part of the First Family. Sure, it was a political appearance, and I’m certain there are other things the First Lady would rather spend her time doing, like, say, throwing playing cards into a hat. Nevertheless, she has done nothing to justify public jeering.

A side note: many of the news accounts stated that the crowd booed Mrs. Obama and Jill Biden, the wife of  Vice President Biden, who was introduced at the same time. Not one American in 10,000 could pick Jill Biden out of a line-up; that’s misleading reporting, either to minimize the magnitude of the insult to Mrs. Obama, or because the reporters really are that dumb. Take your pick.

Wild Card Ethics and Cultural Expectations

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Bad ideas are contagious, especially popular ones.

Major League Baseball just expanded the number of teams that qualify for post-season glory from eight to ten. Yes, there are ethical calculations involved in this, whether baseball cares or not. Supposedly, questions of fairness were part of the reason for the change, though I doubt it—in pro sports, the engine of change is always profit. And whether the change results in more fairness or less depends on what you consider fair—or perhaps whether you are sleeping intents in various U.S. cities.

Sports is such a big part of our cultural consciousness that what the National Pastime calls fair and just cannot help but influence cultural standards. Before 1969, there were two leagues of eight, then ten, Major League teams, and the two teams with the best records in each league met in the World Series. It was a simple meritocracy, with just 10% of the teams being allowed to advance after the regular season. Oh, there was always complaining about how the rich Yankees got into the Series more often than not, while the Senators, Phillies, Astros and A’s never did, but nobody camped out in the middle of Manhattan to protest baseball talent disparity. If you lived in one of the smaller Major League cities you just scaled back expectations, that’s all. And if, by some miracle, you won, then victory was all the sweeter, because you had bucked the odds by being harder working, stronger, better. Continue reading →

Now THIS Is An Offensive Team Name

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

The London, Ontario independent baseball team has decided to rename itself “The London Rippers.”

Jack's last victim: a logo, perhaps?

The city’s mayor has expressed concerns about the name, and good for him. This isn’t a manufactured political correctness complaint, based on the dubious logic that it demeans a group to honor it with an athletic team name. This is the opposite: a team name that honors a serial killer who disemboweled poor women in the slums of London in 1888. Misogyny isn’t cute or funny, and anyone who thinks that making Jack the Ripper a team symbol is anything but one more outrage perpetrated against his pathetic victims but gets indignant over the Atlanta Braves has his head on upside-down and backwards.

Now, I suppose it’s possible that an association of serial killers will protest that the name “London Rippers” dehumanizes them and puts them in the same category with lions, tigers and bears. In such an eventuality, I would side with the associations of lions, tigers and bears protesting that the name denigrates them. Sportswriting lawyer Craig Calcaterra, a sharp baseball mind whose NBC column alerted me to this story, somehow misses the point by a mile, writing:

“…Jack the Ripper did his work, like, 130 years ago. Murder is murder and it’s always awful, but at what point has enough time passed to where this kind of thing isn’t a problem?  And yes, I note the mayor’s nod to ending violence against women, but does a reference to a 19th century British serial killer who is more often fictionalized today than dealt with in his brutal reality really undermine those laudable aims?
I’m not saying it’s 100% fabulous. But really, kids were singing about Lizzie Borden taking an axe and giving her mother 40 whacks within a few years of that going down. Is it really too soon to be able to use a  long-dead historical figure as a mascot? There are a bunch teams called “crusaders” and the crusades were brutal. We still have Chief Wahoo around, and you can make an argument that the thinking behind that mascot (i.e. Indians are somehow less-than-human) represented way more death and destruction than anything Jack the Ripper did.”

Ugh. How many rationalizations are in this passage? Playground chants about Lizzie Borden (or the Black Plague, which is what “Ring around the rosey” is about) are not remotely comparable to naming a community’s baseball team after a serial killer. Playground refrains don’t become part of a community’s identity, and they don’t in any way bestow prestige on the dark subjects of their rhymes. Teams named after crusaders, warriors, braves and pirates don’t aspire to honor the deaths caused by these groups, any more than teams are named the Lions or Tigers because they have mauled people, or the Cardinals and Orioles are so named because the birds poop on our heads. There one reason, and only one, Jack the Ripper is famous. He slit the throats of desperate prostitutes and dissected them,: in the case of Mary Kelly, he minced his victim, leaving her internal organs on her night table. The London Ripper sent body parts of one victim to police, and taunted them. He didn’t possess a single admirable quality to justify a connection to a sports team, unless there are professional misogyny, mayhem or maniac leagues somewhere.

And Craig’s argument that is an expiration date on the offensiveness of trivializing tragedy is the worst of all. Seriously, Craig? So Penn State can call its wrestling team “the Molesters” in 100 years or so? What he’s really endorsing is ignorance. Kids who chant about the bubonic plague don’t realize it, and neither do their parents. That a lot of people don’t know the truth behind all the fictional Jack the Ripper tales is an argument for enlightening them, not pretending that killing prostitutes is just fun and games.

The mayor of London is right, Craig  is wrong, and if there ever was an inappropriate and harmful  team name, the London Rippers is it.

For Those Who Want To Discover First-Hand Whether My Oral Opinions Are Even More Infuriating Than My Written Ones…

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

…I will be a guest on NPR’s “Tell Me More” with Michel Martin this Friday morning to talk about ethical issues raised by the Penn State.

Of course, by that time, Jerry Sandusky may have given another creepy interview confessing that he always wanted to be a Catholic priest,  it will be discovered that Joe Paterno not only gave ownership of his house to his wife to avoid paying liability damages, but also has left the country to rule a colony of fanatic Penn State boosters in Guyana, amd Mike McQueary may have sent out an e-mails revealing  that he is really Marie of Rumania.

You never know.

The show will be broadcast live at 11 AM, East Coast time, and my segment will begin around 11:20.

Judging McQueary: Child Rape Bystander Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

You have no excuses, Kal-El. But the rest...

“It was cowardly for a 6′4″ graduate assistant to witness the rape of a child by an older man and not only take no action to stop it but also not even call the police,” writes David French in the National Review.

He is, of course, referring to Mike McQueary, then a 28-year-old graduate student assistant coach for Joe Paterno at Penn State. Others have declared that it was an “absolute moral imperative” that McQueary physically intervene to stop the sexual assault.

It is interesting that the absolute moral imperative is nonetheless linked to qualifiers. French references McQueary’s size and the fact that the alleged assailant, Jerry Sandusky, is older. Some critics have focused on his gender. Still others, making the argument that McQueary failed to intervene because he didn’t take a child rape seriously enough, have suggested that he would have acted differently had Sandusky been beating, rather than raping the child. Of all the ethical debates surrounding the Penn State scandal, the question of how much scorn should be heaped on McQueary for not acting immediately to stop the rape in progress has been the most fascinating, and to my mind, the most disingenuous. It appears that every commentator, male or female, young or old, fat or fit, is convinced that would have charged in and battled the 57-year-old former wide-receiver, pummeling him into wet submission while the child escaped. Maybe. Studies and anecdotal evidence indicate that in fact, most people wouldn’t physically intervene. Perhaps sportswriters and op-ed writers are made of sterner stuff that the rest of the public.

Yes, that must be it.

None of this is to suggest that physically stopping a child rape in progress isn’t the right thing to do; it is. For his part, McQueary reputedly didn’t take any action to stop the assault,* which in order of effectiveness would be… Continue reading →

A Commercial Break

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The new Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2012 is out today. As usual, publisher Dave Studenmund and his staff have done a terrific job gathering provocative commentary on the baseball season just ended, and have stuffed the book with the fascinating and useful statistics and analysis that makes the Hardball Times website such an enjoyable hang-out for baseball fans.

Dave consented to allowing this year’s Annual to include an essay on some of the important ethics issues that surfaced during the season, and it bears my name as author. I’m proud to be part of such an excellent publication.

If you are a baseball fan, I recommend The Hardball Times Baseball Annual 2012 heartily. You can order it, and many other nifty baseball books,  here.

Now back to our regularly scheduled ethics alarms…