Some Cultural Criticism on Baseball and Honesty

(Originally written August 7, 2007 in Notebook 17)

We, as a culture are not only numb to cheating and dishonesty, but approve of it. Cheating lying and most importantly, the half-truth telling are arts and skills that are honed from early ages. We only criticize these actions when the person doing them is caught.

We see these things as shrewdness and tactics in business and in life. Cheating in school or plagiarism is only a great sin if we copy word for word, but if we add an insight here and there we are seen as reworking old theories and making them new. We can point to these insights and say, "Sure, our theories are similar, but my insights make it my own". We would only become outraged if we saw someone plagiarizing our own work or something we collectively hold as sacrosanct.

In business we only become outraged at cheating, lying and half-truths when they come to fruition in major scandals. Rightfully so we were outraged at Enron, but we ignore a salesman's half-truths tricks as the norm unless we are, of course, the one who the product is sold to.

In spurts we are outraged by cheating only when the hallowed records fall. Nobody cared about steroids in the 80's and 90's, now that a truly talented ballplayer has tied Aaron's record we are outraged. Just the hint of cheating has us up in arms about Barry Bonds. For what reason? It offends our ideological history of Baseball. Where was this outrage when it all began? Was it not obvious that something improper was going on when people were gaining 30 pounds of muscle in the offseason?

Lying, cheating and half-truths are ignored or even celebrated until their outcomes effect us directly or they encroach upon something that is sacred. We should be outraged when this happens, but we should have been outraged much sooner.