The Case For Jack Wilson

Unlike most people, I’m not crazy about the early part of the baseball season. Yes, I know, spring is here and games are being played and life begins anew and all. But at the same time, it’s the season for drastic overreactions, guys hitting .667, and not all of the silliness of spring, the corporate catchphrases and handwringing over the last spot in the bullpen, have been washed away. Baseball in early April is rusty. It’s still baseball, of course, and I’ll happily take it, but you have to work awfully hard to resist seeing patterns everywhere.

Over the course of the past week, the two of the most indelible images of Marinerdom to me, as a televisionless fan, are these:

1. goodness
2. badness

Well, there’s plenty of other badness. But these two in particular make for quite a dichotomy. You're probably aware by now: the story broke slowly over the course of Thursday night and Friday, as it first appeared as an injury, then a benching, then a self-benching. Wilson committed two errors in the same inning, costing Felix Hernandez and the Mariners a win, and then disappeared. Wedge’s story changed, and then Wilson’s story changed. First Wilson was angry, then Wedge was angry, now everyone is smiling with tight lips and lowered eyes. Wilson spent the weekend on the end of the bench, as Wedge decided his fate. Strangely, the story has been somewhat obscured by the Mariners’ seven game losing streak; it’s as if we accept that Wilson’s departure has no real effect on the M’s chances of winning.

However, many feel that this is something that needs to be dealt with immediately. John McGrath certainly takes one position, calling on Jack Zduriencik to fire Wilson on the spot for insubordination. McGrath calls Wilson selfish, saying that "…quitting in the middle of a game is not an option for a major leaguer." He doesn’t buy Wilson’s argument that he didn’t feel like he was helping his team win, saying that decision is entirely up to Wedge.

Jack Wilson is a competitive guy. Most people who play baseball are. It’s not difficult to imagine the frustration for a player like Wilson, who is as brilliant with the glove as he is useless with the bat, when he hurts the team with his defense. I’m sure all of us have shared that frustration at some point in our careers, and needed some time to get away and clear our heads. Imagine being very good at your job, earning accolades, and then get informed that your job description was changing. Imagine getting told that you’d have six weeks at your new position before the auditors come in and inspect your work. Imagine that your work would then fall under glaring public scrutiny.

Perhaps you feel differently. But I find Wilson’s behavior to be, if not wise or helpful, certainly human. The confusion over how to portray the story to the media, with both Wedge and Wilson instinctively trying to cover for each other, only exacerbated the situation. But I fail to see how anger with one’s self, leading to self-removal from a ballgame, hurts a team any more than getting angry at an umpire and getting ejected, or getting caught scuffing a ball, or getting in trouble with the law. Yet these happen constantly and receive forgiveness, and Wilson’s crime results in torches and pitchforks. I find it odd.

I don’t have my copy of Ball Four handy; I lent it to a friend a couple weeks ago. But I remember a passage about Jim Bouton warming up in the bullpen, and knowing with his first warmup pitch that the knuckler wasn’t knuckling that day. He didn’t have it. He wanted to tell his bullpen coach, ask them to put in someone else, someone who gave the team a better chance to win, but he knew it would be suicide. Admitting to be less than 100% is a sin in baseball, even over things a player may not fully be in control of.

McGrath states that it’s Wedge’s job to manage who plays and when, and it’s a pretty simple argument: after all, he’s the manager. But to make another workplace analogy, no employee wants an environment where he or she passively does his or her work, without having any input as to how they’re managed. We don’t tell our bosses what to do, but we do want them to know how we feel, what’s going on. I certainly hope that Mr. McGrath doesn’t accept every editorial revision he gets without an occasional fight. And I don’t buy the tired "Player A is making $X, so he shouldn’t complain" argument. Being wealthy doesn’t make a person less human. This is especially true when our society accepts erratic behavior out of its musicians, actors and other miscellaneous celebrities.
McGrath concludes with this quotation:

But every so often in baseball, maintaining a standard of professionalism supersedes winning. Every so often, making a point is more important than scoring a run.

It’s an interesting sentiment, not because it’s conclusive, but because it’s so open-ended: When does professionalism supersede winning? It didn’t for the Yankees in 1978, nor for the Red Sox in 2004. Is professionalism more valuable for losing teams than winning teams? Do people go out to the ballpark to see polite young men? How much do we care whether a player is "respecting the game"?

These questions are beside the point. By demanding a permanent solution to Wilson, McGrath is insinuating that Wilson’s unprofessionalism is also permanent, or that it will spread to other players. To me, it would seem that if Wilson’s punishment is considered tough but fair, both of these outcomes are avoided. In fact, Wedge’s handling of the situation, since the "unspeakable" comment, has been masterful: let the issue die without seeming to bend or undercut the seriousness of the issue, quietly reinstate Wilson after the end of a series, wash hands. When you concentrate on treating the symptoms, the disease remains: chemistry suffers when teams perform poorly. Scoring runs really does end up being more important than making a point. And if firings are the solution to that problem, Jack Wilson isn’t the only person whose job might be on the line.