Sorry is a Sacrament

One of the year’s pleasant surprises for New England baseball fans everywhere was the Boston Red Sox winning of the 2021 American League East Division Series. It was supposed to be a rebuilding year for the home team and none of the baseball experts predicted them to be in a position to compete for a playoff spot this season.

The 2021 Red Sox team was a scrappy and likable bunch of players, fighting until the last out and often coming from behind to win games. They were underdogs all year but managed to squeak into a wildcard playoff position; where they then proceeded to defeat their arch-rival New York Yankees, and odds-on favorites Tampa Bay Rays – before finally losing in the championship series to the Houston Astros.

A lot of the credit for the team’s successful season was given to their young manager, Alex Cora. Alex had previously coached the Red Sox and was praised for leading the team to the World Series Championship in 2018. He was suspended by Major League Baseball for the entire 2020 season, however, when it was discovered that he participated in a scheme to steal the opposing team’s pitching signals back in 2017 when he was working as a bench coach for the Houston Astros.

Trying to steal your opponents signs is a tradition as old as baseball because it can give batters a significant advantage when they know which type of pitch is coming (Fastball, Curveball, Sinker, Breaking Ball, Splitter, etc.). Stealing signs is not against the rules as long as the players manage to decipher the signals using personnel that are on the field.

The most common way teams try to steal signs is for a runner on base to peek in and study the hand signals the catcher sends to his pitcher prior to every pitch and then relay the sign to his teammate standing in the batting box. If a team does not disguise their signals effectively or change them up occasionally, then the opposing team is usually able to decode them.

What made the sign-stealing scheme devised by the Houston Astros and Alex Cora against the rules is that their efforts made use of on-field technology. They used a dedicated camera in the center field stands of their home stadium that was focused directly on the opposing team’s catcher. The video was sent to a monitor near the Houston dugout where Houston players could examine it and quickly decode the signs being sent to the pitcher. Various methods were then used to communicate the decoded pitch signs to the batter, including hand signals, whistling and banging on a trash can. Alex Cora even received the stolen sign information on the smartwatch he was wearing.

Condemnation was swift when the scheme was first revealed to the public in 2019 by a traded Houston pitcher. The whole Houston Astros team was immediately branded as cheaters and the World Series championship Houston won in 2017 came to be seen as illegitimate, tarnished forever by the cheating scandal. Major League Baseball conducted a retroactive investigation in 2019 and punished all the managers it found participated in the scheme with a one year suspension.

This included Alex Cora, who had moved on to manager of the Boston Red Sox and led them to the 2018 World Series Championship. Cora paid a high price for his decision to participate in the cheating scheme. The once proud man lost his job, his sterling reputation, his dignity, and the respect of his friends, family and colleagues. He spent a year exiled away from the game he loved while he watched the media attack his character and his young children suffer because of his sullied reputation.

Despite the harsh judgement, Cora never complained. He sincerely apologized for his actions, admitted his fault in the sign stealing scheme, acknowledged that what he did was unfair to the teams they played against and accepted his punishment as well deserved. It was clear he truly felt remorse for his role in the whole affair.

I found myself becoming emotional while watching Alex Cora lovingly embrace his young 14 year old daughter Camilla in the immediate aftermath of the Red Sox victory over the Rays in the Division Series. A postgame reporter asked Alex what that moment meant to him after serving a year of suspension. Here is the video clip of that special moment courtesy of the MLB Network (along with a transcript of his remarks about his family):

“I’m happy for my family. I put them in such a tough spot last year and for them to be able to enjoy it is very gratifying, I’m very very happy for them. She [Camilla] suffered a lot and it was my fault, and sometimes we make bad decisions, and I made a horrible decision in baseball and I paid the price. But what really hurt me was for them to suffer because of my mistakes. And for her to enjoy this is very gratifying.

Alex Cora, Postgame interview, 2021 ALDS

So many people today are afraid to say they are sorry or admit they have done something wrong. They view apologizing as a sign of weakness and surrender; therefore their egos prevent them from owning up to their mistakes or attempting to repair and heal the hurt they have caused.

Still other people never develop the moral compass or sense of compassion and empathy that is necessary to understand how their actions negatively affect others. They feel entitled, believing that the world revolves around them – and they are so used to thinking about themselves that they have no capacity to think about anyone else.

That is why it was so refreshing to watch how Alex Cora handled the fall out from the cheating scandal. Here was a rare example of an authentic apology, one where Alex confessed remorse for his mistake, admitted that it was wrong, fully cooperated with the investigators, accepted his punishment and attempted to make amends with those who were most hurt.

I can’t help but contrast Alex Cora’s apology with one recently made by the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, Aaron Rodgers. Aaron was widely criticized when it was discovered that he lied to reporters at a press conference when he told them he had been fully “immunized” against the COVID-19 virus. The truth that he had never received a vaccination was only revealed after he became infected with COVID and was forced to go into NFL quarantine protocols.

Rather than apologizing for lying to reporters and his failure to follow mandated COVID-19 safety protocols, Rodgers first tried to explain that when he said he was immunized he meant he had taken some (ineffective) home treatment and he didn’t actually say that he was vaccinated. He inferred that the reporters were to blame because they assumed immunized meant vaccinated.

When that explanation was roundly ridiculed, Rogers tried again by issuing a statement saying that some people might have felt misled by his comments and that he takes full responsibility for the misleading comments.

Notice in this example of a fake apology Rogers never says he is sorry for putting people at risk and he never says he regrets what he did. He apologizes only to those who “felt misled,” as if it was just their feeling, and not his own actions, that were to blame. The reality is that people felt misled because Rodgers misled them.

Rodgers elaborated further, explaining that he believed strongly in body autonomy and that he wasn’t up-front with people because he didn’t want to acquiesce to a “woke culture” or a “crazed group of individuals” who harass those who choose not to get vaccinated. With this explanation, Rodgers again shifts the blame for his wrongdoing. It is not his fault that he lied and exposed others to potential risk, – it is the fault of a group of crazy people and the toxic culture.

After this explanation was also criticized, Aaron Rodgers just refused to talk anymore about the subject. This was probably his wisest decision since bad apologies that blame the victims usually make things worse than saying nothing at all.

Looking in someone’s eyes and offering a sincere apology is not easy. Many people, like Aaron Rodgers, attempt to get by with with fake apologies which seek to avoid responsibility by making excuses, shifting blame, downplaying what was done, invalidating the hurt person, or trying to move on prematurely.

By contrast, Psychologists say that authentic apologies have most or all of the following elements:

• It is freely offered without conditions or minimizing of what was done
• It conveys that the person apologizing understands and cares about the hurt person’s experience and feelings
• It conveys remorse
• It offers a commitment to avoid repeating the hurtful behavior
• It offers to make amends or provide restitution if appropriate

During my lifetime I have given more than my share of ineffective apologies, but it is a life skill that I’m still working to improve because it is impossible for any of us to go through life without hurting someone. As Bob Dylan once sang: “I hurt easy, I just don’t show it; you can hurt someone and not even know it“. We are all human and in the daily course of our existence, no matter how hard we try, there are going to be moments ahead when we are guilty of hurting people. During those moments of our life, we should try, like Alex Cora, to put aside our egos and summon the humility and dignity that is required to repair the damaged relationship and make it stronger.

A good apology is like an offering or a gift that has a supernatural power to heal. The Catholic faith believes that admitting to our faults and seeking reconciliation with God and our neighbors is so important that they have established it as one of the Church’s seven sacred sacraments. The practice of Confession and forgiveness are referred to as a healing sacrament, one in which a spiritual power is believed to be transmitted through channels of divine grace.

During this season of thanks giving and gift giving, may you too come to experience the holy and redemptive power of the Sacrament of Sorry that is just waiting for all of us who seek it out sincerely.

Nothing is forever in this world, even your problems

If I could go back in time, one of the things I would tell my younger self is not to worry so much about what other people think about him or inflate the importance he thinks small events will have on his future.

Because sometimes, especially when we are young, we become our own worst enemies when we inhabit a distorted world where we imagine that everybody we see is judging our every move and we worry that people will gossip about us behind our backs (or worse embarrass us on social media!) if we happen to do something outside of culturally accepted norms.

These worries can be harmful if they cause us to withdraw and lead a cautious life. Instead of living in the moment and boldly taking on new and interesting challenges, we play it safe and stop taking chances because we are frightened how people will view us if we make a mistake.

We think that if we don’t make a good impression, then we will be ridiculed or ignored, forever limiting our opportunities to succeed in the future. Constantly worrying about what others think about us can lead to anxiety and even depression, but even worse, it prevents us from achieving our full potential.

What I would tell my younger self is that the truth is, in most cases, that other people are not thinking about you! They are too wrapped up thinking about themselves and their own life to waste time thinking about or remembering anything that we do (good or bad). I laugh when I look back now at all of the small things that seemed so big to me when I was young and I realize I assigned them way more importance in my mind than they deserved.

When I was in school, I remember being paralyzed with fear at the thought of public speaking . In Junior High, the Principle asked me to get up at an Assembly and introduce an act in front of the whole school. I practiced the introduction over and over and thought I had it memorized; but when the lights came up and I was facing the entire Assembly, I completely blanked, muttered something incomprehensible, and stumbled backstage.

I was mortified and walked around for the rest of the week with my eyes downcast, imagining that all my classmates were talking about me and my embarrassing performance. That episode left a mental scar that stayed with me throughout high school. I would have anxiety whenever I was asked to speak in front of an audience. My mind kept imagining another disaster – and even when I managed to get through a speaking assignment without a major mistake – my thoughts kept focusing on how I should have done better.

I didn’t start to feel comfortable speaking in public until I went to College and attended a Speech class that exposed me to methods for dealing with anxiety and the practice of focusing on positive outcomes rather than the fear of failing. That young boy who feared public speaking would never have believed that his older self would someday speak to an audience of hundreds at engineering conferences, participate as a Lector in his church community, happily officiate weddings for friends and family and deliver eulogies to honor the deceased.

I’m sure nobody but me thinks back to that moment in 1973 when I flubbed my speech in front of the school assembly; and my worst fears about being ridiculed by my classmates never happened. My friends joked with me saying they were glad the Principal hadn’t asked them to do the introduction and the rest of my classmates quickly forgot the incident as they were too occupied concentrating on all the events and drama happening in their own life.

That moment and other traumatic events in my life, like failing my first driving test or watching the Red Sox choke away the World Series to the New York Mets in 1986 have taught me an important life lesson that is best summarized by an expression coined by the great Charlie Chaplin:

“Nothing is forever in this world, even your problems”

Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin from the film “Modern Times”

Chaplin was no stranger to problems. His childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship, as his alcoholic father was absent and abusive and his mother was committed to a mental asylum when he was 14. He was sent to live in a workhouse twice before the age of nine. Reminiscing upon his childhood, Chaplin wrote “I was hardly aware of a crisis because we lived in a continual crisis; and, being a boy, I dismissed our troubles with gracious forgetfulness“.

Despite these less than ideal childhood circumstances, Chaplin managed to start performing in music halls and working as a stage actor and comedian, where he developed his Tramp persona. He was scouted by the film industry and moved to America where he began appearing in comedies starting in 1914. Within four years he became one of the best known figures in the world.

Troubles found their way into Chaplin’s life again in the 1940s when a number of controversies led to a rapid decline in his popularity. He was accused of communist sympathies, and some members of the press and public found his involvement in a paternity suit, and marriages to much younger women, scandalous. A politically motivated FBI investigation against him was opened by J. Edgar Hoover which forced Chaplin to leave the United States in disgrace and settle in Switzerland.

Chaplin eventually overcame these problems as well. He married the daughter of playwright Eugene O’Neil when he was 54 and lived happily with her and their 8 children until he died at the age of 88. During this time he was awarded honorary degrees from many prestigious universities and was finally invited back to America in 1972 when he was given a [12 minute standing ovation] at the Academy Awards for “the incalculable effect he has had in making motion pictures the art form of this century“. Charlie Chaplain continues to be held in high regard today, with his movies The Gold Rush, City Lights, Modern Times, and The Great Dictator often ranked on lists of the greatest films of all time.

I think about Charlie Chaplin’s wise observation that nothing lasts forever in this world when I encounter problems in my life that seem as if they are insurmountable. I try not to worry so much about what other people are thinking and remind myself that life will go on, problems will eventually fade, and other people’s opinions can not defeat me or define my future as long as I remain productive and engaged in positive pursuits. It gives me hope to believe that all suffering eventually ends.

There is one final point that is important for us all to consider; which is that just as troubles do not last forever, neither do the good times. This is an unfortunate corollary to Chaplin’s idea that often goes without saying. Sometimes we take the good times for granted and fail to fully appreciate our good fortune.

So, I hope that when things are going well in your life, you find time to slow down, live in the moment and acknowledge your blessings, because the good times become all the sweeter when you realize that they will not last.