A philosophical question

Always happy for the chance to mix baseball and philosophy, as per The NY Times Sunday Magazine’s “Ethicist” column.

I coach a youth all-star baseball team. After tryouts, our league director chose the 13 best players for our team, leaving about six kids unselected. Among those is a boy whose father recently died of cancer. The boy is not very good at baseball, about the worst among those who tried out. The community is pressuring the director to “do the right thing” for the boy and a family coping with tragedy. They say some things transcend baseball skill. But what about the better player whose spot he would be taking? What is “the right thing”?

Name Withheld, California

Your community’s desire to respond to a family’s misfortune is admirable, but I’m not persuaded that they have found the best way to do so. This well-intended gesture could be seen as condescending to the boy who is to be helped — it says he can’t succeed on his merits — and unfair to the better player, whose spot on the roster is simply not the community’s to bestow elsewhere.

Assuming this boy isn’t stuck on the end of the bench and actually gets into a game, it will take him about three pitches to realize he’s not good enough to hold his own among the all-stars. It will not be a pleasant moment. His well-wishers may be setting him up for failure, accompanied by the queasy sensation of his not deserving to be there, along with the resentment of teammates who genuinely earned their place on the squad. Some gift.

The community should consider alternatives that will bring this boy more satisfaction and do the other children less harm. Perhaps there’s another way he could be involved with the team: practicing but not playing, for example, or working with the coaches. His benefactors should discuss this with his family and find out what the boy would most enjoy. Excluding my TV set. That, too, is not theirs to give.

UPDATE: The league director put this boy on the all-star team. League rules say that all on the roster must bat, but only nine will play in the field. In his first few games, he never got a hit and did not field. In recent games, he has gotten on base and caught a fly ball. He enjoys playing, and his teammates — and coach — have accepted him.