Sports

Obama Joins Coakley, Hillary and Kerry in “The Baseball Trap”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

A new poll finds the American public’s trust in its government at an all-time low, and as silly as it is, this sort of thing doesn’t help a bit.

President Obama pointedly wore a Chicago White Sox cap when he threw out the first ball at the official Major League baseball season opener in Washington, D.C. rather than the cap of the home team, the Washington Nationals, who need all the fans they can get. Last week he stopped by an actual White Sox game, and visited the broadcast booth, where he chatted with Rob Dibble on the air about his baseball loyalties, and how he was, at heart, a White Sox fan, having lived in the South Side (the North Side is Chicago Cubs territory) during his Chicago days, which extended from 1985 to when he moved into the White House—about 23 years.

Then Dibble asked the President who his favorite White Sox player was “growing up.” It was clear from his answer—stuttering, followed by the explanation that he grew up in Hawaii and thus began life as an Oakland A’s fan—that Obama couldn’t name a single one. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Sportswriter William Rhoden

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“What is character? In the N.F.L., character is need.”

—–New York Times sports columnist William Rhoden, explaining how teams seek to draft players “with character,” a.k.a. “who don’t commit felonies off the field,” unless, of course, the player is especially talented and they need what he has to offer on the field in order to win.

This intellectually dishonest standard is not restricted to pro football. Voters want ethical and honest elected representatives, unless they keep taxes low and deliver goodies to their neighborhoods. Corporations want executives with character too, unless a manipulative, deceitful, scheming whiz makes the company’s profits soar. The student with great promise will be excused or merely admonished for offenses that a school will suspend lesser students for.

The well-documented human tendency to endure unethical conduct from high-level performers while holding less gifted and accomplished individuals to higher standards of character serves to undermine ethics generally, confirming as it does the principle that the prettier, smarter, richer, more powerful, more famous you are, the less obligated you are to care about others, do the right things, or obey the rules.

For this is the Star Syndrome. In the coming months and years, Ethics Alarms and its readers will encounter it often. Continue reading →

A. J. Pierzynski, Baseball Cheating and Moral Gray Zones

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The baseball season is certainly off to an unethical start.

In Tuesday’s game between the Blue Jays and White Sox, Toronto pitcher Ricky Romero’s gestating no-hitter was aborted in the 8th inning in part because of some deceptive play-acting by ChiSox catcher A. J. Pierzynski. Every era  has one player who acquires a reputation for being tricky, a.k.a. “dirty,” and Pierzynski is the current title holder. When he came to bat against Romero, the catcher with the unspellable name took advantage of a pitch that bounced in the dirt near him to hop up and down as if his widdle toe had a ball-induced boo-boo. Incredibly (for even the White Sox announcers were chatting about how obvious it was that the ball hadn’t touched A. J., noting that he wasn’t even hopping on the most plausibly injured foot), home umpire Tim McClelland stood by silently as Pierzynski trotted to first base. Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston protested to no avail, and, not for the first time, A. J. Pierzynski had stolen first base. Now Romero had to pitch from the stretch rather than a wind-up, and the no-hitter (and the shut-out) was no-history seconds later, as Toronto’s Alex Rios hit a home run.

Did A. J. Pierzynski cheat? Should he be fined or punished for feigning an injury,  as some have suggested? Continue reading →

The Conundrum of the Unsuccessful Cheat

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A sharp-eyed Chicago White Sox fan with a blog at his disposal caught something interesting in yesterdays Twins-White Sox game, which ended in a ChiSox victory when Twins baserunner J.J. Hardy was thrown out at home to end the game. As Hardy rounded third, Twins third base coach Scott Ullger stepped on to the playing field, planted one foot on third and for all the world looked like a runner holding the bag until he saw if the relay throw was going to be fielded cleanly. Was his intent to fool Twin Mark Teahan, who had just received the throw from the outfield, into believing—just for a crucial second—that he was Hardy, thus delaying the relay throw home? If so, it didn’t work: Teahan threw home quickly and well, and Hardy was a dead duck. As the blogger,Jim Margalus, writes,

“…it would’ve been interesting to see what would’ve happened if the relay were botched, because what Ullger is doing seems to be in violation of rule 7.09(h), in which…‘With a runner on third base, the base coach leaves his box and acts in any manner to draw a throw by a fielder;… is defined as an act of interference’.” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Boston Sportswriter Pete Abraham

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

I try to keep the number of Ethics Heroes and Ethics Dunces in rough balance here, and sometimes I despair of how few of the former and how many of the latter I have to choose from. Perhaps part of the problem is that good conduct is more common than bad conduct, and thus has to be especially flashy before the media notices. Or perhaps I am not giving sufficient credit to small, ethical gestures that in their own way make a difference.

This brings us to Pete Abraham, a writer on the Red Sox beat for the Boston Globe. Pete writes the “Extra Bases” blog, and does something that I have not seen before. At the end of his post every morning, Pete signs off with, “Thanks as always for reading the blog.”

It is a small but genteel exhibition of civility and manners that, for me at least, serves the same purpose every morning as Ben Franklin’s Daily Questions. It sets the ethics alarms for the day and reminds me to not get so focused on work, tasks and problems that I forget to help smooth out the edges for those around me.

I’ve never met Pete Abraham, but I hope I do some day. He is obviously a kind and caring person who understands the importance of civility. He knows how to set his ethics alarms.

And best of all, he’s a Red Sox fan.

Oh—I almost forgot! “Thanks as always for reading the blog.”

Unethical Questions, Anti-Semitism, and Greenberg’s Chase

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I first encountered the device of the unfounded accusatory rhetorical questions when, as 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 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, but it is also a regrettably common tool of journalists and historians. Now the eclectic sports journalist Howard Megdal (who also edits a terrific website, The Perpetual Post)  has found a new use for it. His question: “When Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers made a run at Babe Ruth’s season home run record, falling two short with 58 in 1938, was he pitched around because he was Jewish?” Continue reading →

Ethics Train Wreck: Step-Dancing, Racism, and Coke

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

I missed this story last week. I am almost sorry it came to my attention.

February 20 witnessed the national finals of the Sprite Step Off competition in Atlanta, billed as “the largest Greek stepping competition ever.” I never heard of “step-dancing,” but that is apparently because I’m not black. It is a lively type of dancing favored by black fraternities and sororities. Although the performance by the all-white Zeta Tau Alpha team from the University of Arkansas—the only white team in the competition—received uproarious applause, mixed with amazement on the part of the almost all-black crowd that a white team could master the art, the cheers turned to jeers when they were announced as the winners.  Although few disputed that the Zeta team had been one of the very best, angry e-mails and on-line protests from African Americans began building into a tidal wave. There were accusations of “cultural theft,” and the general message was that a white team should not have been declared the winner in a step-dancing competition. That was a black tradition, and only bias could explain the white team’s success. Most of the protests came from people who had not seen the performances. Continue reading →

Essay: Ending the Bi-Partisan Effort to Destroy Trust in America

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Both the Pentagon shooter and the Texas I.R.S. attacker were motivated by a virulent distrust of the U.S. government, the distrust mutating into desperation and violence with the assistance of personal problems and emotional instability. We would be foolish, however, to dismiss the two as mere “wingnuts,” the current term of choice to describe political extremists who have gone around the bend. They are a vivid warning of America’s future, for the media, partisan commentators, the two political parties and our elected officials are doing their worst to convert all of us into wingnuts, and the results could be even more disastrous than the fanciful horrors the Left and the Right tell us that the other has planned for us. Continue reading →

The Dishonest or Cowardly Joke Excuse

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

An enthusiastic commenter to the post on Tony Kornheiser’s suspension by ESPN bases his defense of the suspended sports commentator on what I call “the joke excuse”: poor Tony was only joking when he insulted colleague Hannah Storm on his syndicated radio show, and that should insulate him from any negative consequences because humor is subjective, and we don’t want people without senses of humor snuffing out laughter in the world.

As anyone who actually has read the contents of this blog (the commenter in question has clearly not), I tend to be in general sympathy with the concept of giving humor free reign. The problem with its application here is that I see no evidence that Kornheiser was joking. His words:

“Hannah Storm in a horrifying, horrifying outfit today. She’s got on red go-go boots and a catholic school plaid skirt … way too short for somebody in her 40s or maybe early 50s by now. She’s got on her typically very, very tight shirt.She looks like she has sausage casing wrapping around her upper body … I know she’s very good, and I’m not supposed to be critical of ESPN people, so I won’t … but Hannah Storm … come on now! Stop! What are you doing?”

I’ll pause a second so you can catch your breath from uncontrollable laughter at Tony’s wit, deft use of irony. brilliant wordplay and creative absurdity. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce Revisted: Jay McGwire

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

About a year ago, over on the Ethics Scoreboard, I made former baseball slugger Mark McGwire’s brother, Jay McGwire, an Ethics Dunce. At that time Mark McGwire was still mum about his widely-suspected steroid use, and his brother was  peddling a book proposal that supposedly exposed his home run-hitting bro’s cheating ways. I then wrote…

“… Brother Jay says he has written the book “out of love” for his brother, who no longer sees, speaks to him, nor, presumably, gives him hand-outs. Right. Jay McGwire is selling out his brother for cash. This is not a courageous whistleblower alerting a company to crime in its ranks. This is not a family member doing the right thing by refusing to help a parent, sibling, or offspring get away with child abuse, treason, fraud or murder. There is nothing admirable, selfless or courageous here. Jay McGwire wants money, and he is willing to embarrass and exploit his brother to get it.” Continue reading →