On Evil

In yesterday's post about Jeff Pearlman's mea culpa, I wondered whether he also planned to apologize for calling Barry Bonds "evil" in an interview with Deadspin's Will Leitch back in July. In response, Pearlman posted a comment asking why, exactly, he should offer Bonds an apology. I responded to him in an email. I feel it was a coherent enough email that it was worth rerunning here. What follows has been modified slightly to fit your TV set, but it's essentially what I wrote Pearlman.

I suppose an apology itself is not truly in order. Pearlman's comment about Bonds merely represents his opinion. While I noted that Pearlman's recantation of his May 18th piece about Torre was admirable, columnists, as a rule, probably shouldn't be in the business of issuing apologies left and right lest their opinions ultimately be dismissed out of hand.

And at least as far as writers who have called out Barry Bonds on his character go, Pearlman is probably the last one who needs to actually apologize inasmuch as he has done exhaustive research into the matter for his recent book, talking with no less than 500 folks about what it is that makes Bonds tick. If anyone is qualified to have an opinion on whether Bonds is truly evil, it's Pearlman.

Not that I agree with his assessment, however. When I read Pearlman's comments about Bonds' alleged malevolence, I asked myself two questions: (1) is Barry Bonds truly "evil" in a way that makes sense given the definition of that term?; and (2) even if we suspect that he is, does calling Bonds evil add anything to the discussion? I say no to both questions. Further, I believe that even if you think he's the worst thing to happen to baseball since the Black Sox scandal, calling Barry Bonds evil actually works against the interests of those who purport to care about steroids in baseball.

While I'll grant it's a subjective definition of the term, I am one of those people who is inclined to reserve concepts like "evil" for those who are truly evil in the Hitler/Pol Pot/Al Qaeda/child molester sense of the term, as opposed to unleashing it on simple assholes. In my mind, those who are evil -- and they are thankfully rare -- not only do truly heinous things, but do so knowing just how heinous their acts are. Moreover, they simply don't care, either because they are psychotic or because they place their own particular values and goals above the lives and well-being of others.

I am hard-pressed to describe others -- your garden variety criminals, your drug users, your particularly odious politicians, and that neighbor who won't mow his lawn -- as evil. They may be stupid or ignorant. They may be misguided. They may even be sociopaths, but at some point they are making a judgment, however wrongheaded, that they are doing the right thing for either narrow self-interest or for the wider good. There's an absence of true cold blood inherent in their acts or, at the very least, an element of desperate calculation that compels them to exploit incentives and opportunities that suit their own needs in ways in which harm to others is a byproduct rather than the motivation.

Which brings us back to Bonds. Having read Pearlman's book and countless thousands of other words written about Barry Lamar, I can say there hasn't been a more off-putting man in baseball since the open-and-obvious racists went underground. I think he's generally full of shit. I believe that anyone who has examined the matter in any amount of detail is living in a profound state of denial if they continue to maintain that Bonds didn't use steroids or if, at the very least, they spend all of their time reciting the "there's no proof" mantra. I'm a trial lawyer by trade, and I know first hand that there is rarely 100% proof of anything. But there does come a time, however, when doubts about something cease to be truly reasonable. As the record currently stands, it is almost certain that Bonds broke rules and Bonds broke laws. And, as I said before, Bonds is also a jerk. But none of that makes him evil, even under a more lenient definition of the term than that to which I subscribe.

But if he is a rule breaker and a general nogoodnik, why do I still defend the guy from the attacks of others on occasion? Certainly not for his sake. He is what he is, and doesn't need little old Shyster to protect him (he has others to do that for him). No, I defend him -- or more to the point, criticize his critics -- in an effort to defend intelligent discourse about performance enhancing drugs in baseball.

While I think most of what has been written on the matter constitutes baseless hysteria, I still think that steroids in baseball are an enormously troubling thing, far more so with respect to their negative impact on players' health and the example that their use sets for up-and-coming players as well as kids. These are things that need greater discussion, not less, as almost all of the discussion to this point has been about things like records and the "integrity of the game," which I believe to be nothing more than red herrings. When we spend the vast majority of our effort discussing steroids only as they relate to Barry Bonds and, even worse, attributing them to his "evil" nature, however, we effectively cut off all intelligent discussion about it. The presence of a scapegoat -- even if he is guilty of his own offenses -- tends to prevent us from looking for further wrongdoers. The attribution of conduct to "evil" tends to prevent us from looking for real causes, motivations, and consequences of steroids in baseball. Saying that something or someone is "evil" forecloses further investigation because evil is and always will be inexplicable. What's more to say?

Bonds' actions, on the other hand, as well as the actions of others who have taken performance enhancing drugs, are totally explainable, even if inexcusable, without reference to evil. There were incentives in place that were not unique to Barry Bonds, and there were hordes of people looking the other way -- myself included -- who tacitly or explicitly allowed him and countless others to use PEDs. What's more, there remain consequences of Bonds' steroids use and the use of others that have yet to be addressed and that will persist even after Barry Bonds retires. When we simply chalk it all up to one man's evil, however, we risk forever putting off that discussion.

Ironically, then, the end result of the demonization of Barry Bonds is the trivialization of the very thing -- steroids -- that so many believe make him such a demon in the first place.