I got a gift card to Barnes & Noble for Father’s Day, and used it to pick up a copy of the Bill James Goldmine 2009.
It includes an essay called “Whoppers,” which riffs off a column from another writer about Tim Johnson, who was fired as manager of the Blue Jays 10 years ago, after it was found out that the stories of his time in Vietnam that he was using to inspire his players were fictional. He has since been a baseball pariah, as Geoff Baker will be happy to tell you.
The theme of the articles, and one of the reason it is topical today, is that we should be more willing to extend forgiveness and compassion to those who commit these public transgressions, and I am inclined to agree. The reason they state is that we’re all capable of similar acts, and that I disagree with it.
The original articles spoke of the writer’s experience of having pretended he was related to pitcher Mike Torrez when he was in junior high. You see, since he’s capable of making things up to impress others, he should be able to understand why Johnson would.
But as James noted, there’s a big difference between an adolescent telling an innocuous lie to impress one’s friends and a middle-aged man telling fabricated tales of his own heroism. They’re really not the same thing at all.
James applies his compassion to the steroids controversy. He writes that if he could make $22 million by taking an illegal drug, he would not only do so, but would kill the pharmacist to get it, so he can’t judge ballplayers who availed themselves of PED’s. So, for us to criticize the players is to put themselves above them and think we’re better than they are, which we’re not.
I suspect James is exaggerating a bit saying he’d resort to homicide, and if so, it was a poor time to add some color in a piece where precision is required. I don’t think James would literally kill a pharmacist. Maybe he would take a drug, but I don’t think he would literally kill to do it.
And maybe I would, too. But I’d like to think I would not, since I would be modeling a culture that would make them essentially required.
Does that mean I think I’m better than theses players? On this particular matter, perhaps. But I’m sure there are other sins I am capable of that they are not. And it may be the case that they act out works of mercy more than I do. I don’t know. Judging their behavior as wrong does not require that I consider myself better than them as complete human beings.
Forgiveness that demands that we can imagine ourselves performing the act we are forgiving isn’t much at all. Eventually, someone will do something to us we could not imagine ourselves doing, but the command for forgiveness is universal. It applies to the guy who cut us off in traffic as well as the 9/11 hijackers.
Ironically, James’s brand of forgiveness leads us into an even more polarized, judgmental world. There’s the folks like almost everybody who commits sins we might all imagine ourselves doing — tax cheats, white liars, recreational drug users, traffic violators, speeders, maybe adulterers, etc. Then there’s the folks beyond the pale — murderers, rapists, pedophiles, etc. As long as you confine oneself to the common sins, nobody has a right to judge you, since we all do that stuff. But if you cross the line to unforgivable territory, watch out. And we will spend a lot of time and energy defining and negotiating where that line is.
The truth is we are all sinners. And our claim to forgiveness is (thankfully) not dependent on others being able to imagine themselves committing the same sin.
I feel bad criticizing James, because his heart is in the right place, and Lord knows we need more forgiveness and compassion in the world rather than less.
I think such a spirit also animates Megan McArdle’s comments about bankers I criticize below. Perhaps she is right that Wall Street bankers are due more compassion and forgiveness than they’ve been receiving. But the key is to play up their humanity rather than downplay the magnitude of their failures.
Forgiveness must be real, and not built on a false modesty where we pretend that these sins aren’t a big deal that we’re all capable of committing.
