Selfish and Stupid

[Elster88]

I am really not looking forward to this discussion again.

No one's forcing me to read it, I know.

It's out of purely morbid fascination that I continue to open this thread.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

i will abandon my hyperbole-filled vitriolic characterization of Piazza's stance in favor of Rotblatt's, which I endorse (mostly). There are probably a couple of hundred ways for a ballplayer to display good character and bad, some of which we'll never know about (like "devoting time and effort and money to charities in secret") and some of which we don't care about. One defense of Piazza I've come across has been "You say he doesn't do A, B, C, or D--but how about E? I know he does E, so Mike's okay with me." This is known as "muddying the waters" and is an effective, if destructive, debating strategy. A.B.C, and D are quite sufficient in and of themselves to cast shadows on his character, if you're willing to go there.

To many of us, character is important only in a positive sense (see the Mookie Wilson thread for abundant evidence of a cheerful and voluntary discussion of a Met's character). To my quasi-scientific mind, though, if it's fair to say that Mookie always smiles, and we love the intangible things Mookie's sweet smile adds to the Mets' organization, then it's fair to point out, for example, that mopiness might be considered a negative. Not a huge negative (I don't really care about mopiness, particularly) but if you're counting Mookie's smile, then mopiness must count as well.

In my opinion, of course.