I struggle sometimes when friends share something publicly, which they intend as uplifting and encouraging, but which reveals their unexamined biases. Do I draw attention to the implicit bias, knowing this likely causes hurt feelings for limited social gain? Do I ignore the situation, knowing it allows wrong ideas to ratify themselves? Spoiler alert: I’m so conflict-avoidant that I usually do the latter. But this time I’m speaking up.
This weekend, several friends shared a story on social media about a developmentally disabled boy named Shay who, seeing other boys his age playing baseball, asks to play. He gets placed low in the batting roster. When he’s at bat, the opposing team literally bobbles every available play to ensure Shay bats a run, even knowing it’ll cost them the game. This is presented as a heartwarming story of kids granting a disadvantaged boy the opportunity to feel loved and useful.
Having limited experience with similarly disabled kids, I appreciate the sentiment. These kids seldom get to feel included, or welcome with peers. Because developmental disabilities often manifest in parallel physical disabilities, such kids are often denied the opportunity to compete equally. Yet, for all I appreciate the underlying motivation, I think the expression is potentially dangerous, because it makes the story all about what we, the “normal,” do for them.
We can find the first problem in the name. Though the story got new traction this month, Snopes identifies the story originating in a book published in 1999. Shay’s name, though, has been anglicized from the more assertively Jewish “Shaya.” I’m reminded that a bowdlerized version of Taylor Mali’s poem “What Teachers Make” continues circulating, with the cusswords excised, and the narrator renamed “Bonnie.”
Setting this subrosa colonialism aside, I still struggle to understand how it’s ennobling to change the rules of a game already in progress to ensure desirable outcomes for certain kids. It creates the idea that their successes are something we, the arbiters of normalcy, permit them to have. It establishes the disabled, including all categories of the disabled, as requiring our pity. Ultimately, the story exists to make “normal people” feel good about themselves.
Part of the nature of sports is that we follow the rules. We don’t do so because the rules are morally right, like rules against murder or theft; nor because the rules standardize social interactions, like traffic laws. Rather, when playing baseball, football, or whatever, we follow the rules because they are rules. Because doing so puts every participant on equal footing, allowing distinctions to arise from comprehensible and consistent foundations.
That isn’t what happened here. In this story, players deliberately ignored the rules and biffed the game to elevate one kid above others. While I can understand maybe throwing the disadvantaged kid a slower pitch, the coördination necessary for this many kids to deliberately manipulate a game’s outcome seems particularly unlikely. Sure would be nice if kids really gathered to protect and advance their own this way.
Both teams could, hypothetically, huddle together—with Shay in their midst!—to create nonce rules that keep everybody participating equally and make the game about something other than winning. Existing leagues have done that. But that isn’t what these kids did. Instead, they created rules that only applied to one player, for one at-bat. Then they celebrated that kid for accomplishing the remarkably low standards they set him.
The celebration, therefore, cannot be about Shay, though he, surrounded in the excitement of the moment, may perceive in that way. Ultimately the kids celebrate themselves for showing magnanimity do somebody they consider deserving of pity. Like the temple leaders whom Jesus castigated for loudly pouring their coins into the copper kettle, these kids celebrate so they can publicly affirm, to themselves, what good people they are.
Please don’t misunderstand. I laud and praise these children’s motivation, even if, as Snopes admits, the story is more likely a parable than something which actually happened. They wanted to make a chronically excluded child feel included, and I cannot disagree with that. If something like this happens in your view, please reward this behavior, and help the children find ways to pursue their goals that aren’t condescending.
But as told, this story extols “normal” people bestowing largess from their places of power. It creates a temporary endorphin boost for one disadvantaged child, but teaches his peers that generosity is something they bestow from atop the hierarchy, with only minor sacrifices that won’t impact their lives very much. And that, sadly, is no kind of message for today’s children.
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