I realize that our readers span every continent except Antarctica (and we’re working on that) and that my discussion of the distinctly homegrown sport of baseball may be regarded by some as arcane, trivial, or tedious. Well, that never stopped me from talking baseball before, so here it comes.

Tastes differ, but one truism that relates to all sports, especially baseball, is that competition is a microcosm of life in general. Last Wednesday’s game between the New York Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays provided a fascinating ethics case history and set the stage for an intriguing debate among players, managers, pundits, and fans.

Here’s what happened: In the ninth inning of the game, Yankees player Alex “A-Rod” Rodriguez was the runner on first base when the batter hit a high pop, an easy out that should have ended the inning. But when Rodriguez ran behind the third baseman, who had positioned himself to catch the ball, Rodriquez shouted something.

Rodriguez claims he shouted “Ha!” The third baseman alleges Rodriguez shouted “Mine!” In any event, the third baseman was distracted, perhaps thinking another defensive player was calling for the ball, and bailed on the pop-up, letting it drop to the infield for a run-scoring single.

The Blue Jays were steaming. Manager John Gibbons protested to the umpire, criticizing the shout as a “bush-league” tactic.

The umpire let the play stand. While there is a rule stating that a runner cannot interfere with a player, the rule (7.08.b, to be precise) generally is interpreted to refer to physical contact, but there is nothing written down that says interference must involve physical contact.

So — and I assume you knew this was coming — the disputed play became a question of ethics. Sports Illustrated concluded that many felt “A-Rod’s utterance went over the sport’s unwritten ethical line.”

Did it? Whether Rodriguez crossed that line was unclear to Yankees brass. Yankees manager Joe Torre said the shout was “inappropriate,” while general manager Brian Cashman did not see that Rodriguez did anything wrong.

Similar uncertainly echoed throughout Major League Baseball. Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen, a former all-star shortstop, said: “Why not do it? You have to do everything to win games.” Seattle Mariners first baseman Richie Sexson, though, cited the “unwritten rule” theory: “You just don’t do it.”

Tim McCarver, a former major-league catcher who broadcasts for Fox TV, was disarmingly honest in his struggle to articulate the difference between fair and foul: “If I could explain it clearly, there would be no fine line,” he told the New York Times. “You just have to be there. That’s how fine the line is.”

Why the confusion? It has less to do with interpretation of the rule book and more with the fact that deception and distraction are tolerated, if not celebrated, in baseball. Faking a steal attempt to distract the infielder or pitcher is considered smart and aggressive. Stealing the catcher’s signals if you’re a runner on second base will win you praise for your sharp eyes. On a personal level, my one and only athletic triumph as a baseball catcher was when a throw to home from the outfield sailed over my head but the incoming runner didn’t see it. I pretended to have the ball in my mitt and the runner tried to slide around me and in the process missed contacting the plate. In the interim, the third baseman retrieved the ball and tagged the runner out.

(Translation for our readers from Europe: What I did was not cricket, but didn’t cross the invisible line and — I can’t help but thinking in feverish, decades-long self-congratulation — was heads-up baseball!)

The larger point here isn’t so much related to the problems of bad behavior and borderline criminality regularly featured in the sports pages; it’s about the fine line between heads-up competitiveness and taking unethical advantage, something we struggle with in any enterprise.

For example, one of my favorite stories from the news business concerns the legendary Don Hewitt, the retired executive producer of CBS’s “60 Minutes.” Early in his career at the network, he was assigned to cover an historic visit by Nikita Khrushchev to a farm community in Iowa. Hewitt hired the town’s former police chief as a driver, guaranteeing him access to just about any place they wanted to go and giving the CBS crew a distinct advantage over rival NBC. But to prepare for contingencies when the ex-police chief wasn’t around, Hewitt had the chief appoint him as an “honorary sheriff,” a not-uncommon informal honor in those parts at those times.

The next day, sporting his new badge and Stetson hat, Hewitt wandered over to the NBC remote truck. “Morning, boys,” he said. “What’s going on?” And the NBC crew told him exactly what was going on, right down to the placement of their “secret” cameras.

NBC executives, of course, were livid and complained about Hewitt impersonating a police officer. “I’m not impersonating anything,” Hewitt countered. “I’m an honorary sheriff and I’ve got the hat and badge to prove it.”

My heart tells me that what Hewitt did was a stroke of genius in the rough and tumble of daily journalism. My head, though, tells me that even though he was an honorary sheriff and had the hat and badge to prove it, he crossed the line because even a technically defensible pretext of being a law enforcement officer opens the door to widespread abuse, and reporters can’t be in the truth business if they make a habit of such deception.

So while at heart level I may have some admiration for an aggressive distraction on the base paths, in the final analysis I think what A-Rod did was wrong. It crosses the invisible, unwritten line between unsettling the competition and actively interfering with them. Left unchecked, such behavior would cause the game to devolve into a concert of disruption, deception, and dirty tricks.

Unwritten rules and invisible lines are important because they use collective wisdom to fill in the gaps that the rule books — even the gigantic ones like Major League Baseball’s or the Federal Tax Code — can’t cover.

At least that’s what I think. What’s your opinion? Do you think Rodriguez crossed the line? Do you have examples from your profession that illustrate the same concept? If I collect enough responses, perhaps I’ll be able to summarize them in a future issue.

©2007 Institute for Global Ethics

“The ruling is clearly a very important setback in the ability to eliminate discriminatory pay. It puts people in a terrible bind. On one hand, it requires individuals to file a complaint within 180 days of being concerned that their pay may be discriminatory in nature. But having to file that quickly could be counterproductive because people might still be trying to make sure that there really is discrimination and because they still might be trying to work things out in a conciliatory way.”

– Marcia Greenberger, a co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, speaking to the New York Times about last week’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling sharply proscribing the right of people to sue their employers for discrimination in pay

DENVER
A man infected with an extremely dangerous, drug-resistant form of tuberculosis (TB) ignited a fierce ethics debate last week after he ignored the request of health authorities and traveled by plane from Europe to the United States, exposing hundreds of people in the process.

Andrew Speaker, a personal-injury lawyer from Atlanta, left for his wedding and honeymoon in Europe knowing he had a form of TB, but exactly what sort of official warning or advice against travel he received was unclear as of late last week, reports ABC News.

But when in Rome, according to a timeline of events from the Los Angeles Times, Speaker was informed that he was infected with a deadly and drug-resistant strain of the illness and was advised to check himself into a hospital. Speaker, who said he was afraid of dying in Rome, decided to ignore the advice and take a circuitous route back to the United States, where he could receive specialized treatment at a hospital in Denver.

People who sat near Speaker during his travels are undergoing testing for TB, but health experts do not anticipate a widespread outbreak of the disease, according to a report from the Washington Post.

Speaker says he does not believe his travels endangered others and regrets “any grief or pain that I caused anyone.”

It does not appear that he broke any laws by traveling. He is now in isolation in a Denver hospital.

The incident has focused attention not only on the individual actions of Speaker and the apparent lapses in national and global health and security systems, but also on what the Associated Press terms the “ethics of illness debate.”

In an analysis of the incident, AP reporter David Crary writes: “Maybe Andrew Speaker, flying abroad despite a dangerous strain of tuberculosis, took things too far. But many people push the limits by staying active when they’re sick. Depending on circumstances, the choice can be seen as laudable, inconsiderate — or downright criminal.

“At the office, coughing and sneezing workaholics might earn a thank you from a boss for their dedication, but dirty looks from co-workers worried about catching the bug. Athletes who compete while sick are sometimes praised for grit, but may risk infecting teammates,” Crary continues.

WASHINGTON
The U.S. Education Department released proposed rules last week that would tighten restrictions on relations between student-loan lenders and universities.

According to the New York Times, the 225-page proposal would ban any benefits paid to universities or financial aid officials for recommending a specific lender for a federally guaranteed loan, and would require educators to explain how and why they recommend certain lenders.

The measure comes in response to what critics charge is the department’s lax oversight of the student-loan industry and a recent string of cases in which lending companies have been found to have paid university officials in return for their recommending the lenders or putting them on a favored list of student-loan companies offered to students and parents.

In a coda to one such case, U.S. Senate investigators last week said they found that Ellen Frishberg, a former financial aid director at Johns Hopkins University, accepted at least $133,695 in gifts from eight lending companies, according to a report from UPI — a total more than double the previously disclosed amount.

Frishberg, who built a reputation as a stickler for ethics, defended her actions, saying she had begun consulting with loan agencies after her supervisors turned down her request for a raise and suggested she supplement her income by consulting with lending firms, according to a report in the Baltimore Sun.

In related news, New York State attorney general Andrew Cuomo announced last week that Columbia University has agreed to contribute more than $1 million to a fund to educate high school students and their parents about the workings of student loans, Newsday reports. The New York City cable news network NY1 notes that the agreement, which also involves adhering to new state rules forbidding lender gifts to financial aid officers, comes after a Columbia financial aid officer was fired for having a financial arrangement with a lender.

VARIOUS DATELINES
Three stories involving the ethics of how humans interact with animals made headlines last week:

• Two soft-drink giants, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, agreed to stop funding product research involving animals except when that research is required by law. The International Herald Tribune reports that the firms apparently reacted to pressure from animal rights advocates protesting the use of animals to test taste perception and in some cases to back health claims for products.
• British actor Roger Moore, one of the actors to play James Bond on screen, has signed on as a spokesman advocating a ban on foie gras, a paste made from birds’ livers. According to the Agence France-Presse, Moore sent a letter and DVD to lawmakers decrying the “cruel” process of forcing ducks to eat grain stuffed down their throats, which swells their livers to 10 times their normal size. The northern city of York is preparing to vote on a proposed ban of the delicacy. In the United States, California and Chicago have banned the sale of foie gras, and its production is prohibited in German and Italy, AFP reports.
• An 11-year old boy who killed a thousand-pound boar while hunting on a fenced preserve has become the center of praise and criticism. While Jamieson Stone’s father and hunting companion proudly featured a picture of the boy grinning over the giant carcass on the family website, critics and animal-welfare groups have raised questions about the ethics of letting children hunt, reports ABC News. The group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals dubbed father Mike Stone “Worst Dad in the Country” and suggested that hunting is comparable to animal torture — a predictor of future criminal behavior. But ABC quotes a child psychologist as saying hunting is not a predictor of future criminality, and quotes a National Rifle Association spokesman as saying “mentored hunting” is a safe pastime.

SAN JOSE, Calif.
A new Internet mapping service offered by Google has raised ethics concerns after pedestrian-eye “tours” of streets in several U.S. cities showed some residents in potentially compromising positions.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Google’s new “Street View” creates the image of a seamless walking tour by digitally stitching together images gathered from a special van-mounted camera.

The system, which is in place in parts of Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, and San Francisco, allows the user to see a map of the area, a satellite view, and then drill down to the street-level tour, according to PC World magazine.

Not everyone is expected to be happy about the service, including presumably the man shown entering an adult bookstore, another leaving a strip club, two women sunbathing topless in a park, and a young man scaling a security fence.

In a statement, Google argued that “Street View only features images taken on public property. This imagery is no different from what any person can readily capture or see walking down a street.”

However technology news service CNET notes that Google already has obscured some of the more sensitive street views, such as those of people entering and leaving battered-spouse shelters.

Privacy advocates say they also worry about people being pictured entering Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, fertility clinics, and political venues, reports the London Daily Telegraph.

Google says it will consider requests for removal of images on a case-by-case basis.

SEATTLE
In a crackdown designed to keep the world’s inboxes from being clogged with stock tips and pharmaceutical come-ons, federal authorities last week arrested the Seattle man dubbed the “Spam King.”

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that Robert Soloway, who is accused of making more than $1 million over four years by sending millions of pieces of spam, was indicted on charges including identity theft, money laundering, and mail fraud.

According to court papers cited by the Post-Intelligencer, prosecutors accuse Soloway of firing off about 120 million spam emails to nearly 80,000 addresses over a three-month period using a controversial software program that lets users join a network of zombie computers unknowingly conscripted to send spam via embedded spyware. Such an arrangement offers the original spammer virtual anonymity.

The Reuters news agency reports that authorities recently have stepped up efforts to can spam, which is estimated to comprise three-quarters of all email and frustrate users.

According to an analysis from Forbes, one research firm estimates that the total cost of spam in eaten-up bandwidth and lost productivity for 2007 will top about $45 billion in the United States and $100 billion worldwide.

Adding to the burden of spam is the fact that spammers often hijack the email addresses of legitimate users, resulting in false accusations of authoring the junk email — and sometimes having their legitimate emails blocked by Internet filters — reports the technology news agency ZDNet.

Soloway pleaded not guilty and was ordered held without bail pending another court appearance.

BOSTON
DNA technology is being used to acquit people who are wrongly convicted, but as the Christian Science Monitor reports, what happens to the exonerated after the cell door is opened remains uncharted ethical and legal territory.

The Monitor’s Amada Paulson profiles two inmates, one from Connecticut and the other from Florida, who spent 18 and 24 years respectively in prison for rapes they did not commit.

Connecticut inmate James Tillman received $5 million from the state to help get his life back on track, while Florida lawmakers denied Alan Crotzer’s request for restitution and let a bill die that would have standardized compensation for those wrongly convicted.

Paulson writes: “The cases are typical results of the patchwork of compensation laws in the U.S., say experts. Last month, the 200th person was exonerated due to DNA evidence, but the majority of those released have gotten nothing but an apology — and sometimes not even that.”

Paulson quotes defense attorney Barry Scheck, who is co-director of an institute that uses DNA evidence and other tactics to exonerate the wrongfully convicted, as noting that “we are exonerating people who did not commit crimes, spent two decades in prison or time on death row, and when they get out, there are fewer reentry services for these people than for individuals who actually committed crimes.”

Coming up with a system to handle the needs of the exonerated is “a measure of decency,” Scheck says.

VARIOUS DATELINES
So-called reality television continues to push ethical limits worldwide, according to stories from the international press. Among the leading items:

• Two ethicists from Keele University in Staffordshire, England, have suggested that reality-TV producers should report to an ethics review board. Citing a new version of the program “Big Brother” that will use a house with a bizarre design to “toy with its contestants’ minds,” and a recent incident on the Australian version of the show that involved withholding from a contestant the news of her father’s death, ethicists Daniel Sokol and James Wilson propose that independent committees, composed of producers, broadcasters, academics, and the general public, review reality-TV proposals in much the same way as a university reviews potential lab experiments on humans. “The fact that something is to be broadcast as entertainment does not remove the duty to treat other human beings decently,” they write in an opinion piece for the BBC.
• Time magazine reports that a small Dutch television network is about to launch a new program in a “Dating Game”-style format — only this time the contestants are in need of a kidney transplant and will attempt to convince a terminally ill donor of their respective worthiness. While critics dismiss the show as stunningly tasteless, the BNN Network claims that it is confronting viewers with uncomfortable topics in order to stimulate debate.
• A former NBC producer has sued the network, claiming that she was fired after complaining of ethical lapses in the production of the popular reality series “To Catch a Predator,” which sets up stings to capture alleged pedophiles on-camera. The Hollywood Reporter and the Chicago Sun-Times say the million-dollar suit by Marsha Bartel alleges that producers of the series maintain an unsavory relationship with a “shadowy vigilante organization” and that the alleged pedophiles are encouraged to perform irrationally humiliating acts in order to enhance the comedic effect of the program. NBC has denied Bartel’s claims, according to the Reuters news agency.

From the Pew Research Center:

“Four months after the bipartisan Iraq Study Group proposed a number of new policy options for dealing with the Iraq conflict, these proposals remain broadly popular with the public.

“Solid majorities favor both initiating talks with Iran and Syria to encourage cooperation on Iraq (66%), and trying harder to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (59%). An April 2007 Pew survey finds that opinion on these proposals has changed little since December, when they were first recommended by the panel led by James Baker and Lee Hamiltonà.

“The most contentious recommendation by the Baker-Hamilton commission was that the U.S. should end its support of the Iraqi government if it failed to make substantial progress. A narrow majority (52%) supports this proposal, while 36% are opposed. Opinion on this proposal is also virtually unchanged since Decemberà.

“Of special note with regard to public reactions to the Baker Hamilton proposals is the lack of a partisan division. On no item do Republicans and Democrats take opposing views. Instead, the balance of opinion across party lines is remarkably even. This stands in stark contrast to virtually all other questions about the war in Iraqà.”

“Happiness is not a goal; it is a byproduct.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt (U.S. humanitarian, writer, and wife of U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt, 1884-1962)