This Can’t Be Happening

If you’re keeping a scorecard in the major league baseball steroids scandal, Andy Pettitte deserves to be the leadoff man, even though he’s a pitcher.

In a spring training news conference, the New York Yankees ace apologized, fell on the sword and took the high road as reporters lobbed questions about performance-enhancing drugs, rather than about his breaking ball.  Pettitte sounded contrite (”Was it stupid? Yes, I was stupid.”)  He told fans that he was sorry for embarrassing them and his Yankees and Astros teammates.  He also said that he regretted the strained relationship with Roger Clemens.

The strain emanates from Pettitte’s truthfulness, not from from Clemens’ recent congressional testimony.  Over time, perhaps over just the upcoming season, Pettitte will be viewed as an athlete who made some mistakes, and owned up to them.  Fans will forgive him.  Reporters will give him the benefit of the doubt.  Fellow major leaguers may even respect him and try Pettitte’s approach if they get popped.

Admissions of guilt are painful, nerve-wracking moments.  But the public scrutiny that accompanies them has a short life cycle, because the public usually has a soft spot for these kind of heroes.  They’ll forgive you.

The French bank that has been upended by a single employee now has a bigger problem: public sympathy for the employee.  A trader at the bank, he allegedly mishandled billions of dollars and compiled the biggest trading loss ever.  He was not a high-level manager or senior executive, but just an employee who apparently manipulated systems and practices, forged trading data, and then got caught.  Bank executives have said he acted alone.

And that “acted alone” assertion has people pulling for him, like a classic underdog.  This was not the case with Enron, you might remember.  That company’s executives concocted schemes to bilk investors and fabricate financial deals, leading to an unprecedented corporate collapse and fortune-ruining.  Public sympathy completely eluded the Enron executives, who were scalded in the media and blasted by employees who lost their retirement savings.  They were indicted and convicted, largely the result of employee whistle-blowing. (more…)