Josh Hamilton: Haunted by Guilt?
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A few weeks ago, a fan at Arlington Stadium took a fatal fall from the stands after reaching over the railing for a ball tossed in his direction by the Rangers’ Josh Hamilton. Hamilton is reportedly taking the tragedy hard, and Tyler Kepner of the New York Times wrote, “You get the feeling that every time a stray ball comes to Hamilton, he will remember Shannon Stone.”
Philosophers have written about “moral luck,” which involves a conundrum nicely illustrated by this case. Hamilton did what ballplayers routinely do. Indeed, tossing the ball to the crowd is a kind gesture and, as suggested by the dearth of prior accidents, relatively safe. Hamilton deserves no blame for what happened and ought to feel no worse than anyone else who witnessed the event – queasy but not guilty. Yet, as a practical matter, he likely feels something they don’t. Consider that the person who through no fault of his own runs over a reckless pedestrian will be haunted far more than onlookers. But why should that unlucky driver, or Josh Hamilton, feel any worse than anyone else who witnesses a traumatic event? They shouldn’t, but they do.
One tempting explanation for their guilt is that they were what lawyers call “but for” causes of the harm. Had Hamilton not thrown the ball, had the driver been driving a different speed, no tragedy would have ensued. But that’s actually true of the onlookers as well. Had a spectator distracted Hamilton so he didn’t throw the ball, or someone distracted the pedestrian so he didn’t race into the street, those accidents might have been averted. Those spectators, too, are technically but for causes of the accident, though they clearly did nothing wrong.
Perhaps those more directly involved feel guilty because they wonder if just maybe they really did do something wrong, or at least failed to do something they realistically could have done differently. Hamilton might be saying (consciously or unconsciously) to himself something like this: “That guy may have been leaning over the railing too eagerly. I should have noticed as much and not thrown the ball.” The driver will at least wonder if he somehow could have slammed on the brakes sooner. When we’re directly involved in harm, we may lack certainty that we did everything reasonable to avoid the harm. That uncertainty, in turn, creates the space where guilt grows.
It’s a terrible burden to carry, and terribly unfair. But life is unfair. It was unfair to Shannon Stone and, to a lesser extent, to Josh Hamilton. Hamilton, who recently turned 30 and has already experienced more pain and glory than most people do in a lifetime (drugs and alcohol nearly destroyed him but he recovered to win an MVP award and World Series ring), understandably does not have it all in perspective. According to the New York Times, “Hamilton said he would never understand the deeper meaning of the accident.”
Life’s dirty secret is that the accident has no deeper meaning. That point, I think, is brilliantly captured by Robert Frost’s “Out, Out,” which describes an agricultural accident that takes the life of a young boy. The grim poem ends as follows:
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then - the watcher at his pulse took a fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
The literal-minded may miss Frost’s mordant wit and complain about the callous reaction (Frost’s and/or the family’s) to the boy’s death, but Frost deliberately diverts us from the deeper truth that is too hard to stare at for too long: “No more to build on there.”