Written by I love both chocolate and peanut butter. Put the two together, and you have magic. This simple but genius idea behind Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups has made Halloween and Easter better holidays.
It also created one of the most effective marketing campaigns ever. A guy walking down the street eating a Hershey’s bar runs into a gal digging Skippy out of a jar with her finger. The clash creates an event that would make Joseph Schumpeter proud.
Who is Schumpeter, you ask? He’s an economist from Austria who created the theory of creative destruction, which means things will constantly innovate to make new things. The old things will eventually become obsolete. Sure, we still have Hershey’s bars and peanut butter, but the paradigm changed once the peanut butter cup emerged onto the scene.
I love tradition in sports, and many others like me hate to see the changes made to keep up with the inevitable advances in technology, safety, or social progress. One of my favorite things on the internet is Super 70s Sports on Twitter. It is a safe place to celebrate good uniforms, hard hits, Linda Carter, and quarterbacks who smoke cigarettes and drink Fresca at halftime. Nostalgia is part of the enjoyment of sports. But, too often, we use it as a crutch.
The commissioners who run the big-time sports leagues regularly have to balance tradition with innovation. They are thankless jobs, and all fans think they could do a better job. Rob Manfred has come under attack recently for his decision to pull this year’s MLB All-Star Game from Atlanta due to the Georgia legislature’s recently passed law to restrict access to voting. Manfred stated it was “the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport.”
I reacted with hesitation when this story came out. I’m not too fond of it when a treasured tradition in sports gets interrupted by politics. I have always viewed sports as an escape from politics. I like both sports and politics separately, like different sections in a Sunday newspaper. You read the funnies first, then the news, then the opinion section, and then a couple of the thin ones like “Arts & Leisure” or “Travel.” Finally, you came to the sports section. These boundaries were clear and essential.
In my mind, sports should bring us together rather than fuel our divisions. I enjoy walking around Astrodome’s decaying remains from the Orange Lot to get to NRG Stadium to watch a Texans game and appreciating the tailgaters’ diversity. All week long, they are in separate economic classes, races, and political persuasions. But on Sunday, they were united as Texans fans and hated the Cowboys. Why drive a wedge in that by chiming in on a political issue? We are all enjoying our Hershey’s bar here. Politics is more like beer than peanut butter. We love beer, too, but nobody wants to mix beer and chocolate.
However, Manfred was right to weigh in on this issue. It’s not a chocolate and beer situation, and it now is a chocolate and peanut butter one. Seeing its collision as an opportunity for innovation was the right move. By his gesture, he uses his position to encourage our leaders to work together and find a solution to the issue that works for everyone. Baseball has learned, finally, the importance of using values to drive decisions. And the impact of ignoring them.
The reality is that my Sunday paper analogy is about as relevant today as a Sunday paper. There are no separate sections. Even on sports-oriented websites, you see news, sports, and opinion articles aggregated together. This version of progress makes sense. The people involved in the sports are no longer just athletes in a uniform but active community members. Many have a significant influence due to their social media presence.
The mission statement for Major League Baseball is: “We achieve our beliefs by demonstrating through our leadership our commitment to preserving core human values, promoting passion for the game of baseball, globally showcasing its values, heritage, and heroes, and by serving the unique needs of players. All of the sports leagues and the NCAA have gone to great lengths to display their values. You see them on uniforms, basketball courts, fences, and end zones.
In Manfred’s opinion, whether you view it as right or wrong, the Georgia legislature violated MLB’s mission’s key tenant. He had to take a stand. This time, he chose to act. Had this mission statement existed from the beginning of the league, maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long to remove the color barrier or create free agency.
Not taking a stand has proven to have negative consequences for Roger Goodell. He dragged his feet on the Colin Kaepernick situation, causing much more trouble for the league down the road than had he taken a stand initially using the NFL’s mission and values. You are never a hypocrite if you make decisions consistent with your stated values. Your values describe your or your organization’s view of reality. Goodell missed an opportunity because he held onto this tradition of not taking a stand. His fear didn’t avoid division. It fueled it.
Too often, we get this wrong. We judge others as if they existed in our reality rather than their own. It is right to say we would have done something differently, but unless it is a situation where we are all governed by a shared set of norms (like the law), it is wrong to judge someone else based on our values. Using my example, I may value tradition and this separation of sports and politics, but if I were in charge of MLB, I would have to make decisions based on the organization’s values instead of mine. A healthy response would be to respect Manfred for staying true to MLB’s values, even while disagreeing with them. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem possible in the divisive political environment of today. People who try to do this get hammered from both sides.
In the grand scheme of things, the All-Star Game location is not a big deal. It is just an exhibition game. We got by without one last year, and Georgia will survive without the economic boost from the event. We have been through much worse recently. I’m not advocating one side or the other on the voting issue. As always, both sides have valid arguments. I’m suggesting that our political leaders get with the times and innovate. It is their job. Our constitution serves as a beautiful mission statement and has clear values in it to guide them. Maybe MLB can share what they have learned in selecting the All-Stars who play in the game. Let’s move forward rather than backward.
Manfred, and the CEOs of the companies who took a stand, did us a favor by challenging us to consider whether we add “core human values” to our mission statements. Or at least question our country’s elected leaders to view the collision as an opportunity to innovate rather than the usual response of immediately running into our chocolate or peanut butter corners, missing out on creating a more perfect union.
What?!