The ethics of friendship

Of late, I have wondered about the ethics of friendship. I’ve been watching The Wire, a cop /newspaper drama in which people do questionable things for ostensibly noble purposes.

In one episode, a superior officer chastises a patrolman for an unquestionably wrong act against a citizen who honked his horn at a crime scene. Although this sergeant was once a contemporary of the cop, he refused to back him up in this case.

Which leads, in a roundabout way, to Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte.

The relationship between these two athletes has been written about extensively. Clemens and Pettitte are almost joined at the hip. It was Clemens who helped his friend decide to return to the Yankees. No doubt they have had deep conversations over the years.

But Pettitte, a self-proclaimed Christian athlete, must answer to a higher authority in the wake of recent steroid news. In fact, many sports pundits agree it’s Pettitte’s testimony, not Brian McNamee’s, that could pose the greater harm to Clemens’ situation.

The New York Times’ Mireya Navarro, contributed this piece on the Pettitte-Clemens friendship and refers to another athlete-cum-writer considered a pariah by many of his peers:

Jim Bouton, a pitcher and the author of the 1970 baseball memoir, “Ball Four,” said men become “like family and you stick up for each other.”

When his book exposed amphetamine use, heavy drinking and fighting among players, Mr. Bouton was labeled a Benedict Arnold by the baseball establishment, some ex-teammates and the press, but he never considered his book an act of betrayal.

“There are things I didn’t put in the book because I thought they’d violate the players’ confidences too much,” said Mr. Bouton, explaining that his goal had been to share what it was like to be a ballplayer, which he was with the Yankees and the Seattle Pilots. He described the experience as mostly “fun.”

“I did hold back,” he said. “It’s a tell-some book.”