Every society needs morality plays. Public incidents on which everybody can reflect and comment help establish common standards and values.
Traditional societies often did this through oral and written myths. Our society’s morality plays usually are enacted through big court trials, politics and professional sports.
The problem with morality plays involving sports in a television era is our short attention span. We run through incidents with dazzling speed, jabber for a few days or weeks, and then turn to the next outrage. There’s rarely a resolution.
Even more unusual is repentance and forgiveness. What passes for repentance is a carefully worked up press statement designed to admit just enough to let a player go on with his multimillion-dollar career.
No, this is not another Mike Tyson column. Instead, it’s a few words in praise of baseball fans. Baseball has given us that rarest of sports morality plays: One with a beginning, a middle and an end.
I have in mind the 1,657,418 baseball fans who voted to elect Roberto Alomar of the Baltimore Orioles to play second base in Tuesday’s All-Star game. (Disclosure: My son and I were two of them.)
You’ll recall Alomar as the man who spit in the face of umpire John Hirschbeck at the end of the 1996 baseball season after calling Alomar out on a strike that closer inspection showed to be a ball.
Alomar’s post-game comments made things worse. He said that Hirschbeck became “real bitter” after the death of his 7-year-old son John in 1993 of a rare disease called adrenoleukodystrophy–a disease Hirschbeck’s other son also suffers from. How could Alomar even mention such a tragedy in the same breath as a blown call?
The sadness for baseball fans is that Alomar is a brilliant second baseman and a serious professional not given to public displays (except of excellence on the field). He and his brother Sandy of the Cleveland Indians, the star of Tuesday’s game, are normally models of decency and family solidarity.
That’s why the end of this story is so satisfactory: Roberto Alomar and Hirschbeck both went on to behave in a way you can tell your kids about.
Alomar was suspended for five games and contributed a portion of his salary from the period to charity. More importantly, he donated $50,000 toward research in the disease that killed Hirschbeck’s son.
And on April 22, Alomar went out of his way to find Hirschbeck before a game, and shook his hand.
“I’m sorry,” Alomar said, according to Hirschbeck.
“Thanks, now maybe they’ll let us both do our jobs,” Hirschbeck replied.
Robbie Alomar is still sometimes booed, but more than a million and a half fans sent a message with their votes: They acknowledged his exceptional gifts at second base, on display again in Tuesday’s game, and paid tribute to the rare public person willing to say “I’m sorry,” without any hedges or dodges. Hirschbeck, who has suffered far more than a parent should, demonstrated his own form of grace.
A cynic might say that Alomar and Hirschbeck simply did what they had to do, baseball already having too many problems without this one. But here’s what matters: Alomar did precisely the right thing in public, and the fans responded. Would that our other morality plays ended so honorably.
