Jeff Pearlman has an article in the November 2009 issue of Penthouse about former pitcher John Rocker.
Pearlman wrote the original article ten years ago in Sports Illustrated that ended Rocker’s career.
It made me reflect on the difference between public and private and how well Judaism educates us in this regard.
If you are an Orthodox Jew, but you quietly watch TV in the privacy of your own apartment on Shabbat, no one is going to know and no one is going to talk. But if you drive your car around the community on Shabbat, people will know and people will talk.
You can say "Queers with AIDS" and diss "faggots" and other such talk all you like in private with like-minded friends, but when you talk to a reporter, you are not talking to him as an individual but to his audience, and you have to be more careful.
Many people will say, "I don’t care what other people think."
This is a delusion. If you truly believe you don’t care what other people think, you are massively deluded. If everywhere you go people turn away from you or treat you like a leper and pour contempt upon you, it will only take a little while before this makes a massive influence on you.
I’m about as independent a person as I know. I am about as free as anyone I know in saying what I think but I consider all the time the consequences of what I am writing and saying. I try to be true to my vision but I don’t pretend that I don’t care about what other people think of me.
People say that about me all the time. "Oh Luke, he doesn’t care about what other people think of him."
I don’t like to argue with people in person so I never contradict this. I think it is great if people think that, if they think I am that strong and independent, but no man is an island. Everything we do affects other people.
I enjoy shocking people but I don’t enjoy the consequences, hence, as I get older, I engage in less needless shocking.
Jeff Pearlman blogs about ESPN’s Steve Phillips:
The ex-New York Mets GM and current (well, former) ESPN baseball analyst has, once again, inserted his penis in the slot where his brain is supposed to make deposits. In case you haven’t heard (and, by this point, who the hell hasn’t?), Phillips—a married father—was having an affair with a 22-year-old ESPN employee … who happens to be insane.
I have never cheated on my wife, and never will. However, if I accidentally break that vow and enter the dark world of infidelity, it would only be with a farm animal, because farm animals don’t talk, write letters or drive their cars into structures. Fortunately, I am not attracted to farm animals (emus, on the other hand …).
Unfortunately for Steve Phillips, he failed to follow my blueprint. His affair was with Brooke Hundley, who not only bears a striking resemblance to the late, great Sam Kinison, but believes the best way to enhance an affair’s excitement is to, egad, write a letter to the man’s wife, chat with his son on Facebook and drive her car into his house.
Of all the moves, my favorite is her letter, which includes this passage:
“I care about Steve a lot and I’ve been asking him to come clean to you about everything, from when we first slept together in St. Louis in his hotel suite (where he assured me I wouldn’t have to worry about getting pregnant since his vasectomy) to the fact that we have continued to talk, see each other and schedule meet-ups even since you found out.”
