Bill James Online features a section called “Polls and Arguments” where readers are asked to make some tough decisions and provide  opinions on questions that can be thought-provoking, and sometimes  maybe even a little divisive.  One of the questions asked involves the moral character of the people who play the games: “Does it matter to  you if a baseball is a nice person and has decent values?”

A few of the writers here at Bill James Online share their thoughts:

Roel Torres:  No.  Nope.  Doesn’t matter to me.  I don't even know how  you can tell.  I think that’s my main issue – I don’t have any credible basis for judgment.  I don’t break bread with them.  I don’t elbow up to the bar and buy them a round.  I don’t sit in their living  rooms, shooting the breeze.  I don’t know them, I can’t judge them.

How would I possibly know what the values are of Ian Kinsler? Dan Uggla? Edinson Volquez? Joe Nathan? And these are big stars.  Don’t even ask me to render an opinion on a minor contributor like Toronto middle reliever, Jesse Carlson.  (Trust me, I have no opinion on Jesse  Carlson as a human being.)  I don’t know anything about these people, deep down at their core.

I don’t know whether their financial wealth has made these people more generous than the average person, or more selfish.  I don’t know if  their professional good fortune has given them an outsized sense of entitlement, or a greater sense of gratitude.  The vast majority of the players in the majors are moral cyphers to me.  Complete and total mysteries.  I know absolutely nothing about their level of decency and their values.

If you try to judge MLB players on their values, you will always be working off an uneducated opinion.  And that’s dangerous as hell.  Unless you know the players personally, you will be at the mercy of the image the media has crafted for you.  And I’m really not interested in letting the media dictate which players I should root for or not.  I’ll pass, thanks.

Sean: I guess it matters to me in the same way that my dentist's personality matters to me. I'd rather him not be a raging anti-Semite (and I'm pretty sure he's not unless he's taken the Woody Allen self-loathing to an entirely new level), but at the end of the day, I'd settle for a guy who knows how to fix teeth and doesn't touch people inappropriately when they're under the gas. That might just be me. I disagree with Roel in some ways, because I think it is very possible to tell when a player is a terrible person, though determining whether they are "morally righteous" is probably impossible unless they're wearing a Colorado Rockies uniform and NOT Denny Neagle. Of course, I also believe that most baseball players, or people for that matter, can be rather terrible based on how you look at them.

I have expressed my love time and again for A-Rod, Jeff Kent and Barry Bonds, without reservation. Sure, they may be robots, mustachioed racists or whining babies of men, but I know 10 guys on my street who are the same, but can't hit a baseball worth a lick. I don't watch baseball so that kids around the world can have role models; I watch it for my personal entertainment. I think it'd be nearly impossible to enjoy baseball (or any spectator ANYTHING) if I was relying on the participants were held to a higher moral standard. Even televised religious services would be hard to stomach.

I relinquish the floor for now, but the hypocrisy, closeted jealousy and biases that rear their ugly head when we determine who is and is not a nice guy are ridiculous.

Dave Fleming: How could a player’s character or values not matter?

Roel brings up some excellent points: we don’t really know professional athletes, the media can distorts our perceptions, and most baseball players are as anonymous as Jesse Carlson.

But the question isn’t about the Jesse Carlson’s of the world. We don’t know anything about Jesse Carlson: there’s nothing to ponder about, nothing to reflect upon. Ditto for Joe Nathan or Ian Kinsler: they’re tabula rasas, blank slates. You can’t answer a question about ‘values’ by discussing someone of whom we know nothing about.     

This question is about Barry Bonds. It’s about Ty Cobb or Pete Rose or Brett Myers or Joe Jackson. It’s about Dale Murphy or Roberto Clemente or Curt Schilling.

And yeah, we don’t know everything about these men. But they live public lives (as we all do, I suppose). How can we separate their actions on a baseball field from their actions off the baseball field? How do you root for Joe Jackson? How do you ignore Cobb’s racism, his violence? And how do you not applaud the generosity of Clemente, or the courage of Gehrig? How do such things not matter?

More importantly, why shouldn’t they matter? What is gained? Do we enjoy the game more when it exists in a sacred sphere, removed from larger societal measures? Are we better people when we ignore wrong-headed actions? Is that more fun, more interesting? Do we want our team rosters filled with anonymous players, men whose lives are shielded from us? Do we want our heroes and villians to be measured and decided upon solely on the basis of what takes place between the lines?   

I don’t. I think life is far richer when we consider our heroes in their entirety. Ty Cobb is an interesting player because of his past, because of his beliefs. His life shaped his play. Clemente the ballplayer is made richer by the way he lived his life. And our experience in the game is made richer by striving to know and consider and discuss these lives as fully as we are able, with all the humility and tolerance we can muster.

Scott Ham:  Whenever I'm faced with this question, I think about other sports first.  Baseball is obviously a team sport, which gives character a little more leeway. But how do people judge individual sports?  How about golf?  Or tennis?  Or boxing?

It's easy to look past the jerk on the team when there are twenty-four other players to root for.  But how do fans pick which boxer they like?  Everyone loved Mike Tyson when he was storming through the heavyweight division like a bull.  But when Tyson's career took a turn, he spent time in jail, and the crazy started to show, he became more freakshow than purveyor of the sweet science.

We can all appreciate athletes for what they accomplish on the field, but when judging them in individual sports, ultimately it's the feeling we get about them as people that makes us fans.  Should that translate to baseball?  Does it matter to me if a player is a jerk?

Let's look at the reverse.  LaTroy Hawkins pitched for the Yankees earlier this year, a signing I was not happy about.  After a particularly bad outing in spring training, Hawkins cracked a joke at his own expense when most players would have given their media speak.   

I instantly liked the man.  And then he stunk up the season.  When the Yankees traded him to Houston, I felt bad for him, but was glad to see him go.

If I don't want to hang on to a guy because he seems like a good man, why would I trade a good player for being a jerk?  I like to be able to root for a guy I like, much like golf or boxing, but I also want to root for a guy who produces.  I'll take a 900 OPS over personality any day.