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Whoppers

By Bill James
July 18, 2008

 

This column is in response to a column by Roel Torres, about the firing of Toronto manager Tim Johnson.   If you have not read that column, you might go read that one before you read this one.   Thanks.

              It is common behavior, particularly among adolescent boys, to tell Whoppers.   A Whopper can be distinguished from a venal lie in this way:  that whereas the purpose of a venal lie is to deny guilt or failings, the purpose of a Whopper is to inflate one’s image with imaginary attributes. 
            Many or perhaps all adolescent boys go through a phase where they tell Whoppers, some more and some less.   Most people discover through life experience that the telling of Whoppers erodes their respect from others, and they gradually learn to live with the dreary realities of their personal history.   Some people miss the memo.  Those people who do not learn this lesson are generally excluded from the better jobs, which rely more on trust and decorum.
            So anyway, Roel argues for forgiveness for Tim Johnson, based on his own failings, and I find this a very moving argument.   I believe, in general, that one of the greatest problems of the modern world is our inability to forgive one another and move on.   Our politics are composed of two parties, both of which believe that it is entirely appropriate for them to exaggerate the failings of those on the other side.   The fact that they all agree about this does not make them right—nor, for that matter, is it even necessarily an effective position from a selfish standpoint.   I believe in forgiveness.  Who speaks for me?   Who represents me on this? 
            Both sides of the political debate make frenzied efforts to attract my support—by exaggerating the failings of the other side.   The problem is, I don’t believe in exaggerating the failings of one’s opponents, and I don’t support anybody who does.
            And I’m not really unusual.   Studies show that more and more people refuse to identify themselves as either Republicans or Democrats.  Why?   I would argue that one of the reasons that many of us will not identify ourselves as either Republican or Democrat is the sense that both Republicans and Democrats and selfish and immature, and that neither really speaks for values. 
            Set aside politics; try Journalism.   People say stupid stuff every day, but twice a month, somebody says The Wrong Thing, and a scandal results.   In sports we have had the Jimmie the Greek Scandal, and the Al Campanis Scandal, and the Marge Schott Scandal, and the Bill Singer Scandal, and. . . .I don’t know.   I don’t keep a calendar.   In the broader world we have them all the time. . ..Trent Lott, and Don Imus, and the guy who played Kramer.
            And, because we have these Scandals, we have tempests, which we are watching to see if they will develop into Scandals, rather as one watches a wart to see whether it will develop into cancer.   For every Scandal, there are 25 tempests, building toward a scandal.   Joe Buck.  Is it a Scandal, what he said, or will he get by with it?
            Journalists, in some sense, are pretending to speak for values by pointing out the moral failings of Senators and other sinners.   But my question is, who speaks for forgiveness? 
            And Roel has hit the nail on the head in this way:  that the refusal of forgiveness is a type of self-righteousness.    We don’t want to say “OK, I forgive you for lying, because I lie, too.”   We don’t want to say, “I forgive you for having mean and petty and unworthy notions about other groups of people, because I have mean and petty and unworthy notions about other groups of people, too.”   We want to say, “Oh, I’m better than that.   I don’t have any little Nazis in my sub-conscious mind.”
            Oh, you don’t?
            Somehow I don’t believe you.
            It takes real courage to do what Roel did, to raise your hand and say “I’m a Liar, too.”    But the fact is, none of us is that different from the others.    We all want other people to think that we’re a little bit bigger and a little bit grander than we really are.   We want others to think that inside of us is a bottomless lake of pure compassion, without pettiness or selfishness or any inappropriate kind of lust. 
            I am not suggesting that it is wrong of journalists to find out that someone has lied, or to point this out.   What I am questioning is what happens after that—this ritual of turning, teeth bared, on the person whose depravity has been exposed, and snarling at him and driving him out of the circle.   He is unworthy of us.
            What I am really trying to get to is this:  that it is very difficult to organize people around the principle or compassion, because compassion requires the acknowledgement of our own guilt.   It was, for centuries, the role of the church to organize the communal acknowledgement of our guilt, but as the church is driven out of public life, how do we replace that? 
            The journalists are organized, in a sense, in their ruthless exposure of people who betray a racist wart, but how do we organize forgiveness?    The political parties are organized in their relentless exaggeration of the failings of their opponents, but how do we organize on behalf of tolerance? 
            We have to do what Roel did.   We have to admit that we’re not any better.   I’m not any better than Bill Singer, and I’m not any better than Al Campanis, and I’m not any better than Marge Schott.
            That, it seems to me, is what is missing from the Barry Bonds debate:  Forgiveness.   I’m not any better than Barry Bonds, and I’m not any better than Mark McGwire, and I’m not any better than Roger Clemens, and I’m not any better than Pete Rose, either.   You give me the opportunity to earn $22 million a year by taking steroids, I’ll shoot the pharmacist if I have to.   I’m not saying it’s right.   I’m not saying I shouldn’t be punished for shooting the pharmacist.  I am saying it is self-righteous to pretend that I don’t have the same human failings that these guys do, and further, if you are insisting that you don’t have them, I don’t believe you.   When you fire Al Campanis to show us that his failings are not your failings, I don’t believe you.    When you fire the next Al Campanis to show us that you are morally superior to him, I don’t buy it.   I don’t believe you are morally superior to him; you’re just a self-righteous asshole who is refusing to forgive his human failings. 
            Look, am I saying that Tim Johnson should not have been fired for telling some Whoppers to his players?   Not exactly.   Tim Johnson was not asking to be a member or the group; he was asking to be the leader of the group.   It’s a little different.   He did the things that adolescent boys do, well after his adolescence was over with. 
            Is it a sham to say, “I forgive him, but he has to be fired anyway?”   I don’t know.   I don’t have the answer to that one.   If you cheat on your wife it is not self-righteous for her to divorce you.   If you cheat in the game, it is not self-righteous for the Umpire to call you out, or to throw you out.   Where trust is necessary, it is necessary to speak for values.
            But when it comes to Roger Clemens, for example. . .is it necessary for us to punish his failings?   Or are we doing it to demonstrate to one another that we are better than he is, that we wouldn’t have taken a dollar that we couldn’t earn with the talent God gave us, and we’d have kicked Mindy McCready out of bed before she could get her shoes off. 
            Yeah, right, buddy.   Sure you would have.  It’s just a shame that God didn’t give more talent to good people like you, but that was Her decision, and we’ll just have to live with it. 

 
 

COMMENTS (21 Comments, most recent shown first)

soprismb
Bill:
You're one of my favorite writers--not just in baseball--but I completely disagree with you on this point. There is a big difference between a big casual lie and perjury.

One of the fundamentals of our justice system is an oath of honesty when appearing in a courtroom or in any other type of legal proceeding. While no one will acknowledge that our system is perfect it is very good; and it's all based on the idea that the truth will be told in legal matters. Without it the system fails. If someone is shown to be anything but 100% honest in a courtroom the punishment must be swift and harsh.

Chris Rock's comedy skit on Bill Clinton's impeachment, while funny, suggested that all Clinton did was lie about getting a BJ. Wrong. He didn't just LIE about getting a BJ, he perjured himself about getting a BJ.

To you and to everyone else that lie may just be an innocent little whopper, I bet you'd be singing a much different tune if you were sentenced to life in prison based on testimony equally perjured before a court of law about a violent crime. Perjury is perjury is perjury. It doesn't matter if it's during an impeachment, or about whether or not you took it in the ass (literally) while Mindy McCready wiggled in bed waiting for you, or if it's about who pulled the trigger in the botched robbery.

Perjury is a different animal than a whopper, Bill. You're a brillant man, you know this! The idea that anyone would put their hand on the Bible and perjure themselves is just not true. And even if it was an innocent little perjury, it doesn't make it right just because everyone else is doing it.

Mike--Aspen, CO
7:28 PM Apr 21st
 
RoelTorres
After firing Tim Johnson in spring training, Toronto GM Gord Ash said: "The unsettledness and the distractions had become the issue. It had become apparent it wasn't going to work." (quote from Jon Pearlman, Sports Illustrated.)

I don't think anyone disputes that Johnson was fired for his deception. I don't even argue that it was unjustified. I just feel like a lot of time has gone by, and he hasn't been given a chance to redeem himself.
4:53 PM Aug 21st
 
bsol007
I agree with Bill James, that forgiveness and compassion ought to be more regularly available to us all. I'd also suggest that each case ought to be evaluated as idiosyncratic, i.e., as consisting of a fairly unique mix of personal and systemic issues.

I have no idea what the Blue Jay management's thinking was, when they fired Tim Johnson. Given the staggering finances of MLB, a full and candid account of the management's thinking is not likely to be forthcoming. And without it, we are limited in our ability to grasp why this was done.
4:42 PM Aug 16th
 
pquinn
I believe forgiveness is *not* based on being better or worse than someone else. It is not a comparative process at all. Jesus forgave me and I need to forgive others. As others who write better than me say, this is not saying someone should not be accountable or not be punished.
1:34 PM Aug 15th
 
jtbrock333
As a Presbyterian minister, I have to say that this is one of the best essays on public life that I have read in many years. I just wish the church would be forgiving to others as well.
9:14 PM Jul 26th
 
timconnelly
Here's what I'm talking about:

Your own style of communication is seen by many people (myself included) as being very intelligent and very interesting. Yet again and again, you use a "negative campaign" style to criticize ideas you either disagree with or don't get. Now don't get the impression that I don't think you make a better effort to be fair than the political parties. But over the years I've seen you criticize the Hall of Fame process, the Elias Sports Bureau, linear weights and John Dowd in a way that's very akin to politicians criticizing their opponents.

I didn't say negativity is good- I said it works. But sometimes it is good. American Independence wasn't won after presenting a balanced account of how good King George actually was. They used every argument under the sun to stir up people to risk their lives for Independence using a negative campaign.
Dr. King's success in the civil rights movement was actually helped by hate groups who threatened to burn down cities if their demands weren't met pronto. Negativity inspires people to action far more than the positive stuff in many, many cases. People will go to the ends of the earth to get back at someone who hurt them.

I don't want to get too far away from the fact that I think your original article was awesome!









5:48 PM Jul 24th
 
bjames
I think it is phenomenal that anyone would suppose that because a few thousand "professional" people believe something, therefore it is unlikely to be false. The entire history of the human race is that vast numbers of people buy into ideas which are self-evidently false. Two generations ago hundreds of millions of Americans believed that blacks were genetically inferior. For thousands of years men believed that women were not intelligent enough to be doctors or lawyers. For tens of thousands of years mankind supposed that the world was flat.

The world is billions of times more complicated than our minds, and because this is true, "explanations" of the world which are paper-thin fictions have always dominated and will always dominate belief systems in every field of endeavor, including the sciences. Science textbooks of 50 years ago made vast numbers of statements that anyone would look at now as head-scratching imbecility.

And "negative campaigning almost always works". . .what in the WORLD are you talking about? Negative campaigning works about as well as a concrete wet suit.
12:12 AM Jul 24th
 
tangotiger
I am a legal permanent resident (LPR, aka Green Card), as I am Canadian living in USA. It took me over 3 years to become LPR, and I was fast-tracked because of my particular skillset. And I was worrying for a long time, because if my company were to fire me, I'd have no legal standing in USA. Now, imagine people who aren't as lucky as I was, who don't have an avenue to USA, and didn't have the good fallback position I had. Also imagine people like Roel, who came here as a minor, and may have become illegal through no fault of his. And then being deported back to a country they don't know.

All to say that those against immigrants, illegal or not, need to walk a mile in their shoes first before yapping about things they know nothing about, other than preserving their own self-interests, which they won via the birth lottery.
11:52 PM Jul 21st
 
RoelTorres
I've tried to stay out of this comment thread (which runs parallel to the Tim Johnson essay comment thread) since this is Bill's essay, not mine.

But I do want to comment on Tom's point about illegal immigration. My mom was an illegal immigrant, and she required legal assistance because the government spent years trying to deport her. So, even though I understand why there are laws in place to regulate immigration, I have a inherently biased sympathy for illegal aliens.
9:51 PM Jul 21st
 
tangotiger
"Let he who has not sinned..."

***

I always call the BBWAA the "The Holy Writers", since they are charged with the moral responsibility to determine the character of someone they may or may not have met when voting in the Hall of Fame. Who are they to judge?

And kudos to Mike Schmidt for admitting a few years ago that he doesn't know what he would do, if he were in the position of ballplayers of a few years ago. He's admitting that he's not any better.

Steve Bartman touched that ball, but he was in a group of fans, (the oblivious) half of which were reaching out for that ball. He's the one who got caught. The big names of today are part of the half that got caught. You single out the biggest name, hope he's the worst person of the lot, and treat him as a pariah.

"Illegal" immigration is the same thing. The only thing different between someone from Latin America and from USA is that Americans won the lottery at birth. Given horrible conditions, you will react just like anyone else.

5:21 PM Jul 21st
 
timconnelly
Attack politics may only work some of the time but negative politics work just about 100% of the time. Why is that?

William Glasser wrote that the human mind works through comparison- that comparison is not just the primary method for making all of our critical choices- it's the only method! If I say Bill is a great writer, I'm comparing him to other, less interesting writers. Sabermetricians don't begin with a blank idea of what might be- they simply open themselves to the realization that there are still facts out there that might provide a deeper insight. So they question the available information in search of more facts. Bill believes Ruth to be a greater player than Wagner- it's not that he's not open to reviewing that accessment if some new, compelling evidence crosses his desk but for the most part, that decision's been made.

Bill made his reputation on negativity. Almost everybody does. If he had written, "here's a statistical formula to prove that the experts were right, batting average is the end all stat, walks don't matter much" he would have bored us to tears. By telling us the experts were wrong, that he was on to a new and better approach to things, he caught our attention. I don't know how many times Bill criticized Elias but part of the charm of being a Bill James fan was you were outside of the major party- you had aligned with an Independent who looked at things differently. That's really no different than Obama saying he's the candidate for change.

It isn't selfish and immature to criticize. It's an important method for drawing out why A is better than B. The problem is, since that's how everybody argues we've reached a point where whovever yells loudest tends to get the most attention. As George Carlin pointed out, certain words get more attention than others. Saying something is a bad idea will never get you as much attention as if you call it stupid.

Bill, your forte is objective reasoning. People like you are not in the majority. When you see people using half truths and whole lies to distort things, it may upset you. I would argue that most people never even catch the errors. And for those people, attack politics work remarkably well.


5:17 PM Jul 21st
 
bokonin
I certainly agree that professional/ automatic self-righteous, in politics or elsewhere, is a turn-off. And I was eagerly waiting a primary candidate who would step in and defend his fellow candidates from idiotic media attacks: I would immediately have given money and written support to that candidate, as I think would a lot of fellow prospective voters, but it never happened. So I'll agree with you there and, like Richie, exit.
11:34 PM Jul 20th
 
Richie
I saw "exaggerate the failings" as basically equivalent to "flame job". Granted that I never saw the "flame job" phrase till today.

To say that a considerable number of people won't subscribe to a party due to its self-righteousness is to leave an implication that remove said self-righteousness, those considerable numbers very well might. Otherwise, if they actually won't in either case, well, then so what either way?

We have 30 GMs, 30 managers, and thousands upon thousands of political operatives. OK, maybe hundreds. But then still hundreds upon hundreds. Yes, I propose that hundreds upon hundreds are much less likely to be all wrong than 30.

I'll grant that political operatives have an incentive to argue that 'what we do works, therefore quick give us money'. But if you're gonna argue they're all wrong and you're right, you've got a burden of proof, beyond saying they're misreading the research and you're hitreading it (baseball humor; punny stuff).

Not that we should delve into that research here. I've succeeded in really really boring myself. Anyone else I've bored, it's your fault for reading this far. I hereby exit stage left.
10:43 PM Jul 20th
 
bjames
1) Nothing that I wrote has anything to do with a "flame job".

2) I certainly did not suggest that there are a large number of people in the middle who would be willing to be Republicans or Democrats. What I said is much nearer to exactly the opposite: that there are a large and growing number of people who are UN-willing to be Republicans or Democrats because of the self-righteousness of both parties.

3) To believe that attack politics works has to work because the professionals wouldn't do it if it didn't work is very much the same as saying that whatever is done by baseball managers or baseball general managers has to be the right thing to do because otherwise why would they do it? The professional low-punchers who have taken control of politics have been misled by an obvious misinterpretation of their own research. They say repeatedly that studies show that negative campaigning works. In reality, what studies show is that negative campaigning works SOMETIMES. But few candidates have been savvy enough to see the difference, so we're in this era where the dominant misunderstanding is that negative campaigning works.

9:35 PM Jul 20th
 
Richie
Bill did not say "flame jobs = exaggeration". I don't find that anywhere in his article. He's saying "Democrats/Republicans do flame jobs on Republicans/Democrats automatically". It doesn't matter who the Democrats/Republicans nominate, the Republicans/Democrats will flame him/her.

The only political aspect of it I differ with is I find naive Bill's assertion of a 'genteel middle', some supposedly-sizeable group of us who will go over to the Democrats or Republicans if one of the two parties just stops with the knee-jerk demonizing of the other. When 110% of political professionals conclude that 'ya know, attack advertising just really works', I figure they have an accurate handle on their business.

Due to professional reasons most of my colleagues are Republicans. They're regular, good-natured people, none of whom hold political jobs, and the politically interested ones learned in turn to hate Bill Clinton, detest Al Gore, and despise John Kerry. We'll see what opinions they form on Barack Obama come September. But I am a pessimist.
7:26 PM Jul 20th
 
bokonin
P.S. To clarify: I could give plus-and-minus discussions of any of this year's Democratic Primary candidates, of Huckabee or Romney, of a decent number of senators or governors, not that I'm about to here. Forget McCain, he's not my point either. But you know enough history, Bill, to know that politics attracts people whose flaws do not need to be exaggerated : no one can actually be Robert Mugabe or Pol Pot in America, because we're a much stronger country than that, but it would be magic if everyone who ran for office was a nobler person.

I am, therefore, only protesting your assumption that flame jobs = exaggeration. It probably causes you to throw away evidence (it doesn't seem likely you could stomach the writing, no matter how evidence-dense, of Bob Somerby or Glenn Greenwald, or even a careful moderate like Hilary Bok). Throwing away evidence is not something you'd do in baseball. Y'know?
2:32 PM Jul 20th
 
bokonin
I agree with most of what you say in favor of forgiveness here -- about Tim Johnson, about Barry Bonds, more likely than not about Al Campanis. But I can tell you and I could never have a productive discussion about (for example) John McCain, and there's a chance that's your fault. I don't have a very high opinion of myself, but I feel free to judge Jeffrey Dahmer (hey, I'm a vegetarian), and to judge Ted Bundy (I interact with a lot of women and never strangle any of them), and I also feel free to note that I've never asked my fellow citizens to give me a fancy house, control of two trillion dollars, and the right to arrest them without trial. Maybe I wouldn't be a very good person if I did have those things -- probably, in fact -- but that's exactly why I would never ask.

A politician's failings are vastly magnified, taking the lives, livelihood, and money of more people than Ted Bundy could have met had he escaped and lived to be 500. If I can't find anything clearly good to say about John McCain (for example) since about 1973, it doesn't mean I'm not looking; I've looked, and I've also watched him eviscerate every good thing he ever arguably said or did. Because power can corrupt. And sure, someone needs to have power. But just because I recognize it shouldn't be me, doesn't mean I should _assume_ virtues in the people more eager to seek it.
1:58 PM Jul 20th
 
wovenstrap
The problem is it's a binary. Disgrace, lose face, punish? Yes. Blackball? No. We have no way of punishing something like this without resorting to the blackball. It's either "keep job until retirement or ordinary incompetence, or blackballed for life." We should be able to modulate these sorts of things better.
10:36 AM Jul 20th
 
timconnelly
In a Course in Miracles the author proposes that forgiveness can be an equally arrogant way of saying "I'm better than you are." I forgive you because I'm such an awesome person.

I'm of the opinion that all of us are on a long journey to a discovery of a more enlightened way. We'll get there when we get there. It's important that we protect ourselves from those who wold hurt us but all forms of condemnation are just a part of that same arrogance: I'm more moral than you are, I'm more honest than you are, I'm more honorable than you are.

The key as I see it is to look at the remarks that a person makes and determine whether they were a slip of the tongue, the result of an ignorant perspective, or part of a concentrated effort to discriminate against a segment of our society. The cure for ignorance is education. Firing somebody for ignorance only compounds the problem.

Forgiveness is a very important step when you have a condemning nature. But far higher than forgiveness is acceptance. People do things because, given their current level of understanding, of maturity, of self-control- that particular action was the one that came out of them. To forgive implies that it was okay to do that. To accept that all of us are where we are at and can't do a single thing to change that until we gain increased knowledge, until we increase our self-control or until we rise above our ignorance.

I think the real prolem in all this is the failure to really believe that people can grow and change, that the mistakes people make, the weaknesses they possess are but temporary spots on a person who is growing wiser and better at his own pace.


7:53 PM Jul 19th
 
Richie
Copied from my comment underneath the original article. Retyping it probably says something unattractive about my heightened sense of self-regard, but let's not go there.


It’s not a matter of personal forgiveness, it’s a question of “Would GM Richie hire Tim Johnson to manage his baseball team?” Probably not. Tim’s particular lie type causes two problems. First, it degrades his ability to motivate ballplayers in the future. If he did so in the past via his great stories, well, obviously that’s not gonna work in the future. Even if he comes up with new true ones, his old false ones are just too memorably false. Any great story he comes up with, listeners are automatically going to wonder about.

That’s the minor reason I probably wouldn’t hire Tim. Perhaps he’s now proving in the Mexican league he can sufficiently motivate ballplayers in some other ways. But a manager is also, in good part working through the public media, supposed to help sell tickets. Because of his memorable lies, I sure don’t see Tim being all that effective there. Again, you hear him say “Joe Shlabotnik has fixed his swing and is gonna help us win ballgames this year. Come watch!”, and instead of thinking “well maybe I’d sure like to think so ya never know”, you automatically remember Tim’s past stories.

So Tim may never again become a major league manager. Yes, too bad. Nor will you, nor will I, nor will dozens of minor league managers and major and minor league coaches who would love to, but will never get that chance. Like the 98% of us who will never rise to the pinnacles of our own professions, to tasks that some of us could indeed handle, but will never get the opportunity to.

Like everyone on this site except that Bill James fellow. His success taunts us all. It’s why I hate him so. grrrr


As to the broader moral issue here, I also vote for all that forgiveness stuff.
12:12 PM Jul 19th
 
RoelTorres
Bill--

Thank you for this. While I'm not convinced that I am deserving of the nice things you say about me, I am nonetheless appreciative. I'm sure that I'll talk to you about it in greater depth over email or in person, as opposed to in this public comments section, but again -- thanks.
11:58 PM Jul 18th
 
 
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