What Major League Baseball Could Learn from Realtors®

I’m assuming many of you have watched at least some of the MLB playoffs this year.  For some reason something has struck me this year that never has quite so obviously in the past, and that is the fact that players are heavily rewarded for keeping their mouths shut, effectively encouraging sins of omission of material information.  If consumers or real estate agents followed this example when selling their homes, they’d be setting themselves up for big-time lawsuits and, in the case of agents, destroyed professional reputations.  It is not often the real estate industry can take the moral high ground, so let’s explore this a bit…

There are many examples I could cite, but let’s look at a couple.  In the White Sox ALCS series against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (or whatever they are called these days), A.J. Pierzynski committed catcher’s interference when a batter’s bat hit his glove before contacting the ball at a crucial point late in the game.  The runner initially hesitated to protest, continued to run to first, and was barely thrown out.  A.J. kept his mouth shut, later admitting that they “caught a break” on that one.  In Sunday night’s game 2 of the World Series, Jermaine Dye of the Sox, with two men on, a 3-2 count and two outs, was awarded first base when the ump presumed the high and tight fastball hit his forearm (after seeing an apparent grimace on Dye’s face).  Subsequent replays show the ball almost certainly hit his bat, not his arm.  As most of you know, the next batter, Paul Konerko, proceeded to step up to the plate and launch a grand slam over the left field wall, helping propel the Sox to another late inning victory. 

Unlike baseball (aka “America’s Game”), real estate has built-in protections encouraging honest and full disclosure in transactions, and buyers can take comfort in the fact that there are incentives in place encouraging honest and fair play.  Why can’t baseball be more like that?  Or like golf, which doesn’t even have umpires yet stories abound of players self imposing penalties, even disqualifying themselves, for minor offenses nobody could ever possibly know about? 

What if the ump said to Dye, “son, did that one get you or not”?  Or asked A.J. if his glove hit the bat as the hitter alleged?  How would the players respond?  It might depend upon the consequences, as many things do in life.  What if player’s reputation could be irreparably damaged in the court of public opinion for compromising the spirit of fair play by lying, as opposed to being elevated to veritable hero status for pulling it off?  I find it fascinating that even the announcers are complicit in this.  The very idea of a player telling the ump what REALLY happened is too foreign a thought to even deserve mention.

I wonder how effective we are in explaining the subtle distinction to our kids that it is not your responsibility to play by the rules in a baseball game (as long as you don’t get caught), but that doesn’t apply in real life, where you really should.  By the way, remember to be careful as many of you out there may be unwittingly administering steroids to yourself, as we all know from the BALCO scandal, leaked grand jury testimony and congressional hearings how easy that is to do…

Maybe someone should send Bud Selig a copy of the Realtors® Code of Ethics…

Gary Beasley