Sorry seems to be the hardest word
In baseball’s ongoing steroids scandal, most of the attention is currently focused on Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens. Yet the responses of these two players — Pettitte’s lengthy explanations and Clemens’ even lengthier denials — are outliers.
When pitchers and catchers reported last week, other players making their first public statements tried to find some sort of middle ground. Milwaukee closer Eric Gagne spoke for the first time since being named in the Mitchell Report. As so many have done since the report was made public, he apologized without specifying what he was apologizing for. Nonetheless, teammate Bill Hall supported him. “Obviously, everybody wants to know the truth,” he said, “But once you get the truth, stop digging.”
I puzzled over that for a while, feeling like I was back in Philosophy 101. “Once you get the truth, stop digging.” What is the truth? And how do we know when we’ve gotten it? Should one ever stop digging? If so, when? Please respond in 500 words or less.
Paul Lo Duca also took advantage of the long weekend to say he was sorry … for something. “You do something wrong in your life and you get away with it, you still have something inside you that burns,” he said. I don’t think he was talking about chicken tikka masala. But what was he talking about? When a reporter asked him for an antecedent, Lo Duca’s response was simply: “Come on, bro. Next question.” It was a standard set by Jason Giambi in 2005, when his steroid use was publicly confirmed. He took “full responsibility”— but for what? He didn’t say, and declined to elaborate. “I’m sorry,” he said, “But I’m trying to go forward now.”
It’s all about moving forward, isn’t it? Baseball’s uniformed participants are pulling a Scarlett O’Hara when it comes to steroids: “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy.” Only unlike Scarlett, they don’t pledge to think about it tomorrow, either. They want to go directly from turning a blind eye to “moving on” without doing any of the necessary work in between.
I know Washington manager Manny Acta spoke for many when he invoked Scarlett’s nemesis-slash-husband, Rhett Butler, saying, “Frankly my dear, I’m ready to talk about something else other than that stuff, because I’m really kind of tired of it.” Bro, I agree. I’m tired of “that stuff” too. But “it” happened, and now we have to deal with it. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have anything to talk about. But we don’t live in a perfect world, so we’d better get used to talking — and get better at apologizing. Because reporters are never going to stop digging, and the first step in dealing with a problem is to name it.
