With all of the ugliness of the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox cheating scandals and the lack of integrity throughout those organizations, I recalled a better time – a particular play and integrity of a teenager in a high school junior varsity baseball game.

For his privacy, I will not use his name, but those who were there that day and reading this will no doubt remember him. He never played major league baseball, so you won’t be able to look up his stats on Baseball_Reference or Fangraphs. And what he did some 25-years ago would not fall into any statistical category that could be analyzed by statisticians, or recorded for posterity to peruse in later years anyway. Yet, what he did made such an impression on me that I can vividly recall the play where he displayed truthfulness and integrity that made me proud that I knew him and previously coached him.

The varsity team was playing at another school, so the JV’s were on the well-groomed and fenced varsity field. For some unexplained reason, there was only one umpire for this game, who was not only responsible for calling balls and strikes, also but for calling plays at the bases and balls hit to the outfield. Baseball in that area was good, very good; and extremely competitive. Every team had terrific athletes who were only playing JV because their respective varsity teams were stacked with juniors and seniors. So a lone umpire had his hands full.

I do not recall the inning, but the events are clear. One of the opposing team’s hitters turned on a fastball and drove a fly ball toward the left field fence. Our left fielder turned and sprinted toward the fence, but was not able to outrace the ball. The outfield fence was chain-link, so it made it difficult to see if the ball hit just before the fence and then over for a ground-rule double, or if it had barely cleared the fence, and bounced a foot or so beyond.

Initially, the home plate umpire held up two fingers and pointed towards second base, signaling a ground-rule double. But the opposing hitter and coach saw it differently, believing it to be a home run. The umpire, with mask in hand, walked to left field, to talk with our player, then turned to walk back to the infield while giving a circular motion with his raised right hand. Home run. He stopped at the third base dugout and explained to our JV coach that the left fielder had told him that the ball had, in fact, cleared the fence for a home run.

I was proud of our left fielder and his teammates, who all supported him. He could have easily said that the ball had bounced over the fence and no one would have been the wiser. But he did not and told the truth.

Integrity is such an important character trait, but too often seems ignored when the ultimate goal is winning – at any cost. The Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox organizations should be ashamed of their collective lack of integrity.

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