ethics

The Ethical Significance of Pete Rose’s Corked Bat

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

To cut to the chase: there is now irrefutable evidence that Pete Rose, Major League Baseball’s all-time hit leader who is currently banned from the game for betting on baseball, used a corked bat. How often he used it, how many other bats were similarly doctored, and what results he got from the illegal bat (s) are all unknown, and probably unknowable. The long, interesting and well-researched article about Rose’s bat on the website “Deadspin” points out that:

  • Corked bats (which have been doctored with a hollow chamber that is filled with cork, on the theory that it lightens the bat without sacrificing power) are forbidden by the rules of baseball, and their use constitutes cheating.
  • Their use is almost impossible to detect; only a handful of players have ever been caught using one, but it is believed that the cheaters are many and notable. Amos Otis, a star for the Kansas City Royals, admitted after he retired that his bats were corked for the majority of his career. Norm Cash, who won a shocking batting championship in 1961 with an average far above any he posted before or after, attributed his career year to a corked bat.
  • It is quite possible that corked bats don’t have any positive effect at all, and might even be worse than regular bats.

The last point cuts no ice with me. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

“Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason.”

— Job posting for a “qualified engineer”at an anonymous electronics company in Angleton, Texas, placed on The People Place, a  recruiting website for the telecommunications, aerospace/defense and engineering industries.

A Huffington Post article by Laura Bassett properly condemns this hiring requirement as offensive, irresponsible, cruel and unfair during a recession, when there is widespread unemployment. The practice would also be offensive, irresponsible, cruel and unfair during an economic boom or an eclipse of the sun. Bassett interviewed a human resources representative for Benchmark industries, which follows the same hiring policies, and its rational was this: Continue reading →

Abuse of Power in the Schools, Part 2: “Beat the Jew”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Seven seniors at a high school at a La Quinta, California high school have been suspended for three to five days, causing some of them to miss graduation, because they participated in a role-playing game, organized on Facebook, after school during their own personal time. The school administrators found the game objectionable, which you will be able to understand. But nobody was hurt, and no laws were broken.

That is all we really need to know. That the seniors were disciplined by the school for an activity completely unrelated to school is a pure abuse of power. This is an outrageous extension of school and government authority into the private lives of the students involved. It should not matter what the game was…not to the school. The governments of La Quinta, California and the United States couldn’t outlaw the game, nor could they forbid citizens to play it, not could they punish citizens that did.

Now, because you may be  curious, here’s a description of the game. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: This Guy at a Mets Game

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

In this video, a grown man reaches over and intercepts a tossed baseball obviously intended to reach a specific little boy with a glove in an inning-ending gesture by New York Mets third baseman David Wright. The fan snags the ball just as it was about to land in the shocked kid’s glove, and then hands it to his own child.

There are rumors, unconfirmed, that after being berated by surrounding fans, he returned the ball. It doesn’t matter if he did or not: doing the right thing after you have been caught, shamed and threatened is not an ethical act, just a pragmatic one. The deficiency of values displayed by the act of taking a baseball from the child, and the stunning lack of kindness, empathy and fairness it shows, would be sufficient to dissuade me from hiring such an individual for a job, allowing him to marry my daughter, or associating with him socially. I think he should have been thrown out of the park.

Many ethical decisions require thought and reflection. Deciding that it’s wrong for an adult to take a gift from a child is not one of them.

Abuse of Power in the Schools, Part 1: Pimping the Kids

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Blogger-mom Laura Wellington is making the talk show rounds after a post last month on her blog aroused interest and commentary from various newspapers. In the post, she indignantly described a fundraising drive by her child’s school that understandably raised her ire:

“…the letter [my daughter] handed me stated my daughter was to accomplish chores around the house with the goal of being paid by me for those chores the sum of $20.  She would then have to hand the full $20 over to the school to make up for the shortfall in their overall budget which, ultimately, disallowed the kids to go on yet another class trip.  Participation was mandatory according to what my daughter told me and the letter seemingly conveyed (however, on a later phone call, my daughter’s teacher altered the word “mandatory” to be “suggested” despite all evidence to the contrary)…”

Wellington’s complaint is that schools need to exercise fiscal responsibility, and she is joining a rising chorus of protest among parents across the country who feel that their tax dollars should not have to be supplemented with constant arm-twisting from schools urging them  to buy and sell over-priced cookies or provide additional contributions. This is a fiscal policy issue; the ethical issue should be less controversial. When did schools get the authority to dictate what children do outside school? How do they justify requiring unpaid labor for the school’s benefit? Continue reading →

Milt Pappas in the Baseball Ethics Wilderness

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Polls say the vast majority of baseball fans wanted Commissioner Bug Selig to over-rule umpire Jim Joyce after the fact and award Armando Galarraga a perfect game. The point of view is purely emotional, and as an ad hoc break with the rules, traditions and practices of the game would be so devastating to baseball’s integrity that I did not expect anyone outside the sport to adopt it. I was very wrong about that. Ex-pitcher, ESPN commentator and blogger Curt Schilling and Sports Illustrated baseball writer Jon Heyman were just a few of the voices calling for Bud to announce that Joyce’s epic mistake, among the thousands and thousands of terrible judgment calls by umpires in the game’s history, should be the one that is changed after the game is over.

But an ex-pitcher who threw a no-hitter himself, Milt Pappas, did us all a favor by showing the ethics wilderness this kind of thinking can cause to sprout overnight. First, Pappas wistfully suggests that if Galarraga’s lost perfect game can be saved by Selig, maybe his 38-year-old not-quite-perfect no-hitter  can be similarly burnished. Pappas also believes that a perfect game is so important, umpires should consciously try to one along. if I interpret his “logic” properly, he thinks that on Joyce’s erroneous call the umpire should have called the runner “out” on a close call even if he was safe. Continue reading →

Helen Thomas, Bias, and the Demon Pazuzu

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Let me be clear: there is nothing wrong with superannuated newswoman Helen Thomas believing that the Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and return to Germany and Poland. An if she believes it, there is nothing wrong with her saying so, as she did to a questioning rabbi. It’s good to know. Since we now know her biases on the matter, we can better assess her credibility when she writes about Middle East politics.  As Joe Gandleman writes on “The Moderate Voice:

“Just saying “Go back to where you come from” is the same as the misguided, empty-headed Americans who shout “Go back to Africa” to blacks or “Go back to Mexico” to American born Latinos when they know they are American born Latinos. It shows her so hopelessly biased and lacking realistic perspective that stories written by her beg to be skipped over…. on the Middle East story, how can anyone think that when she asks questions she is seeking information to flesh out a story (unless it was a special on airfares so Jews can fly out of Israel)?”

As I said: good to know. What is wrong and dishonest, however, is Thomas’s “apology” after it began to sink in that her candidly expressed and crude bias could be a career-ender. So, emulating that eminent anti-Semite, Mel Gibson, Helen released this: Continue reading →

Try the “Ethicability” Test!

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

British “corporate philosopher” Roger Steere has developed an on-line “Ethicability” test that is worth the time to take. (I know…I hate the title too.)  Of course, self-evaluations of ethical conduct are notoriously suspect, as the Gallup Poll proves every year. (Most Americans think they are the most ethical individuals they know.) This one focuses on integrity, however, and the computer-generated scores and the personal assessment are thought-provoking. I took it; I think anyone who knew me well would have been more accurate, but it wasn’t wildly off the mark.

See how you do, and if you have a couple more minutes, post your reactions at Ethics Alarms. Is this sort of thing useful?

The test is here.

Obama on Jobs: Spin, Deceit or Encouragement?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

What constitutes dishonesty in politics, in leadership, for a U.S. President?

The Labor Department reported today that the nation added 431,000 jobs in May. The good news: it was the fifth consecutive month of job growth. The bad: private employment, the best indicator of real economic recovery, climbed just 41,000. It had increased by 218,000 in April, and economists had predicted private employment, to rise by at least 190,000 in May. Thus the low number was a setback for the economy’s recovery.

Not to hear the President describe it, however. “What these numbers do mean though is that we’re moving in the right direction,” he said. “The economic policies that we’ve put in place are working.” Continue reading →

Integrity, Lost Perfection, and the Midget at the Bat

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Suddenly, a lot of writers, baseball players and commentators are calling for Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to step in and reverse umpire Jim Joyce’s blown call that cost Armando Galarraga a history-making perfect game on what should have been the last play of the game. Disturbingly, it seems that the Commissioner might be listening. The argument: the Commissioner has broad power to take action “in the best interest of baseball.”

The problem with this argument: it wouldn’t be in the best interests of baseball, or the principles of ethics, either. Continue reading →