Perfection and cheating: how do lies continue to corrode our love and trust in something greater?
We are only a couple of weeks into the New Year and baseball has had a lot to talk about. The first began with perfection. On the first day of the year Don Larsen died. In baseball terms he had an average career. A pitcher with a lifetime loosing record with the exception of a magical day, on October 8, 1956, when he threw a perfect game in the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. He will be forever remembered not for the career but for the one exceptional moment which no one has ever done before or since. He stands alone.
Then there is the cheating. This past week Major League Baseball has begun to hand out punishments to the Houston Astros for their cheating in the 2017 World Series in beating the Los Angeles Dodgers in seven games. It’s a complicated story that begins by using a television camera to see the “sign” given by the opposing catcher, relaying the sign to the batter by banging a garbage can, so the batter will be tipped off on what the pitcher will be throwing. It sounds weird but it is true. It is complicated because “sign stealing” has always been part of the game but this went beyond what is “accepted” because it used an electronic medium that gave an unfair advantage.
As a Dodgers fan, I am frustrated and hurt at this cheating scandal. As a baseball fan, I am disturbed and troubled at the response of Baseball and those involved who have spoken publicly. As a Catholic Christian, I recognize how sin has infected the integrity of the individuals who know what they were doing was wrong and yet excused it in so many different ways.
“Wealth obtained by fraud dwindles, But the one who gathers by labor increases it.” Proverbs 13:11
What can one do in the face of cheating? We are reminded of how choosing to do wrong diminished any accomplishment we may secure. Whether the wrong is discovered or remains hidden in continually lurks in the dark corners of life haunting any accomplishment with the weak foundation of doubt. Integrity matters in life because it helps to build the self confidence of not only succeeding but also the reality that in failure lessons are learned and new paths are discovered in the growing grace of life.
“Can I justify wicked scales And a bag of deceptive weights?” Micah 6:11
Part of the statement by A.J. Hinch, the now fired manager of the Houston Astros, reads, “While the evidence consistently showed I didn’t endorse or participate in the sign-stealing practices, I failed to stop them and I am deeply sorry.”
Accepting responsibility for our actions and seeking forgiveness and reconciliation for our failures to follow right and avoid wrong is living the gift of fortitude and courage. Knowing wrong is occurring, as the leader of the team, and failing to stop the wrong is a great moral failure. One of the most important things we have learned from years past is if we sit by and permit evil to occur only allows the sin to grow ever deeper in our hearts and the life of the community around us. If you are sitting on the bench and hearing the bang of the can, knowing what it is, are you not participating by the inaction? A lower echelon employee my not be able to stop it…but the manager of the team?
“As a partridge that hatches eggs which it has not laid, So is he who makes a fortune, but unjustly; In the midst of his days it will forsake him, And in the end he will be a fool.” Jeremiah 17:11
It talking with another Dodger fan, yes there is more than one, he reminded me of the ripple effect of the sin, the cheating, the degrading of integrity. It may have, as the report suggests, began as an idea of someone other than the “manager” but the action infected the character of each and every member of the team, just as sin does to families, parishes, communities and the world. Each and every person, from the General Manager to the batboy, began to participate, willingly or unwillingly, in the ripple of the sin. This becomes the insidiousness of the sin, each action of moral corruption makes the next one easier to grasp.
Moreover, they did not require an accounting from the men into whose hand they gave the money to pay to those who did the work, for they dealt faithfully. 2 Kings 12:15
Perfection and cheating: what are we to do? What does it matter? Just a thought…if Don Larsen had been pitching against the Houston Astros on the magical day when everything aligned for a pitcher who would never be remembered for his career numbers but is remembered this one day…Would that day have happened? Would the cheating have erased a magical day, a good man’s accomplishment, a moment of history into nothingness?
On a parish note, this is one of the reasons why we are using “A Parent Who Prays” talking and building up our child’s, our family’s, our own integrity in virtue is part of living our vocation of holiness.
God Bless
Fr. Mark