The American Pastime & Moral Immunity

There are few things as strange as the survival of baseball. With the waning of attention spans it is surprising that a sport as time consuming as baseball continues being popular. There is just too much of a patience requirement to fulfill the task of sitting in front of a television pitch after pitch for nine innings. At least it seems that way. Of course, things changed when men increased their chances of hitting a ball out of a park not through weight training, but by turning to performance enhancing drugs. I sat through a recent Phillies versus Mets game that ended with a score of something like 13-8. My girlfriend's uncle made small talk throughout the high scoring ordeal, and at some point handed me 3D glasses so that I could marvel at the technological wonder in his living room. No one paid attention to the fact that so many runs were being scored. But most importantly, no one seemed to question it.

This is where I have to introduce the idea of moral immunity. Simply put, moral immunity allows the bending of societal moral fibers because of how engrained and personalized a cultural subject has become. In the case of baseball, fans and athletes alike are able to ignore the wrongness of cheating for nine innings at a time because of how much the sport means to them and what it is associated with. Once the game is over a line between right and wrong becomes clearly established again. At least we hope it does.

So much can be said about the irrational love for sports. Soccer, known as football across the world, is a perfect example. Soccer is a polarizing but global sport that brings out the best and worst in athletes and fans. There is racism, match fixing, diving, violence in the stands, streets, and on the pitch, and a trading system of players and contracts that is simply confusing. But for all the global talk regarding soccer it has yet to catch on in America. As a demonstration of stubbornness we continue to call it soccer while nurturing our own football. It is a testament to the feeling of isolated uniqueness as a geopolitical and cultural entity that football has become the most popular sport in the U.S. Football, the American brand of it, is where we separate ourselves from the rest of the sports world, and as a demonstration of our rebelliousness we have even hijacked the name of the most popular sport on the planet.

We overlook the fact that there are few instances in which a foot comes into contact with a ball in American football, and we overlook the billions of soccer fans across the world, many of whom may have no idea what American football is. How many people do you know that think the Superbowl is the most watched sporting event on the planet?

It is this irrationality and American identity that allows us to grant baseball the moral immunity needed to continue being popular despite the amount of illegal activity that takes place within it. Even if it has been dethroned as the American pastime it only needs to remind you of its long history and evolution. This is enough to make it very difficult for some to turn their backs on the sport. But it is the moral immunity and the message it sends that we should be wary of. Certain institutions seem impossible to bring down, no matter how egregious their acts may be. The survival of Wall Street and financial institutions that did not play by the rules has many coded messages that translate into shrugs. We shrug when institutions and entities that define American success commit crimes and pass moral boundaries, but come down hard on others that would not face a fall from grace.

This leads to questions regarding American society as a whole: How far does moral immunity go? To whom or what does moral immunity apply? These questions can lead to answers that clarify the social, racial, and economic hierarchies that are at play in American society today. Your love for a sport my reveal many things, including a moral flexibility that others call hypocrisy.  

- Alex Moran (@MoonbeanMarcos)