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Commentary
rupted so that public messages can be given in the name of the leagues. Players are presented as supporters of “Big Brothers,” or “Boy Scouts” and a host of other good causes.
Now, the “higher purpose” is being laid on baseball by new Commissioner Peter Uberroth.
Uberroth comes to baseball from what has been judged successful service with the United States Olympics. Recently, he announced that new “charity elements” have been introduced to baseball through corporate sponsorships of programs. Big Brothers and Big Sisters programs and the Boys’ Clubs of America will, under the new commissioner, become beneficiaries of organized baseball’s attention.
Supplementing the Uberroth effort, some have expressed hope that baseball players may provide the initiative and leadership control to eliminate drug abuse not only among baseball players (for the good of the game), but in the whole of our society. Editors, columnists and some sports writers are calling on baseball players to be role models to be looked up to, thus supplanting the traditional disposition to look up to some baseball players, to look down on others, and to be indifferent to most of them.
Uberroth’s interest in higher purposes is understandable. Promoting such purposes as international understanding, world peace, good sportsmanship and the like are accepted as proper goals for the Olympics. Nothing relative to the Olympics is done simply for the “good of the Olympics.”
Baseball is different. The application of the higher purpose is likely to affect baseball in a manner comparable to that noted by the poet William Stafford, when he wrote the warning line:
“If you purify the pond, the water lilies die.”
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