Doing the Right Thing... and Losing
A few games ago, the Mighty Michigan Moose were the victims of some really awful officiating.
Really awful. Cost us the game aweful. Couple of guys hurt aweful.
In the process of losing the game, our players went ahead and gave the officials an ear full for the bad job they were doing. In the process of this, one of our players was ejected.
Jump to the next game. The head Moose was out of town, leaving me as the sort of, by default, manager for the night. Pre-game, I got a call from the rink. The call clarified for me who was and was not suspended, and the caller, a very nice young woman who works nights at the rink, asked me a favor. She didn't know if she knew the new player who was suspended, could I please make sure to tell him he couldn't play? Could I make sure to point him out if he tried to get on the ice? Yeah, ok, sure.
So when new player showed up, I told him. I wasn't exactly happy to do it, but I gave my word to the girl from the rink, and so I did what I'd said I would. I tried to get it through to the new guy: if he played and was found out, he'd sit longer; if he played and was found out, I could get booted as a manager that knowingly put on an illegal player; the girl who called and the ref that ejected him were going to be the scorekeeper and ref of this game and might recognize him; I wanted to make sure that if someone had to sit, they had the right person...
It went on and on. The gist of it being, new guy was pissed that I'd "blown it" and hadn't helped him lie to the people at the rink.
Then we lost, narrowly, in a game where the new guy would have been a big help.
Well, fuck me. What's a Moose to do, anyway?
It's not that I never lie. I do, once in a while. As Archie Goodwin put it, if I'm going to lie, it's going to be worth it. The kind of thing where I'm trying to serve some better purpose than just putting one over on some other poor schmuck. Give me a CEO or a government official, and I'd probably feel little remorse. Give me some person working a crappy job making minimum wage, and I can't bring myself to do it. There's enough injustice at the bottom already without me dumping petty lies on people.
So, I couldn't lie to that nice girl. I see her score keeping games from 10pm-12:30am, and then cleaning the building at 1am as we're leaving. She remembers most of our names, smiles and says hello, while doing what is really a kind of sucky and thankless job. I just wouldn't feel right lying to her. Call it fear of Karma or the Spirit whispering in my ear, or maybe just some human sympathy for someone who was honest with me and asked me to be honest with her.
The Moose are on a losing streak. That loss extended it, and that part really sucked. But what's a Moose to do? You gotta be able to hold your antlers up when you look at your reflection in the stream the next morning, right?
Really awful. Cost us the game aweful. Couple of guys hurt aweful.
In the process of losing the game, our players went ahead and gave the officials an ear full for the bad job they were doing. In the process of this, one of our players was ejected.
Jump to the next game. The head Moose was out of town, leaving me as the sort of, by default, manager for the night. Pre-game, I got a call from the rink. The call clarified for me who was and was not suspended, and the caller, a very nice young woman who works nights at the rink, asked me a favor. She didn't know if she knew the new player who was suspended, could I please make sure to tell him he couldn't play? Could I make sure to point him out if he tried to get on the ice? Yeah, ok, sure.
So when new player showed up, I told him. I wasn't exactly happy to do it, but I gave my word to the girl from the rink, and so I did what I'd said I would. I tried to get it through to the new guy: if he played and was found out, he'd sit longer; if he played and was found out, I could get booted as a manager that knowingly put on an illegal player; the girl who called and the ref that ejected him were going to be the scorekeeper and ref of this game and might recognize him; I wanted to make sure that if someone had to sit, they had the right person...
It went on and on. The gist of it being, new guy was pissed that I'd "blown it" and hadn't helped him lie to the people at the rink.
Then we lost, narrowly, in a game where the new guy would have been a big help.
Well, fuck me. What's a Moose to do, anyway?
It's not that I never lie. I do, once in a while. As Archie Goodwin put it, if I'm going to lie, it's going to be worth it. The kind of thing where I'm trying to serve some better purpose than just putting one over on some other poor schmuck. Give me a CEO or a government official, and I'd probably feel little remorse. Give me some person working a crappy job making minimum wage, and I can't bring myself to do it. There's enough injustice at the bottom already without me dumping petty lies on people.
So, I couldn't lie to that nice girl. I see her score keeping games from 10pm-12:30am, and then cleaning the building at 1am as we're leaving. She remembers most of our names, smiles and says hello, while doing what is really a kind of sucky and thankless job. I just wouldn't feel right lying to her. Call it fear of Karma or the Spirit whispering in my ear, or maybe just some human sympathy for someone who was honest with me and asked me to be honest with her.
The Moose are on a losing streak. That loss extended it, and that part really sucked. But what's a Moose to do? You gotta be able to hold your antlers up when you look at your reflection in the stream the next morning, right?
posted by Micah at 2:27 PM
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