The Comment Factory

When Cal Ripken, Jr. was inducted into the Hall of Fame, every article written about him (rightfully) gave the most words to discussing his undisputed-never-to-be-topped record of consecutive games played. Something absurd in the thousands. They used to call him Ironman. In Little League if you bitched about the weather or something during a game, some avuncular assistant base coach would remind you that Cal Ripken never bitched about the weather.

One article, in the Wall Street Journal, made an interesting hypothesis that maybe, at least according to one particular set of data, Ripken’s endurance ended up hindering his ability to play (although the writer of the article was certainly respectful of Ripken’s legacy and took pains to avoid saying Ripken or his handlers and coaches misused him and his talents). Apparently, the writer notes, the careers of most ballplayers look like a bell curve. I mean, that might seem obvious, even. A guy starts out green, improves and then declines as he gets older and has less to prove or whatever.

Ripken, however, did not have a bell curve. For the most part, his career just declined. Not that he wasn’t one of the best hitting shortstops ever and not that he didn’t contribute great things to his team and to baseball in general. But in comparison to other short stops who resembled him in other ways (quick, good hitter, but not for power) his stats dropped while his peers’ ascended and then dropped, later in their careers. Not only that, but mathematically the writer extrapolates that his record would have topped his peers if, instead of declining, he got better at the same rate as he did in the beginning of his career when he was fresh. In the end, we are supposed to conclude that quite possibly Ripken’s consecutive games record was a detriment to the rest of his career. In other words, he could have been greater if he had taken a break once in a while.
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Now, this has obvious correlations to America and our work ethic. We work longer than many other countries. Even the wealthy work long hours. Might it be, however, that we would get more done if we went a little easier? That much seems apparent. Or apparent at least is the fact that that is a question to be asked. What is left to wonder is why Americans would rather be less productive during longer hours than explore ways to economize their time and work less. I think we wouldn’t dare ask to work fewer hours, for fear of being forced into working no hours at all.

We have this image ingrained in our psyche of the battered, bruised office-warrior who just keeps on keeping on. Why is that? Why don’t we admire the clever genius? The Rube Goldberg who devises a brilliant way around the problems? Is it, as many would suggest, because we despise the easy way out? Or is it, perhaps because being an Ironman is the easy way out? I mean, no offense at all meant to Ripken, but how difficult is it to trot out onto the baseball diamond and play nine innings for an insane amount of money every day. Sure you gotta do some basic things right but pretty much as long as you are out there and decent, everyone adores you. You are a common man, working hard the same as you did the day before and the day before that. You are not like those flashy elitists, the home-run sluggers, or the deceitful base-stealers. Joe Blow can relate to you.

From here we get into the belief that, well, if it takes character to work long hours, than working long hours must be indicative of good character! And from there, we figure that the wealthy who work long hours must be fully deserving of every dime they get because they worked hard. Not because they are talented or lucky, but because they worked hard. If you work hard, you deserve what you get, and if you got nothing, you obviously didn’t work hard enough. So says another recent article—this time a column by David Brooks in the New York Times. In response to his thesis that the rich are harder working and better skilled than the poor, a letter writer to the paper points out that even if you extrapolated skill-time-money hundreds of thousands of times out, you still wouldn’t come to the current disparity of a small press publisher who works 60 hour weeks, is highly skilled and makes $50K or so, and a corporate lawyer just out of school who makes hundreds of thousands and works similar hours.

But again, it is just easier to agree that hard work makes you deserving, even honorable, rather than actually examining the morality, the skills and the ingenuity behind it all.