Application Journal #4

Baseball - Virtues and Morality

Liz Horgan

Comm 628 Summer 2010

Dr. Kristen Johnson

July 6, 2010
 Baseball is a game of rules, skill and fortune. It is a game that, the more you practice and

the more you play, the better a player can get. Leadership and coaching are important

components that guide the process. I like to think that virtue and morality is a bit like baseball –

it explains how ethics can be taught and learned. Excellence, goodness, can occur, but it is in the

daily practice, the hard work and the interest in the arena that progress is made and skills honed.

Because the decisions we make as to “right” or “wrong” are not fixed but evolve and change

over time and with the situation and the will/desire/mindset/need of the person deciding, it makes

sense that what we do and who we are is in flux, is a process. I concur with our textbook

(Northouse, 2010) that virtues and moral abilities are not innate but evolve, and can be acquired

and learned through practice and are based on experience and knowledge.

Moral abilities are what a moral person demonstrates, such as “virtues of courage,

temperance, generosity, self-control, honesty, sociability, modesty, fairness and justice…(this can

also include) perseverance, public-spiritedness, integrity, truthfulness, fidelity, benevolence and

humility” (p. 382). Moral abilities influence our behaviors and how we act toward others.

How do we learn to care about the impact of our behavior on others? We learn from

leaders in our society, from our experiences, from consequences and from understanding things

from other people’s point of view. As a parent leader, I tried to both model and teach the virtues

of honesty to my children. While it may be a stretch to bring in Heifetz’s perspective on ethical

leadership, I feel his ideas can apply at this micro level; Heifetz suggests that “in a supportive

context, followers can feel safe to confront hard problems…(a leader) assists the follower in

struggling with change and personal growth” (p. 383). I have been socialized to believe through
the teachings I received as a child and through my personal experiences, that “honesty is the best

policy”. This brings me to an example - my son, who was 11 years old at the time, took $20

from his younger sister. My daughter reported the money missing at the same time that my son

seemed surprisingly flush with candy and superhero trading cards. While I silently jumped to the

conclusion that my son had taken the money, I made a point to ask everyone in the family if they

had taken or found $20. When no one affirmed the windfall, I took my son aside and more

forcefully asked if he had taken the money. He confessed under duress, and endured what I

described to him as double consequences. First, for this issue of character, I focused on stealing

and how it was wrong. As a consequence for this behavior, he would have to repay his sister. I

explained to him that, because he also lied about taking the money, the punishment was harsher

than if he had admitted his wrongdoing. He would have to work to pay off his debt to his sister –

in the event he chose to work for me, I would pay him 10 cents an hour. After a miserable and

busy week of manning a lemonade stand and working for me, he was able to pay his sister back

from what he earned and by giving up some of his birthday money. As Northouse (2010) noted,

a breach of honesty is an issue of both conduct and character. His action of taking something

that was not his was stealing, a moral and ethical violation, where it was important to teach him

the consequences of his action. Punishment, in the form of working for the money to repay his

sister, and the shame of having to both apologize for his wrongdoing and of having the family

know of his action, were both done to manage and frame the issue of dishonesty – to penalize the

bad behavior and teach the advantages of honesty. I orchestrated these teachings in the hopes

they would be internalized and that would help facilitate good decision making going forward. It
is hopeful to me that prior ethical lapses do not define character, rather they can be used to teach

and form actions and ultimately build over time to create character.

How does one determine what is morally right or wrong? I believe answers lie in

concepts of fairness, in the Golden Rule, and in the ethics of reciprocity for distributing a benefit

fairly. For an example of ethics and conduct, I look at lines at a concession stand. Typically,

where you’re standing in line for a drink or food at a baseball game, chaos reigns. The person

who is served quickly is the person who is pushy and gets to the front, they tend to be loud and

forcefully demand service. I look at how teenagers, kids, polite patient people are treated at

these times. The concessioners tend to wait on the aggressive patron, ignoring those who have

been playing by the rules and waiting in line for their turn. Fairness, waiting your turn in this

case, has little to do with who is served in the melee, and certain people seem to be consistently

passed over in favor of others. I apply the principle of distributive justice here: to each person an

equal opportunity. When this justice does not occur, when things are unfair, I feel compelled to

act, to speak up. I realize this is a small example, but things start small, and can be used to build

momentum. I hope I model something, teach something, and help myself act in accordance with

my beliefs, values and morals. By starting small, maybe I am practicing so that one day I can be

courageous and stand up for something big as well. So, when I am in line at the concession

stand and a young person is ahead of me and is ignored, when the rep asks me what I want/need,

I loudly tell them the other person was before me and I will wait my turn until he/she is helped. I

can relate to the Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you – and I know

what it feels like to be on the other end of unfair treatment. Putting myself in others shoes makes

me understand how others’ actions can hurt. By speaking up, I attempt to remove the
inequalities and social injustices and end up practicing servant leadership on a small scale. I care

about the impact of my behavior on others.

Ethics plays a significant role in how people in general and I, specifically, deal with

competing values. I used to be a stockbroker, a stretch for me from my work history of advising

and support in marketing and financial planning. I had to face the unrelenting pressure of

competing values which pitted job performance and doing the right/best thing for my clients and

prospects. Specifically, I repeatedly faced the conundrum of pushing an investment

recommendation (where I would be compensated and paid a commission) vs. doing the right

thing for the client by suggesting they use the money I had helped them “find” for investing and

instead pay off their credit card debt. Buying from me and earning 8% (with risk) on an

investment while paying out 20% or more in interest charges was clearly the wrong thing to

encourage people to do. Should I be altruistic or slide on the scale towards ethical egoism? My

sales figures lagged as I acted altruistically, and the danger of being asked to go/being fired was

imminent. It was interesting that my ethical concerns paid off just after I’d quit the job – a big

case I’d been working on came through and paid me a substantial commission – well beyond

what I would have made on the multiple situations that I had advised people where I received no

material benefit. Do the right thing for the right reasons and I believe you will be rewarded

(even if you don’t understand the correlation or the reward). I do feel that it is who I am, who I

have evolved to be as a person (a convergence of both virtuous conduct and character). This

helped me navigate conflicting goals and allowed me find an ethical balance that made sense to

me. I look to baseball for an analogy for this situation: I had just a couple of hits during the

game, yet had to wait to score with a home run in the 9th inning. I needed more runs to win and
to stay in the game, but at least I used what I had, tried, and ended up going out with a great play.

While the ethical piece tied together nicely, I realized I was not cut out for the sales part of the

business and had to rework what I was doing career-wise.

Generally, I think I practice, practice and practice some more in an effort to follow

through on ethical decisions. The world presents barriers, self interest in the short term can color

how we see things, and overall it is not always easy to ‘do the right thing’. I am heartened by the

premise that people can learn to be ethical when presented with ethical and morally supportive

teachings. People who have good character and conduct teachers and role models, who are self

monitoring, who critique their thoughts and actions, who are given consequences and lessons in

applying morals and ethics, can learn and evolve to think and act in “good” ways. However, not

everyone is that fortunate. I believe some people are not, and cannot, be taught concern and

interest for others. As with baseball, not everyone has a coach or teacher, not everyone wants to

learn or wants to put in the time or sees the value of learning and striving to be better. Finally,

not everyone is exposed to values and ethics, just as not everyone knows or cares about baseball.

In the end, for some, there is just hope for innate good, for innate talent.
References:

Northouse, P. G. (2010). Leadership: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.