Little Shay and Not Playing to Win
A classmate forwarded this to me. As author of Playing to Win, I am strangely compelled to post it.
What would you do?.....you make the choice. Don't look for a punch line, there isn't one. Read it anyway. My question is: Would you have made the same choice?
At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question: "When not interfered with by outside influences, everything nature does is done with perfection. Yet my son, Shay, cannot learn things as other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is the natural order of things in my son?"
The audience was stilled by the query.
The father continued. "I believe, that when a child like Shay, physicall y and men tally handicapped comes into the world, an opportunity to realize true human nature presents itself, and it comes in the way other people treat that child."Then he told the following story:
Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, "Do you think they'll let me play?" Shay's father knew that most of the boys would not want someone like Shay on their team, but the father also understood that if his son were allowed to play, it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging and some confidence to be accepted by others in spite of his handicaps.
Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked (not expecting much) if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance and said, "We're losing by six runs and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team and we'll try to put him in to bat in the ninth inning."
Shay struggled over to the team's bench and, with a broad smile, put on
a team shirt. His Fa ther ;watched with a small tear in his eye and warmth in his heart. The boys saw the father's joy at his son being accepted.. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the right field. Even though no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be in the game and on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team scored again. Now, with two outs and the bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base and Shay was scheduled to be next at bat.At this juncture, do they let Shay bat and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball.
However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher, recognizing that the other team was putting winning aside for this moment in Shay's life, moved in a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly towards Shay. As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball right back to the pitcher.
The game would now be over. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could have easily thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have been the end of the game.
Instead, the pitcher threw the ball right over the first baseman's head, out of reach of all team mates. Everyone from the stands and both teams started yelling, "Shay, run to f
irst! Run to first!" Neve r in his life had Shay ever run that far, but he made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!" Catching his breath, Shay awkwardly ran towards second, gleaming and struggling to make it to the base. By the time Shay rounded towards second base, the right fielder had the ball ... the smallest guy on their team who now had his first chance to be the hero for his team. He could have thrown the ball to the second-baseman for the tag, but he understood the pitcher's intentions so he, too, intentionally threw the ball high and far over the third-baseman's head. Shay ran toward third base deliriously as the runners ahead of him circled the bases toward home.
All were screaming, "Shay, Shay, Shay, all the Way Shay"
Shay reached third base because the opposing shortstop ran to help him
by turning him in the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third! Shay, run to third!"As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams, and the spectators, were on their feet screaming, "Shay, run home! Run home!" Shay ran to home, stepped on the plate, and was cheered as the hero who hit the grand slam and won the game for his team.
"That day", said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, "the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of true love and humanity into this world".
Shay didn't make it to another summer. He died that winter, having never forgotten being the hero and making his father so happy, and coming home and seeing his Mother tearfully embrace her little hero of the day!
--Sirlin
February 16th, 2008 at 5:04 am
I’ve heard this story before.
I think it’s a solid example of playing for fun, in a casual setting. In a tournament or big-league game, nobody would dream of putting Shay on bat, and even if they did, the pitcher has an obligation to strike him out, hard and fast. At that point, it’s about playing to win.
Still, you can’t play to win all the time, and you can’t play for fun all the time. What the pitcher did is the equivelent of setting his handicap to Max and using only the Jab button. The objectivist in me says that Shay didn’t earn the win, and that giving it to him like that is immoral, according to Rand. Then again, maybe Shay will achieve now that he’s got a taste for it, and the idea has been put into his mind that he can do it. Do you think that serves a greater good?
February 16th, 2008 at 5:09 am
That’s beautiful.
Everybody was a winner that game.
February 16th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Disabling some rules so that people who are not as good can play with ones who are better is an incredibly nice and overlooked feature in my opinion.
February 16th, 2008 at 6:27 am
[…] Sirlin.net â?? Your source of shocking insights on game design wrote an interesting post today on Little Shay and Not Playing to WinHere’s a quick excerpt A classmate forwarded this to me. As author of Playing to Win, I am strangely compelled to post it. What would you do?…..you make the choice. Don’t look for a punch line, there isn’t one. Read it anyway. My question is: Would you have made the same choice? At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled children, the father of one of the students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he of […]
February 16th, 2008 at 6:31 am
I hate to be a thread shitter, but that story has been altered from it’s original form, and possibly was made up in it’s original form.
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/chush.asp
February 16th, 2008 at 7:06 am
I figured that was a possibility, but I honestly don’t care if the story is true or not. It brings up an interesting philosophical question either way.
I think once Shay is in the game at all, the usual purpose behind “Playing to Win” has been completely eliminated. The point of PTW is self-improvement, and exhibiting the abilities you’ve honed. What does it prove if you beat a disabled person? Nothing. So unless a lot is riding on the outcome of this particular game I don’t think it’s scrubby to let him “win” given that he’s on the field at all.
Yet after I typed that, snopes brings up an interesting counterpoint:
“Can a disabled child hit a baseball as well as a perfectly-abled one? No. But can that same child learn to work within his disabilities to the point of achieving real accomplishments he can take honest pride in? Absolutely. And this beats all the pity-driven home runs in the world.
Said the father in the story, ‘I believe that when God brings a child like this into the world the perfection that he seeks is in the way people react to this child.’ This story counsels that ‘perfection’ be one of pity and dismissal of the actual person. And that can’t be right.”
February 16th, 2008 at 7:06 am
Things like this happen on a lesser scale all the time.
Hell when I play fighting games against newbs I purposely go easy on them and try to teach them fundamentals instead of immediately tick-throwing them to death.
February 16th, 2008 at 7:13 am
I would have let him bat after saying he could; it’d be mean not to. But if I were the pitcher I wouldn’t have purposely missed the first baseman. The kid got to do what he wanted, which was to play.
February 16th, 2008 at 7:43 am
In poker, the player who wins the most showdowns is often a player that looses money because he isn’t folding enough.
Really, it all comes down to what winning is.
February 16th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Someone on here said that this was a classic case of playing for fun, but that’s only looking at the baseball game. One could say that on that day, all of the people present were playing to win at something much bigger.
February 16th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
I have to say I find it pretentious to talk about morality in a story about children. Kids don’t act with moral or immoral intentions, and they certainly don’t think about whether a seemingly “good” act might actually be “bad”. Children are inherently both compassionate and cruel. In this story the kids were compassionate, but why? Allowing Shay to play was simple enough. They were probably going to lose anyway, so letting the handicapped kid bat once at the end of the game wasn’t a big deal. The pitcher is the only boy who makes a deliberate effort to let Shay have his moment, and whatever his motivations, it’s unlikely he did so out of any true moral understanding of the situation. The rest of team is almost certainly just mimicking the pitcher. So if the if the victory here was to have a heart and let the kid have his day, were the other boys playing to win? No, but they ended up winning anyway.
February 16th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Ayn Rand would have beaned the kid with a fastball then kicked him as he rolled around in pain.
February 16th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
Erik McLennan nailed it. In a situation like this it’s fallacious to look at “Playing to Win” as it pertains to the game in a vacuum, because clearly the game is part of a larger ‘game’, so to speak, which supercedes it in importance.
February 16th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
Shay’s team made the logical decision since the opposing team took pity and allowed Shay to win. Even though they couldn’t have known that decision would make the difference, they would’ve been right in seeing Shay as a sort of pity-trump-card. It was risky, though, and personally I would’ve told Shay’s dad to fuck off.
February 17th, 2008 at 2:20 am
i guess it depends on the circumstances, i mean in a league/tournament/training yourself you play to win
but if you can make someone else happy (such as this case) there is not harm done
February 17th, 2008 at 7:40 am
I’m going to have to agree with Chad here. What kid would feel good about winning a game, knowing that the other team let him win? Aside from the bullying/cheating type?
I don’t like the bringing in Shay; it’s one thing to start the game with Shay in, with some sort of agreement on how to handle him (whether it’s just “we’ll go easy on him” or whatever), it’s another thing to bring him in at the end, no explicit decision of how to handle him, and suddenly get the game thrown.
Also, it may be just for fun, but a baseball game is pretty long, no? I’ll play a game or two of “Crap, wrong settings - well, it’s just for fun”, but only assuming the game in question is on the order of 5 minutes or so. I’m not going to spend an hour or two that way, unless it’s a boardgame and we only notice halfway in that we’ve got the rules wrong. The longer a game is, the less random or ill-defined it can afford to be.
February 17th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Whether the story is true or slightly altered, or if you would have told the dad to piss off, or just have been trying to be nice, I think everyone needs to take a moment to ponder what the definition of a win would be in such a scenario: the actual score of the game, or making sure someone who was born with the odds stacked against him experience compassion, which many people of this world cannot find such a capacity in themselves.
In any moment, not just this baseball game, where a group of people decide to do something for a better purpose, and find that extra special something in themselves, those individuals are all elevated. That is still playing to win.
February 17th, 2008 at 10:31 am
“What kid would feel good about winning a game, knowing that the other team let him win?”
By their letting him win, they showed their willingness to sacrifice for his enjoyment. I think any kid could appreciate that.
It’s not about winning the game, which is the whole point that seems to have been missed. Too bad; the world needs more people in it who understand compassion.
February 17th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
“I’m going to have to agree with Chad here. What kid would feel good about winning a game, knowing that the other team let him win?”
A kid like Shay. Isn’t that obvious?
February 17th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
As Sirlin has had to clarify many many times to those who jump to conclusions, playing to win competitive games isn’t about winning for winning’s sake but about self-improvement and using your ability to win as a measurement for that improvement (alongside other tangible and intangible payoffs).
Compassion–our ability to safely tell that old ghoul Survival-of-the-Fittest to sit down and shut up–is part of what separates humanity from all other living beings. But compassion and pity are not the same. People with disabilities, whether from birth or from accident, should not be scorned, but neither should they be pitied. Both pity and scorn are feelings that refuse to give another person the same degree of human dignity that you afford yourself. You (hopefully) have recognized your limits, so allow others the same priviledge. Recognizing our own limits, after all, is the first step to overcoming them.
And going off on a tangent, but American culture (and many other modern cultures) has long treated achievement and excellence as life requirements instead of the life choices they really are. Remember all the doomsayings from our school years? “Get better grades or you’ll flip burgers your whole life.”, and other quotes to that effect (even though it is quite possible–though difficult in the pervailing culture–to do well for yourself even if you didn’t farm As and Bs back in high school and college). And jobs that need a list of degrees and licenses as long as your arm (even if a person without such certifications–but with the same knowledge and ability–could potentially do the job at the same level of competence).
February 17th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
I like this whole “Playing to Win” == “Playing to Learn and Improve” thread. Sometimes the best way to learn and improve is to teach. I believe compassion (and empathy) are inherent characteristics of conscious honorable people too.
Playing to win aggressively in a tournament setting (where there is no expectation or initial agreement on physical or mental handicaps discernible among competitors being equalized through adjusted scoring and victory assessments) is the typical scenario I think we refer to when seeking that rigorous self-improvement through hard-core gaming. Other scenarios can clearly be beneficial for learning other perspectives, for encouraging others that they can seek their *own* self-improvement at their own pace, that subsets of game-mechanics can be compelling abstractions or areas for emphasis (e.g., “All-Kick Cervantes”? ;) ), that experiences are diverse, and that roles can be updated with dynamic responsiveness to circumstances.
When I play fighting games with friends and co-workers, they are usually blatantly worse than me (even when they know and love whatever particular fighting franchise has earned our selection), often apparently incapable of winning a single round from me (i.e., not even able to “get lucky” after any number of serious battles).
In these situations, where neither of us could have any delusions that we are well-matched, I prefer to let them know that I will hold nothing back for seven fights or until whenever they announce that they’re too frustrated by getting repeatedly trounced. Then I’ll be glad to switch modes to go easy, maybe even agreeing on limits like no supers, specials, unblockables, throws, parries, directions (i.e., only-buttons without movement), only-kicks, etc., or I’ll be glad to enter a full instruction mode (e.g., “Here are all the interesting properties and uses of Guilty Gear’s Tension meter…” or “Let’s employ these conducive circumstances for you to improve the reliability of your fireball execution.”).
Usually several good ways can be found to encourage and instruct, to alleviate pressure or performance anxiety, to bolster confidence and understanding, and to share mutual enjoyment of the experience. I think the goal of these exercises is usually to elevate a potential opponent to a place where you’re both content to remain on equal-footing thereafter. This is why I prefer to conclude play sessions with serious pull-no-punches battles too. Starting and ending with clear emphasis on efficient victory reinforces that ultimate goal, while having a middle relaxed session where they might earn their only wins as I maybe willingly sacrifice myself to demonstrate some of their character’s interesting ring-out opportunities can be gratifying self-improvement for them and a taste of the success that awaits their further progress.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to play first to 63 wins serious straight through. I’m totally stoked to lose badly for hours myself or be taught by willing mentors so that I can improve too. I’d like to keep learning so that I can win more within real competitions. Toggling to a casual mode that helps others learn to at least compete against themselves is rewarding to me too. Run Shay (Forrest?), run! =)
-Pip
February 17th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
The moment I saw the ending, I suspected the story was a fake. Factory’s report only confirms it. The story is just too perfect to be real.
(Yeah, I’m feeling a tad snarky today. Comes from too much Metafilter I guess.)
February 18th, 2008 at 12:59 am
I never expected to see the word “compassion” uttered by so many people on a blog or forum that wasn’t dedicated to humanitarianism or buddhism or what not. Neat.
February 18th, 2008 at 3:34 am
Whether or not the story is real is beside the point in this context.
February 18th, 2008 at 6:41 am
I would feel even worse if someone let me win rather than don’t let me play.
I prefer much more to lose miserably than win that way.
February 18th, 2008 at 7:00 am
@nemesis: You feel that way because you’re not a retarded kid…or are you? Everyone please read Erik McLennan’s post and DredNicolson’s first paragraph and ponder why anything more need be said in this entire thread.
February 19th, 2008 at 2:22 am
I’d like to point out two things:
1) This story is, likely, chain-mail-esque in nature, and therefore brings into question it’s validity/reality.
2) Aside from that, you can imagine this possibly happening in real life.
Now, here’s where Playing to Win and the “Little Shay Theory” come into conflict: If all participants decide to even the field (lobbing a pitch), and are no longer playing to win (or even scrubbing), I think that’s the end of the “game.” I have no problem with it, since there needs to be some lightheartedness and fun in the games we play, but it is in no way Playing to Win or Scrubbing…I think it probably deserves it’s own section in the Sirlin Thought Method.
Sirlin mentioned something in his SMGalaxy review: girlfriend mode.
Casual gaming should be a priority for many - just because the field of play is even doesn’t mean the game results are going to be around 50/50. Chess and Go are games that I will kill my girlfriend at…I’m looking for something to play that won’t make her just give up after about 5 minutes… card games seem to be the best.
February 19th, 2008 at 4:00 am
“In poker, the player who wins the most showdowns is often a player that looses money because he isn’t folding enough.
Really, it all comes down to what winning is. “
Poker is an especially apt example because truly understanding the dynamics of a lot of poker games requires acknowledging that not everyone has the same incentives to play.
The top players play for money. There are probably other motives as well, but the game is so streaky sometimes that anyone playing purely for self-improvement will probably take up a game that won’t randomly screw with them the way poker will.
There are players who play to “prove themselves.” These are usually regarded as egotistical jerks by other poker players, including the best ones. Especially despised are the ones that are so competitive that they talk trash at the table, to the point that the “fish” (who provide most of the money for the winners) get annoyed or intimidated and leave. There’s even a phrase that floats around poker circles, “Don’t tap the glass.” — in other words don’t disturb the fish.
David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth have written some well-known poker books. While most of their advice is mathematical and strategic in nature, there is a section in their texas holdem book about games filled with recreational losing players. Included in their advice: Be friendly. Realize that most recreational players you see aren’t playing at the top of their game (which is already pretty weak) because they usually don’t care. Don’t act like a scary pro, make everyone think you’re just another guy having fun with them so they’ll stay relaxed (and therefore careless) in their playing. Don’t make plays that are excessively mean if they only marginally increase the amount you win from them; often the victim of the play will gear down and try to play better, and you’ve now turned an easy opponent into a difficult one. Are they not playing to win because they don’t do the poker equivalent of “tick throwing newbs to death” in the interest of making more money? No, they’ve just decided that profit = winning and it turns out that not playing their hardest against everyone all the time is often the way to “win” in that regard.
Once at a poker table, I was sitting next to a guy that was playing very poorly. He got lucky and won some pots so of course some other people started grumbling. He told me, “I don’t really care if I win here, I just came to gamble and have a good time.” I told him, “I guess that means you always win.”
February 19th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I apologize in advance for the lengthy post, but I sort of got on a roll, and this kind of thing really does bother me quite a bit…
Call me a cynical, incompassionate jerk but it always upsets me when I see stuff like that; people forfeiting this, that, or the other to someone that is handicapped. My reasons don’t have much to do with “playing to win” but I still just don’t think it’s right.
I guess the best way I could describe my thoughts on this are survival of the fittest combined with a lack of fairness. On the one hand, it’s bad enough that the human race is doomed to a perpetual cease of evolution because of technology (ok, well I suppose we are still evolving, but it is in such a way that we are losing adeptness at things because we no longer need it due to technology… in the extreme, this eventually will lead to everyone being basically formless, who needs bones/muscles/anything when in the future everything can be moved with thoughts alone due to technology? I call that deevolution personally) but similarly people that are born with ailments or defects or whatnot that otherwise would leave them unable to survive (by this I mean naturally, I understand that humans are’t quite the same as animals in nature, but who cares? at the very least, statistically speaking it’s somewhat impossible for us to be the only truly sentient beings on the planet and you don’t see too many other animals ‘going easy’ on the ones born with defects) are being catered to. I just don’t like it because it isn’t natural.
‘But, that’s mean. Shay had never felt that sort of accomplishment in the rest of his whole life. He isn’t like the other boys who can just play the game all day every day and succeed as well as they like.”
Him feeling accomplished in the feat is irrelevant since everyone can feel equally accomplished at different things. Personally, I’d never feel particularly accomplished by winning what was mostly probably an impromptu baseball game against a small group of my peers. On the other hand, if I wrote a piece of software that compiled and did everything I wanted it to do with no display errors or anything on the first try, that would be an IMMENSE accomplishment to me. You may side with the baseball game, that’s just how people are, we’re all different, and that’s why his sense of accomplishment or whatever similar emotion is irrelevant. Which brings me to my next point, fairness.
I can see how someone might say something like, “It would be unfair for these capable boys to play 100% against someone that is handicapped, so what they did was a fair compromise” they might say that, but it doesn’t mean they’d be right. Think of this scenario: given the example I provided of something that would make me feel accomplished, you might guess that I’m not too good at baseball. Well, that would be a pretty accurate guess. I’m probably better than Shay but still probably not nearly as good as a random collection of the types of people that would just get together and play a game of baseball in the park; that is, I like the sport and I’ve played it before, I just am not good at it by any means. Would this same team of boys ever let me win by the same circumstances? Obviously not. Why though? Because it isn’t fair to do that for me because I am capable of winning on my own? You will have to take my word for it, but it’s pretty clear to me that I could never in a million years pull off such a feat. It’s awfully likely that none of the other attending players could have even pulled off that feat; bottom of the ninth game winning grand-slams aren’t things you see particularly often. Being that it’s just as likely for Shay to have done that on his own than for me to do it on my own, why wouldn’t it be acceptable for them to do that for me? I wouldn’t expect them to do it because it wouldn’t be fair.
I think I might’ve previously alluded that I had two reasons for disliking this special treatment, well I thought of another one. Letting this boy win adds to a false sense of the way life really is. You may like to think that we live in a world in which birth defects and things of that nature don’t matter and that with technology and common compassion things like that can be totally overlooked, wrong again. The truth is that we live in a world in which even normal, perfectly capable (or even in many cases superiorly able) job applicants are overlooked because of something as silly as their race or gender. Given that, I’m pretty sure those with mental defects are likely to have it worse. A woman may be guaranteed to make 75% of a man’s wage doing the same job (which, personally I don’t think is that big a deal… not because I’m chauvinistic but because women are more of a liability than men are (bad writing be damned… I don’t mean that women are a liability, I just mean they are MORE so than men) things like pregnency and menstrual cycles are things that would make a woman less capable of performing during those periods that a man doesn’t have to deal with. That’s cool if you disagree, I just like to think logically about things like that) but she can still find work over a very large array of fields.
I’m not saying doing that is never ok. I happen to know a man who is a soccer coach that is UNREASONABLY strict on his somewhat overweight son that plays on his team. The kid isn’t morbidly obese or anything like that, he isn’t even particularly out of shape for his age, he just naturally has a body type that is out of line with the physical expectations of his father. Would I let him or someone like him win? Yes, but not really for his sake to let him feel what it’s like to win, I’d do it to make his Dad happy and maybe give the kid some slack for a change. Of course I wouldn’t make it so obvious because it’s likely that it wouldn’t work on account of his Dad probably noticing it was on purpose, but the main point is in doing that it would help the kid out a little without giving him a skewed sense of reality.
It’s sort of funny, there’s a kid at my school that is probably (I don’t know since I don’t know him personally but I can’t imagine it’s any worse) as close to being mentally capable as possible while still maintaining a mental handicap and he ABSOLUTELY takes advantage of it. Everywhere you see him (and, by the way, you do see him EVERYWHERE on campus) he is always hanging out with and engaging in conversation with some of the more attractive females around campus, who are usually noticably uncomfortable in one way or another. He knows that people will be nice to him because of his condition so he takes advantage of it and uses it to talk to pretty girls. That’s playing to win right there if I’ve ever seen it, more power to him in my opinion. However, on one occasion I was eating dinner with some friends of mine and one of them squirted him in the back of the head from across the way with a small squirt gun he had; not any kind of monstrously drenching super-soaker or anything like that, just the kind that are half the size of an index card that come in 12packs at the dollar store, so I can assure you it didn’t have any serious affect on the victim. We had are middleschool-style teehees and he never found out it was us. After he left, though, the girls he was talking to came over and scolded us for picking on him “because he’s retarded” when in fact we were squirting him because he’s a dork and we’re jealous that he can talk to any hot girl he wants with little or no repercussion, and the only ones treating him in a special way because of his condition were them.
You see what I mean? If true equality and fairness is what is wanted, then no special treatment can be given at all, be it negative or positive. If I’m not allowed to squirt him in the back of the head with water because I think he’s a dork, then you’re not allowed to let him win a baseball game on purpose because you feel sorry for him.
February 19th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
What a wonderful story.
I think how this relates to “Playing to Win” is that there was an extra outcome here that you don’t often see in video games: Win, Lose, or Make Someone Else Fell Good About Themselves.
And that’s no choice at all…
February 20th, 2008 at 12:55 am
I agree 100% with Dave
February 20th, 2008 at 3:11 am
I agree with Dave as well. The short version is, Shay never played Baseball. A normal person with no experience playing the game is more or less guaranteed to lose their first time at bat, or whatever. Shay clearly had never played before, from the story, yet the rules were changed for him, by others, to cause him to win, but those rules were no longer the rules of baseball. In fact, there wasn’t even any sort of acceptance of him by a group of his peers, since they appear to have gone out of their way, without consulting him, to ensure that he was playing by different rules than everyone else on the field.
I guess it’s sort of okay, cause it sounds like Shay was naive enough to think that something positive happened, and possibly physically incapable of playing regular baseball given the way he’s described. Regardless, the story definitely leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:24 am
…you might want to brush up on your evolutionary theory there, Dave. “Survival of the fittest” isn’t a moral proposition. And remember that “fittest” is highly context-dependent, and that efficiency is key. Offloading vital functions to outside technology? Very efficient.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:31 am
It’s a moral proposition if he proposes it as one… morals are kinda subjective like that.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:36 am
Some people sure have very little compassion here. Even though it’s likely a fake story, since they didn’t even give his condition, I’m surprised at some of the opinions expressed here.
Was this kid taking advantage of his condition to win the game? No. He wasn’t involved in the decision to let him win the game at all. It’d be one thing if he was pretending to be mentally and physically handicapped so that he could get an unfair advantage, but he was not.
Was this a real, important game? No. From the description, it seemed like it was just a pick-up game in a park, not the finals of the Little League World Series or something. If the game doesn’t actually involve some sort of reward at the end, such as being ranked higher in the league, it makes no difference whether your team wins or loses. While I never let someone who’s worse than me win at CoD4, Company of Heroes, or any other game if the win actually matters, such as if it’s in ladder play or for a tournament, I have no problem with giving someone a chance to enjoy themselves by not playing at my 100% best for one game.
Lastly, I think your prejudices really show Dave when you start talking about how women deserve to be paid 75% as much as men because their biology allows them to have children. You say that women perform less well because of menstrual cycles and pregnancy, but hell, I bet many men perform less well because they spend half their time ogling women at their jobs and getting involved in sexual harassment problems. Should we do some statistics to find out which gender performs worse on the job and then pay them less? We can add in race and every kind of mental/physical disability too if you want to remove the rest of the biases out there too.
And oddly enough, you say that you would be willing to let a slightly overweight kid win in a soccer game so that his father didn’t get angry at him. Isn’t that just ‘wrong’ as letting Shay win the game?
February 20th, 2008 at 3:40 am
Oops, I guess agree with Wyatt, and not with Dave the way I said earlier (damn wall of text made me skim some of those crazier paragraphs in the middle)… but it doesn’t change what I had to say.
February 20th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Some people will go to great lengths to rationalize a philosophy of incredible selfishness.
“Letting this boy win adds to a false sense of the way life really is.”
Life “really is” whatever we make it. He didn’t get a false sense of what life is; what happened to him didn’t take place in an alternate reality, it happened in real life.
What you mean to say is he got a false sense of how life would be if everyone acted like yourself. Luckily we don’t live in that world.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Well said James
February 20th, 2008 at 8:06 am
Some people will also go to great lengths to deny the reality they see around them. What do you think capitalism is… the most successful economic system ever invented, and a system based on the proposition that everyone is selfish and greedy. And yet, somehow it works, and has actively benefited most of the world. Who needs compasion, it’s just an empty word. I give money to charity for the tax benefits… but for some reason no charity has ever complained… hmmm.
I guess my point is it’s seems so obvious that every day, great things happen, that benefit everyone, and yet they often aren’t done with the specific goal of helping everyone. Why do so many people get hung up on “intentions”, when it’s usually a worthless standard trying to actually measure results.
It’s also why people are pointing out this story is fake. If it didn’t happen, then it’s not a description of how the world really works >.>
February 20th, 2008 at 8:56 am
<i>It’s a moral proposition if he proposes it as one… morals are kinda subjective like that.</i>
It appeared to me that he stated it in a way that implied that it is both a moral proposition and an integral part of the theory of evolution. He also used the word “deevolution”. This isn’t the 19th century; we shouldn’t be getting morality confused with science. Evolution is evolution, a simple fact. It’s not a way of saying some animals are “higher” than others. That’s more 19th century bullshit. I have no problem making the value judgement that we are higher than the other animals - we’re clearly the smartest, no other species has language, real technology, etc - but it’s not because we’re “more evolved”. Considering the relative rates of evolution, the bacteria on you is far “more evolved” than you are. “Devolution” is a meaningless term. As for “survival of the fittest”, really it’s not a very useful way of putting things at all, seeing as it’s pretty much a tautology when you consider fitness is defined in terms of the specific environment, and perhaps more importantly, it is ultimately not individuals that compete but genes. Dave’s ideas about evolution seem strongly reminiscent of Social Darwinism. Plus his reverence of the “natural” is pretty bizarre. Also, for someone pointing out human superiority, his reverence of the “natural” is pretty bizarre. You know what else distinguishes us from the animals? We’re not constantly living on the edge of death! We don’t die of a broken leg! We actually have free time!
<i>And oddly enough, you say that you would be willing to let a slightly overweight kid win in a soccer game so that his father didn’t get angry at him. Isn’t that just ‘wrong’ as letting Shay win the game? </i>
Well, no. From the point of view of the game? Yes. But here we have to take into account that there’s actually something going on outside the game. You’re trying to spare the kid his dad’s anger. But what is accomplished by throwing Shay the game? He feels better? Because he has a false sense of accomplishment? There’s a big difference between trying to protect someone from an external force (even if it is only being shouted at), and just trying to make someone feel better about themselves. Furthermore, I would argue that throwing the game to Shay is in fact cruel, in that it is dishonest and gives him, as I said, a false sense of accomplishment. It’s flat-out deceptive, and furthermore, demeaning. Or is that not what he’s happy about? Is it something else he’s happy about? In contrast, the fat kid probably doesn’t care so much himself whether he wins or not. But it would be nice to let him know beforehand of your plans so he doesn’t get a false idea of what’s going on. I’m not going to say it’s necessarily right - it definitely bugs me - but it’s definitely more right than throwing the game to Shay.
<i>Life “really is” whatever we make it. He didn’t get a false sense of what life is; what happened to him didn’t take place in an alternate reality, it happened in real life.</i>
But how representative is what he sees? How often has he so much as gotten the chance to ask to play baseball? If this is the only time, he’s seen a very non-representative sample.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:24 am
I’ll give you that one… I guess I shouldn’t have responded about Dave, when I wasn’t really paying enough attention to what he said in the first place. Personally, I think “survival of the fittest”, is very much a useful term, and can still describe daily life… but you have to first realize that “fittest” does not refer to “fitness”. That is, physical attributes are no longer superior to mental attributes, especially in the modern business lifestyle… but it’s still quite possible to be more or less successful, and being successful is a valuable skill that people should learn.
I finally read that article about how this story might be false, in the early comments, and it put into words what was making me feel uneasy about this article:
———————–
“The true value of any inspirational tale lies not in its veracity (or lack thereof) but in its ability to move those who read it to improve some facet of themselves. As with many other glurges, we find this story’s premise a poor one, and its message one likely to do more harm than good.
The story of Shaya’s grand slam positions the 18 boys who fooled the disabled child into thinking he’d done something miraculous as great-hearted lads who reached into the depths of their souls and therein found the kindness with which to lavish upon a less-abled youngster. We’re supposed to look up to them and want to be like them. Yet to do that, we’d have to fail to understand the nature of what they did; rather than accept Shaya for who he was, they pretended he wasn’t disabled. Were this story taken as the model for how we should all behave around the less-abled, those struggling with very real physical and mental shortcomings would never get to show off what they can do nor experience the honest praise of admiring teammates and co-workers for their actual contributions, because pity-driven exercises in make-believe would rob them of their every chance to be seen as actual people.
Can a disabled child hit a baseball as well as a perfectly-abled one? No. But can that same child learn to work within his disabilities to the point of achieving real accomplishments he can take honest pride in? Absolutely. And that beats all the pity-driven home runs in the world.
Said the father in the story, “I believe that when God brings a child like this into the world the perfection that he seeks is in the way people react to this child.” This story counsels that “perfection” be one of pity and dismissal of the actual person. And that can’t be right.
—————–
Taken in that light, it’s rather disgusting that within these comments, the majority of people are short-sighted enough to see the story as a positive.
February 20th, 2008 at 9:51 am
“It’s also why people are pointing out this story is fake. If it didn’t happen, then it’s not a description of how the world really works.”
Today while I was waiting for the bus to work a blind man came up to me and asked what bus it was. It turned out he was looking for another bus that was just about to leave. I ran up to the other bus as it was pulling away and knocked on the window to get the bus to stop. It stopped and I helped the blind guy to the door of the bus.
True story.
Now someone here explain to me how I betrayed survival of the fittest by helping a blind person, how I gave him a false sense of reality, how what I did was unfair by giving him a leg up, how I only did it for the tax benefits, how I wouldn’t have done the same if he was morbidly obese, how what happened to him wasn’t representative because the world is full of assholes, etc.
“Some people will also go to great lengths to deny the reality they see around them.”
We define reality with our actions.
When you strip away the pseudo-intellectual rhetoric (capitalism? Rand? natural selection?) what we’re left with is that people in this thread can justify being selfish because other people in the world are also selfish, which is an entirely circular and self-perpetuating argument.
—
The arguments about natural selection betray a fundamental misunderstanding of how natural selection operates. You don’t have to help it along, hence the NATURAL part of the name. It’s always happening regardless of your actions. Natural selection isn’t some person with an agenda that picks out only people with blond hair and blue eyes. The idea that people have to somehow help it out or work according to its will is inane.
Beyond that, natural selection operates by preventing the reproduction of genes, not by changing the scores of baseball games. The idea that throwing a baseball game has ANYTHING to do with natural selection is absurd. The kids didn’t kill Shay or have babies with him. (Things that actually alter the gene pool) I’m curious: how exactly did the results of the baseball game alter the gene pool?
February 20th, 2008 at 10:00 am
“Taken in that light, it’s rather disgusting that within these comments, the majority of people are short-sighted enough to see the story as a positive.”
Explain, without relying on bloated rhetoric, how it is a negative. In particular who was harmed. If your answer is “Shay” please explain in simple concrete terms how he was harmed and how you came to that knowledge. Please provide proof that he was harmed either physically or emotionally. Should be easy.
I suspect you’ll rely on vague handwaving like “it harms society and the advancement of disabled people” and we’ll all laugh and your moronic black & white formulation.
Children like Shay can achieve “real accomplishments”? Name some. Again should be easy. Please be specific.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:09 am
(Sorry for three posts in a row, lol)
I had a retarded Aunt. Guess what? She couldn’t accomplish anything in life because she was severely retarded. She wasn’t going to impress her co-workers because she never had a job. She was never going to be praised for anything she did because she didn’t do anything any better than a small child could. That’s reality.
We aren’t talking about someone who is deaf but can contribute to society in very meaningful ways, or someone who has a bum knee or some shit like that. For all the talk of “real life” it’s incredibly naive to think that every person with disabilities is a “My Left Foot” waiting to happen.
My Aunt had a short life in which she did basically nothing except be cared for. If it made her a little happier to pretend her drawings or singing were good then I don’t see the harm in that; it’s not like she was going to hit her head, become a fully functioning person and realize that we were tricking her. Nor is the case that she was disabled in some ways but had some incredible and genuinely awesome abilities in life.
February 20th, 2008 at 10:12 am
It’s not about Shay… he’s dead, noone cares about him. The problem is that by actively publishing and circulating a story like this, you’re supporting rhetoric based on the idea of complete dismissal of anyone with a physical or mental handicap.
Imagine a kid like Shay, who is often put in situations like this, and the only skill he learns is to rely on his handicap to get “free” wins, and never gets a chance to actually find something he’s good at it. You’ve taken someone with a slight handicap, who probably has the potential to become extremely competitive at some game, even if it’s not baseball, and turned them into someone completely dysfunctional, cause they weren’t even allowed to learn the actual rules of games like baseball, and couldn’t use full understanding of the rules of the world to find something to become good at.
You’re blind man story was also completely idiotic. The blind guy asked you for directions… he acknowledged his handicap, and used you to get around it. In our story, Shay is forced into a situation where’s unable to actually play baseball by the action’s of others. It’s the equivalent of you seeking out any blind guy you see at a busstop, asking which bus they need, taking by the hand, and forcibly leading them onto it. I have a feeling the blind guy wouldn’t be quite as happy to receive the help in that situation…
February 20th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Well it’s nice to know that Shay is dead and no one cares about him. I guess it really didn’t matter that he got to win the game then.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Most of you are totally off base with this.
No pun intended.
February 20th, 2008 at 11:23 am
I think you’re all ignoring a pretty major issue here. Does Shay want you to throw the game? This may seem like a silly question because he doesn’t know, but what would he want? If he’s unable to form an intelligent opinion on it because of his disability, how do you ethically make the choices about how he is going to be treated for him? Shay is a human being, not an object; it’s pretty demeaning to him for you to try to make this sort of decision for him.
I think we have to ask why he wants to play in the first place. After all, if he wasn’t choosing to play, there would be no gain in allowing him to play.
a. He likes the game of baseball - Clearly you should treat him like any other player. He wants to play the game so let him play the real game, not one with arbitrary rules. You’re stealing from him what he wants while pretending to give it to him (and maybe even fooling him, but I don’t think that makes it right) if you do otherwise.
b. He wants to be “normal” - Again, you should treat him like any other player. If he wants to feel like he’s one of you, treat him like one of you. To do otherwise is, again, to deny him what he wants in the first place and possibly deceive him.
c. He wants his father (who is watching) to be proud of him. - This is harder since we don’t know his father, but the better bet is to treat him like any other player. Caring for a disabled person is a lot of work, and I bet it is especially disheartening to not even be able to sit and talk with your child like a normal person. Watching him be babied because of his disability will only enforce to the parent his child’s problems. I am probably mostly speaking out of my personal opinion, but if I were Shay’s father, I’d rather see my son lose the game with the rest of his team than win because of something like that because at least he really would have been a part of the team.
d. Shay wants the excitement of everyone caring about him. - The deception problems remain to an extent, but in this case you should probably let him win (assuming you value his happiness over the game at hand which, given how petty the context, you probably should). People like him are frequently lonely so being cheered for by everyone may be just what he wants.
All in all, I’d say that in most circumstances you should not make accommodations for him, but there is a situation in which it is reasonable. Really, the kids playing have to actually look at Shay as a unique person and judge him and try to decide, as objectively as possible, what he really wants. Of course, I’m assuming that even if you don’t go easy on Shay that you are still going to be nice to him (congratulate him on the effort and generally treat him as an equal member of the team); it’s not like if you don’t go easy on him that you point and laugh and tell him to sit in the corner and drool on himself.
Of course, the actual story is both false and unrealistic, but that hardly matters.
February 20th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
“You’re blind man story was also completely idiotic. The blind guy asked you for directions… he acknowledged his handicap, and used you to get around it.”
Why are you changing my story? Were you there watching me?
The blind guy did not acknowledge his handicap, he asked me which bus I was standing in front of. That’s it. He didn’t ask me to show him the correct bus and he certainly didn’t ask me to stop it from pulling away before he could get on.
—
Your argument is based entirely on your rather vivid imagination. Instead of dealing with the specifics of the incident you ask us to imagine an entirely different incident, one you’ve purposely contructed because the real incident doesn’t work for your logic. Maybe I should imagine a kid who strikes out then commits suicide? Or maybe I should imagine a kid who is encouraged by his fake home run, practices baseball a lot, then becomes the next Babe Ruth?
I asked you to articulate the damage that was done. You could not do that without relying on pure invention. Fail.
The story does not encourage the “complete dismissal of anyone with a physical or mental handicap.” Maybe it does to you, but that’s your defect.
I’m still waiting to hear how throwing a baseball game alters the gene pool. I bet that will require some even more creative imaginations.
February 20th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore, James M. From that quote I used earlier:
“Can a disabled child hit a baseball as well as a perfectly-abled one? No. But can that same child learn to work within his disabilities to the point of achieving real accomplishments he can take honest pride in? Absolutely. And that beats all the pity-driven home runs in the world.”
My question is, why do you see value in a story about a pity-driven home run, rather than wanting to publish an inspiring and meaningful accomplishment? I don’t care about the blind man, or Shay, or any other disabled person either of us could invent. What I do care about is you, and me, and what we can learn from reading this story about Shay. And the things I see that we could learn from this story look to be extremely harmful if anyone tried to base their actions in the real world on them. I’d much rather be genuinely accepting of someone with disabilities, despite their disabilities… not hand them a “pity-driven home run”, and then move with my life as if they didn’t exist, as that’s essentially what all the baseball players in that game did. (<sarcasm>I mean, obviously the result of a game played with a disable person doesn’t count… he’s not a real player, so we don’t need to play to win</sarcasm>)
I still don’t have any clue what you’re talking about regarding the gene pool. I was talking about measuring someone’s success. Make it through college and get a job… you’re an upstanding member of the community and are treated as such; drop out of high school and become a fry cook… you’re a complete loser, and the entire world will treat you as such. And, most important to our discussion here… drop out of high school because noone ever taught you value of working hard because they handed “pity wins” at anything you did all your life, and you will become a loser. It’s exactly the same whether you’re talking about someone who’s disabled or not… games are a powerful tool for teaching, and this particular baseball game taught nothing of value.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:39 am
What you don’t seem to be acknowledging is that the point of the story isn’t about the game at all. The story is about self-sacrifice. It isn’t about giving somebody something out of pity. It’s about a willingness to actually give something from yourself to somebody else because of the emotional impact it would have on somebody.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:18 am
In Playing to Win didn’t Sirlin say that the SF community is missing something of value due to certain cut-throat players who stomp children into the ground are missing from the scene? Also: that teachers lose out because they could be spending time improving? I found it funny that he posted this feel-good story, but is sure has sparked some discussion hasn’t it?
Anyways, if the game were serious they wouldn’t have let Shay play because something would be riding on the game. The whole thing about special people not wanting to be treated special is out the window when that special someone asks / agrees to be inserted into the final inning. The second he was accepted the story obvoiusly became something more about doing something kind for someone else, regardless of all this high-sounding philospohy.
Thinking about the matter, isn’t this why they have weight classes in wrestling and boxing, and normal vs special olympics? You can’t just treat everybody the same all the time.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:47 am
Comment #44 is pretty much the only reason I wasn’t severely bothered by this story. If it were a paraplegic kid with a perfectly working brain I’d wonder why he doesn’t learn to use what he does have.
February 21st, 2008 at 2:50 am
See, the issue is that the kid’s goal wasn’t to become good at baseball. He wasn’t going to be in the MLB, and it would’ve been a different case if it was. The point was that he wanted to connect with others and be praised for actually having done something. How is this difficult to grasp?
February 21st, 2008 at 2:50 am
What you guys are missing is that the story doesn’t specify what disabilities Shay has. It’s quite possible he was quite capable of playing baseball, and yet the rules were changed when he was brought up to bat. Without specifying information like that, the story comes across as a generalization about the way you can treat all disabled people. And, as such, fails horribly.
There was no self-sacrifice here… Shay was forced to play by different rules than anyone else, and noone bothered asking him whether that was appropriate. It’s irrelevant that he seems to have enjoyed it. The story basically tells us that bigotry is okay, because disabled people know they’re “less than” normal people, and will be happy to win with altered rules.
Jin: This is notably different from the ST comments, as those relate to skilled players teaching lesser players rather than just beating them. Neither happened here… Shay wasn’t taught how to play baseball, and he wasn’t crushed under stronger players… he was simply forced to play a game that wasn’t normal baseball, to get him the win… everyone basically accepted that he was a scrub and needed altered rules, and decided to play “at his level”, rather than show him the real game, and give him any opportunity for self-improvement. In my book, that’s called rude, not kind.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:09 am
If this were a major league game, or even any sort of league, there would have been rules against letting a new player not on the team join in the 8th inning. It’s not right to assume that anyone was playing that baseball game to win. At best it was two pickup teams or an outting arranged by the parents. In either case, winning isn’t anyone’s priority; not being bored for the day was.
This is equivalent to playing Mouse Trap with your 6 year old cousin. You’re not playing to win a game of Mouse Trap. You’re probably playing to build some sort of bond with your cousin or just get him to shut up about being bored, or fascinate him, or whatever. Shay’s baseball game had players playing for the same reasons.
In fact, if there had been a 2nd baseman who was the type of kid that always played to win, he would have been looked down upon after throwing Shay out at 3rd. His parents would have said stuff like “winning isn’t everything” and “sometimes winning isn’t worth it if you’re the only one happy” and other phrases that help us build internal decoders for when it’s okay to Play To Win and when we should Play For Fun.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:32 am
Claytus, while they don’t mention a specific condition in the story it is made clear that Shay is suffering from both physical and mental disabilities. Not one or the other.
February 21st, 2008 at 6:03 am
Chad: I understand that, but it doesn’t matter.
To everyone else: good lord, you guys are dense, at least James M makes some good counterpoints, even if I don’t think he quite understood me. To go back to a question he asked:
“Explain, without relying on bloated rhetoric, how it is a negative. In particular who was harmed. If your answer is “Shay” please explain in simple concrete terms how he was harmed and how you came to that knowledge. Please provide proof that he was harmed either physically or emotionally. Should be easy.”
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… I don’t care about Shay, he’s dead. The person “harmed” was James M himself, and all the rest of you who read this story and are now going to go out into the world and try to make things “better” for some random disabled person you meet, by assuming that they’re similar to Shay, instead of doing something like asking them how they’d like to be treated.
I’ve been trying to sort of tiptoe around the subject, but I’ll just come out and say it… if I’m calling out anyone in this thread, it’s Sirlin himself. I think he was incredibly negligent in taking a story with such a shallow, short-sighted, and negative connotation like this, and stating that it’s relevant to his playing to win book, which has a wonderfully positive message about self-improvement, and the way an understanding of competitive gameplay can shape a person’s entire life.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:18 am
Claytus, my only poiny in bringing up Playing to Win was to simply point out the contrasts and similarities between the book by Sirlin and the blog update by him. Here we have a feel-good story against the experience of trully trying to better oneself at something. Playing for fun vs playing to win, the eternal struggle.
Anyways, since I do have something worth saying…
You said: “he was simply forced to play a game that wasn’t normal baseball, to get him the win… everyone basically accepted that he was a scrub and needed altered rules, and decided to play “at his level”, rather than show him the real game, and give him any opportunity for self-improvement. In my book, that’s called rude, not kind. “
1.) He was not forced to play. The story says: “Shay asked, “Do you think they’ll let me play?”"
2.) We can assume from what is said throughout the story that the mental and physical handicaps were obvious. There was no need to guess him a “scrub”.
So my counter-agrument is a question: Would you consider it proper to insert a young child into a game with adults and have them throw him 90-mile-an-hour pitches? I doubt you would even allow your child to be in such a dangerous environment.
Therefore my point is that what everyone did for him what they would probably do for their own kid at any picnic where adults are playing and decide to give their kid a chance at bat. The father approached the players on the whim that they would be nice about it. The players all decided to go along with it. So Shay has fun before he dies.
So what is wrong with that?
February 21st, 2008 at 7:37 am
Just wanted to add that Shay wasn’t able to tell that he was allowed to win, which should have been obvious. Yet it reminds me of something I’ve experienced playing SF. I’ve had a hard time rooting the need to play to win out of myself, particularly against new / unskilled opponents. It’s like I can’t shut off my brain and be like “don’t swing here” and “let him hit me there”. Whenever I do that it looks completely obvious.
Yet I remember John Choi playing a casual match with someone who didn’t know what they were doing, and Choi let the guy win a round, and even appear to have a close match with him. I’m not saying I’ve never been able to accomlish that, but the way John did it showed that he had the opponent read so well he could actually get hit on purpose and make it look like a mistake.
That’s like a skill or something. Maybe if I could get better at that I would be a better player lol.
February 21st, 2008 at 7:38 am
1) I didn’t say he was “forced to play”, I said “he was forced to play by different rules than the other kids” (once he was already in the game)… those are two completely different sentences.
2) I also didn’t call Shay a scrub, I doubt he had any of the “mental barriers” that defines what a scrub is. I said that the other kids treated him as if he were a scrub, without giving him the opportunity to learn the actual rules… again, two completely different sentences.
As for your counter-question… you’re still missing my point. I don’t care about Shay, he was happy, and that’s fine. You’re welcome to take your kid, and not pitch crazy hard when you’re trying to teach him the game. Obviously noone will pick up a bat for the first time, and hit a home run off a 90 mph pitch. But, when you slow your pitches down for your kid, you’re probably doing it with the understanding that it’s an effective way to teach him how to bat, and if he learns to enjoy baseball, you’ll go back to normal speed. My point again… no extra ways of looking at this situation, such as this, where stated in the story, which makes the story itself a poor generalization of how and when it’s appropriate to treat people differently.
February 21st, 2008 at 8:04 am
Sometimes we play to win, to learn, to better ourselves… and sometimes we play to connect with others or for the sole benefit of another.
Was letting Shay win a good thing… or bad thing?
Honestly, it really depends. I mean, sure… if everyone hands him victories in his life, he doesn’t really become a better person for it. In the long-term, he suffers. However, the short-term benefits are obvious too. He has a higher self-esteem for a period of time. He may even become motivated to try new things after getting a sample of what winning feels like. Maybe he’ll try to earn his wins from that moment on. Who knows how it will affect him? …or how his parents will allow that moment affect him?
The thing is, sometimes we need both hardships and handouts to make it in life. Too much of one thing, either way, will ruin a person.
February 21st, 2008 at 9:12 am
Why fumble for words when it has been said correctly before. From the excellent Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (slightly abridged for clarity):
“Nothing of value is free. … You! I’ve just awarded you the prize for the hundred-meter dash. Does it make you happy? … here, I’ll write it out: ‘Grand prize for the championship, one hundred-meter sprint.’ ” He had actually come back to my seat and pinned it on my chest. “There! Are you happy? You value it - or don’t you?”
I was sore. First that dirty crack about rich kids - a typical sneer of those who haven’t got it - and now this farce. I ripped it off and chucked it at him.
Mr. Dubois had looked surprised. “It doesn’t make you happy?”
“You know darn well I placed fourth!”
“Exactly! The prize for first place is worthless to you . . . because you haven’t earned it. But you enjoy a modest satisfaction in placing fourth; you earned it. …”
Now, I happen to think that the anecdote isn’t as black or white as it has been represented by some people here. There is some good in boosting someone’s self-esteem, disabled or not. However, I also feel that there are negative implications in it as well, not so much for Shay but for the reader. The anecdote doesn’t give us any real clear idea of the severity of Shay’s handicaps, nor of how he is treated in other circumstances in his life. It seems plausible that none of the ballplayers knew these things either. So when they’re throwing the game to make Shay feel good, how do they arrive at the conclusion that he has an emotional need to have the game thrown for him? Maybe he would have been happy just to have hit the ball and run to first base. Picture it in your mind: “Mom, I played baseball today and I hit the ball!” Well what if Shay was capable of knowing that he was being duped? What if Shay realized somewhere between first and second that the players were putting him on? Imagine Shay coming to a halt on the field, hurt and angry that the players were teasing him this way when he had thought he had done so well! Did they think that just because he had trouble walking and holding a bat that he was incapable of knowing what was going on around him?
And that is my point: the ballplayers made a prejudicial judgment of Shay and based their treatment of him on that. In the case of the anecdote it worked out and Shay got his ego boost. But in the real world outside of uplifting anecdotes, how do you know that your judgment is sound? How do you know that you aren’t insulting the person you are trying to ‘help’? And even if you do happen to jump to the right conclusion, do we really want to promote prejudice because it works some of the time? Probably not. That’s why this is okay as an uplifting anecdote, but not so strong as a life lesson.
My $0.02
February 21st, 2008 at 10:16 am
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… I don’t care about Shay, he’s dead. The person “harmed” was James M himself, and all the rest of you who read this story and are now going to go out into the world and try to make things “better” for some random disabled person you meet, by assuming that they’re similar to Shay, instead of doing something like asking them how they’d like to be treated.”
Can you stop putting words in my mouth? It’s a bad habit. You don’t know what I got out of the story at all, or what my future actions are going to be. Once again your argument is based on your imagination rather than reality. I’m going to assume every disabled person I meet is similar to Shay? Really? How exactly do you know that?
If you can’t make a reality-based argument just stop talking, it’s embarrassing.
Your ability to wholesale invent and to magically predict the future is impressive. Your ability to speak rationally? Not so much.
February 21st, 2008 at 11:02 am
Wow. Did this entry get turned stupid quickly.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:04 pm
What exactly did I make up, James M? Quoted for the 3rd time from that article in comment 5:
“Said the father in the story, “I believe that when God brings a child like this into the world the perfection that he seeks is in the way people react to this child.” This story counsels that “perfection” be one of pity and dismissal of the actual person. And that can’t be right.”
You are defending a story that claims that a “pity-driven homerun” is perfection, when dealing with anyone who is mentally or physically disabled (since the story doesn’t specify the extent of his disabilities). Now, either you’re going to act in line with that belief in the future, or you don’t really value what this story had to say, and should just back down. There’s not really a third option when the word “perfection” is at stake.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Oh, and Jasonimus Prime: Thank you, you said very clearly exactly what I’ve been trying to get across. But rather than give some benefit of the doubt, and just say the story isn’t black and white, I think the story itself is at fault for not making those other circumstances clear, yet being published as “inspirational”. If it’s not clear without additional context what exactly it’s inspiring, then it’s just poorly written.
February 21st, 2008 at 12:21 pm
“What exactly did I make up, James M?”
1. Your entire “Imagine a kid like Shay…” post was based on your imagination rather than reality.
2. You changed details of my blind man storyas if you knew anything about it.
3. You desribed me as “read this story and are now going to go out into the world and try to make things “better” for some random disabled person you meet, by assuming that they’re similar to Shay, instead of doing something like asking them how they’d like to be treated.”
Again as if you know anything about me and possess the magical ability to predict the future based on nothing.
I tend not to start my arguments with “Imagine…” because I prefer to argue based on reality.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:01 pm
I should also point out that your argument has totally changed. Originally the problem was that what the kids did was immoral. But since you couldn’t articulate what harm was done to anyone, your argument has morphed into that retelling the story is the immoral part.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:12 pm
What? I never said that what the kids did was immoral. I don’t think that either. My argument never changed.
February 21st, 2008 at 1:18 pm
And for clarity… all my examples that you claimed were “imagined”, were just meant to exemplify possible interpretations of the story. The only reason I mentioned any of them was to illustrate that the story doesn’t give enough information to differentiate between supporting an example like mine or an example like any of yours. I’m not sure why you’re so hung up on that… all your recent posts are attacking small supporting statements of mine when I think I’ve finally made what my actual point is quite clear. What’s the deal… do you still have a counterpoint, or are we done here?
February 21st, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Somewhere on this site, Sirlin said something to the effect of “I’m talking about how to win at games, not at life, not at your career, nor marriage, friendships, etc.”
If you take “Playing to Win” outside of the magic circle into these other domains, then you’re acting in those domains according to rules that exist only in your head - the definition of a scrub.
Fictional or not, the minute Shay’s father asked his question of the player on the field, the kids stopped playing the game of baseball and started playing Real Life - where ruthless competition is often the worst strategy on so many levels.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:07 am
Johnny: Playing to Win, as Sirlin said, is a positive message that should only be applied to some aspects of life. However, this story contains a negative message, that probably shouldn’t be applied to any aspects of life, and yet it claims that the actions presented within are “perfection”. Where’s the disclaimer?
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:50 pm
People would like to talk about the story in respect to Playing to Win (as per Sirlin’s intent when posting this). Please take your moral brigade somewhere else. You can post this story on a forum with one account and then pick a fight with a second account. That lets you carry on without invalidating maybe 1/3 of the comments here.
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Playing to win is a philosophy describing proper ways to act when participating in certain activites (mostly competitive game tournaments). To counterpoint it, this story also has to be looked at as a philosophy describing a proper way to act. I claim it fails to do that. How is that not talking about the story in respect to Playing to Win?
I think I’m actually making a deeper comparison that most people here. Most people don’t seem to have actually paid any attention to the story, they just skimmed through it, said “Oh, Shay’s happy, how sweet, obviously this one anecdote proves that throwing games left and right is okay.”, and left it at that.
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
“Oh, Shay’s happy, how sweet, obviously this one anecdote proves that throwing games left and right is okay.”
Number of people who actually said that: zero.
Fail.
February 24th, 2008 at 7:19 am
Um… how about we try actually reading the old comments I was referring to, James M: like number 10 here:
“Someone on here said that this was a classic case of playing for fun, but that’s only looking at the baseball game. One could say that on that day, all of the people present were playing to win at something much bigger.”
What happened in this story is that a bunch of kids took pity on a disabled kid, and let him win. They didn’t encourage him, they didn’t accept him, they didn’t support them. They just pitied him. Now, last I checked pity was still considered a mostly negative emotion. How is a story that claims that pity is “perfection”, getting so much support?
February 24th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
It all depends on what your objective here is. Clearly little Shay is not trying to break it into the big leagues. If you opponent’s aim, as well as yours, is to become the best there is at gaming then that is the situation where you hold no punches as giving your opponent anything less than your best game is truly disrespectful and dishonorable both to your opponent as well as yourself.
However little Shay is not trying to become the best there is as well as I’m sure this game was not for any big tournament league. If anything this choice was the choice for Playing to Win in the ultimate sense of becoming the greatest. In your book you talk about forming relationships with as many people as they will aid you in your quest to play to win. In this type of situation making this choice to concede the win for Shay’s pleasure builds a character which people would naturally relate to and respect where as the opposite would would drive those important relationships away.
Furthermore giving Shay everything you’ve got yields no benefit to increasing your skill as a gamer. I’m not saying to always concede the win in non tournament play against somebody else who is playing for fun; however if playing for fun yields a benefit for your ultimate quest then this is the proper decision to make.
February 27th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
If you would be offended by this story with the references to Shay’s handicap removed, you should be offended by it the way it is now.
Otherwise, you are condoning the treatment of a person as an animal, a pet. The same way you eventually let a cat have the string or a dog have the bone when you play with them.
Furthermore, the child’s father is the LAST person you should be looking to for how to treat this child. He himself has essentially been made a slave by a combination of the defective genetic outcome of his child and modern society’s expectation of how to treat it. After 10-14 years of being trapped by his son’s disability he is not going to be of the right state of mind to advise on this issue.
February 28th, 2008 at 9:37 am
I completely disagree with a lot of you. The kid is retarded and didn’t know any better. It’s like playing with a 3-year-old; if you were just wrestling with your young son, would you just CRUSH him? What I would’ve recommended (and I showed this story to another forum and the one who replied agreed) was to let him hit and then continue the game for real.
March 1st, 2008 at 10:02 am
Ignorance is a horrible excuse. We don’t grant it to the rapist or religous fanatic.
Thank you for conceding my point about treating Shay as a pet. I guess you are ok with doing that to people. I’m not.
March 1st, 2008 at 8:41 pm
<strong>Ardith</strong>
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