Beans, Beans, the Morality Fruit: Can Pitchers Justify Throwing at the Guilty-Adjacent?

In the American League at least, “an eye for an eye” becomes “an eye for a comparably accomplished player’s eye.” Baseball culture decrees that if a pitcher throws at a hitter with the intention of hitting him, that pitcher’s teammate will be hit with a pitch. And not just any teammate, but a teammate of similar star power, or lack thereof. (Being perceived as comparable, however, has not proven sufficient for receiving a comparable salary.)

But baseball culture is better at hiding the truth than creating it; just because there is a consensus that this practice is just, that don’t make it so. (Besides, that rock of ethics-‘an eye for an eye’- is covered by the paper of ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’, and so more precise philosophical scissors are required to cut through the issue.) Consequently, the philosophical and ethical burden on the combatants in the recent slew of beanball wars is not only to show that it is morally acceptable to throw a hard sphere with a velocity of 90 something miles per hour at a fragile body with the intention of hurting, but that it is morally acceptable to throw it at someone who had no part in motivating the apparent need to throw it.

Utilitarians argue that the morally right action is that which increases pleasure and decreases pain, and so as a result, the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham opposed “retributivism ”- the idea that punishment should be dished out as retribution- because it only served to increase the amount of misery in the world, as any hitter with a fastball in his ribs can attest. But Bentham, whose remains remain on display in the lobby of the University College London, covered in wax, was not waxy soft on crime; according to James Rachels, utilitarians primarily used four principles to justify the imposition of punishments despite its consequent increase of misery. But will they justify surrogate beaning?

First, because punishment can provide comfort and gratification to a victim, it can also increase pleasure. This may be true, but your typical sadist might enjoy seeing anyone punished, and since the batter who is the object of retribution is a surrogate and so didn’t deserve the beaning, he is no more justifiably punished for gratification’s sake than the aforementioned anyone or Michael Vick’s puppies.

Utilitarians also argue that punishment or imprisonment may take wrongdoers off the street, thereby preventing future transgressions. Though some hitters may be shell-shocked by a well-placed two seam revenge-ball, more commonly hitting below the Mendoza line is what gets hitters off the basepaths, no longer able to hurt society.

Third, utilitarians point out that punishment deters future crime. In May, Chicago’s Bobby Jenks threw at Texas’ Ian Kinsler, and admitted he did so because he was tired of his Chicago teammates being thrown at. Does the theory work? Kinsler has yet to show remorse for the crime of not being a White Sock, and he has only continued his criminal ways on the Texas roster.

Fourth, the utilitarian argues that punishment may have a rehabilitative or “correctional” effect. In this case, Kinsler, still a Ranger, has not been rehabilitated.

It appears surrogate beaning has no utilitarian benefit, and obviously the surrogate does not deserve to be hit- else he would not be a surrogate, so it is not clear that anything justifies baseball’s cultural practice. (One can infer Youkilis agrees.) Worse, surrogate beaning can only have the effect of turning teammates against each other as Buster Olney claims it did in Texas, according to whom hitters banded together against their real enemy, headhunting teammate Vicente Padilla.

As is so often the case, unfortunately, sociology trumps morality. As Immanuel Kant noted, “when someone who delights in annoying and vexing peace-loving folk receives at last a right good beating, it is certainly an ill, but everyone approves of it and considers it as good in itself even if nothing further results from it.”

And if that comes with peanuts and cracker jack, all the better.

Bentham photo here