If you have any friends who work in marriage counseling, this is a frighteningly common “explanation” for certain behaviors.

because the question was (deliberately so, I realize). ;)

There are a couple of relevant things to note.

1) I have never been paid to “represent” an organization. Nobody expects me to be a role model, and nobody requires that I maintain some semblance of goodwill with the public. When I had a job, anyway, I showed up, I sat at my desk, I did my job, I went home. I could have been charged with murder and it STILL wouldn’t be my employer’s concern short of “Hey, going to need to take a few weeks off so they can decide my fate. If I’m innocent, will I still have a job?” But when you represent a company, and your image impacts their revenue, then you don’t get quite the same level of job-related privacy.

2) The severity of the offense is relevant. For instance, I think it is absolutely appalling that sports media even reports on players getting speeding tickets. On the other hand, I don’t think Michael Vick got “too much” attention, and I even recall thinking that Rae Carruth wasn’t getting enough.

So if they fine or suspend him, I have no problem with it.

If you were the owner of a small business, for example, and one of your top employees was arrested for driving drunk (a year after he was arrested for domestic violence against his wife), that wouldn’t concern you? Wouldn’t it make you think twice about this individual’s judgment and reliability, as well as his character? Perhaps fining or suspending the person might not be something you’d do…I’m guessing that it’d be more likely that you might actually fire him. We’re not talking about speeding tickets here.

If I were the Royals I would suspend Callaspo for a few days. While the guy may not ever be destined for sainthood, he sounds like he really needs to talk to someone about the privilege of being a well-compensated professional athlete and the unique responsibilities that come with it.

I’d also be very surprised if Callaspo’s arrest last year didn’t factor into their decision (at least to some degree) to trade him in the offseason.

I had a longer message written almost all the way, then realized that rhetoric might be misinterpreted and/or open up a whole bunch of other issues that aren’t worth getting into here. I’ll try to just make some general points, some of which we may agree on, some which we may not. They aren’t meant to be a sequential argument, just a series of things I think might be relevant.

I’m not claiming that I know exactly where to draw the line and what appropriate punishments should be, however, I will say that I don’t think that a small fine and/or suspension would be out of line (if “internal due process” if followed by the Royals) in cases such as these.

1. I think we probably agree that the team doesn’t need to be the “moral arbiter” regarding whether or not drunk drivin is right or wrong. It’s clearly wrong, given that it killed over 17,000 people in 2006. That’s many more people than were killed in domestic abuse situations.

2. The “moral/legal judgment” issue aside, there is a potential PR problem here for teams. True, fans don’t seem to care all that much when they or their loved ones aren’t being run down, but there is a reason that Roger Goodell and David Stern take player behavior so seriously off of the court—the money at stake in the image of the league as a whole and the players in particular, who generate money based on their public image. Cynical, but true. While it is irksome that the NFL, for example, got off so lightly in the annoying “steroid hearings” in Congress, it seems to me that on this issue, Stern and Goodell have taken a more proactive stance than Selig. Yeah, someone being more forward-thinking than Bud, I’m shocked, too.

3. Law’s piece is anecdotal, but does make some disturbing points with regard to the cavalier attitude toward not just drinking (I’m not worried about a few beers or something), but alcoholism in the game. This isn’t the first time it has come up. That’s a reason for attention.

4. We obviously don’t know what Callaspo’s situation is, if this is an isolated incident or whatever. But sometimes people need a “warning shot” (it’s too late for me to come up with a decent turn of phrase). Maybe a small fine or suspension is the kind of thing that will make him think twice next time. Cynically, the team has too much invested in its players, not just PR-wise, but in terms of money and talent and the future to let them get derailed in drugs and alcohol (if that is where this might go). Less cynically, if Callaspo is prone to making poor decisions like this (again, I’m speculating), then the time to wake him up is now, before it aversly affects his career and his life (and the Law piece leads me to believe that baseball teams aren’t doing much of that with players at this point.

Sory for the fuzziness and fluffiness, I need to go to bed. I remember reading the Law piece when it came out, and it really effected me. It’s funny—while I’ve never been much of a drinker, I always found the over-the-top emotionalism and irrational approach of all the MADD/SADD rallies I had to go to in high school beyond annoying. But Keith Law, many years later, gets me going…