Spring is here and the boys of summer are undergoing the
ritual of spring training. See this old, yellowed newspaper clipping? Not sure
why I kept it all these years. It’s about Al Worthington, a pitcher whose
career started in 1953 with the New York Giants. He played for half a dozen
teams and was considered the Twins’ first great closer.
In 1960, Worthington was traded to the White Sox after
complaining his team was breaking rules by stealing the other teams’ signs. There,
he witnessed an elaborate scheme. Chicago’s pitching coach hid in the outfield
scoreboard where he could see catchers signal opposing pitchers.
Using scoreboard lights, he signaled batters. Blinking lights
meant a breaking ball. A solid light forecasted fastballs. The practice was illegal
and too much for the deeply principled Worthington. He threatened to quit if
that “unethical” behavior continued.
Worthington pitched only four more games before the Sox demoted
him to the minors. He had brief stays in Cincinnati and Minnesota before his “all-too-honest”
baseball career ended.
Baseball is just a game. Don’t you wish those politicians
who play games with our lives would be as honest as Al Worthington? His story
sounds odd today. The nation’s foundational myth tells of a young George
Washington, who, when asked who chopped down his father’s favorite cherry tree,
confessed, “I cannot tell a lie.” It too sounds odd by today’s standards.
Wouldn’t America be great again if its leaders reacted to
dishonesty in government the way Al Worthington did in baseball? Wouldn’t it be better if members of his own
party would put the country ahead of a President who says, “Well, I try. I
always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth.”
Clearly, the truth isn’t all it was once cracked up to be.
There was a time when we the people could agree on facts even when they led us
to different opinions. Jesus’s timeless question, “What is truth,” has become complicated.
Jesus may have assumed the ultimate goal of thoughtful people was to find
truth.
“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free,”
is just some of that old-time religion that is not good enough for a lot of
folks anymore.
It started with the 24/7 news cycle. Prior to that
development, trustworthy newscasters like Cronkite, Murrow, Huntley and Brinkley
were allotted just thirty minutes each evening to give us the facts. We trusted
them and used those facts to develop our opinions, to decide how to vote.
Then in 1980, CNN became the first network to give us the
news 24 hours a day. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes didn’t like the way CNN
reported the news. They built a conservative competitor, Fox. Radio stations
found they could make more money if rock and roll disc jockeys were replaced with
talk radio dominated by prevaricators like Rush Limbaugh and felons like Gordon
Liddy and Oliver North.
Some blame FOX, others MSNBC. One thing is true. Neither can
fill 24 hours with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and
keep people watching. Networks are built around the willingness of talking
heads to spend hours saying anything. Half-baked opinions and falsehoods pass
for facts. Facts are increasingly unimportant, inconvenient science ignored and
denigrated, history revised, statistics and data disregarded.
The more outrageous guests are willing to be, the more often
they are invited back.
Unlike Al Worthington who once sacrificed a major league
baseball career to the truth, careers are now enhanced by not telling it. The
truth is a relic, a part of museum displays of what our country once was.
No one needs to steal signals anymore. Each side hires its
own umpires. Strikes can be called balls, balls can be called strikes. Whatever
one’s own team needs at the moment is upheld as an alternative to what was once
considered the truth. Alternative facts form alternative universes. We each go
off to live in our own.
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