This conference of prominent psychologists has been brought
together to help Major League Baseball deal with its temperamental
star, Albert Belle. We all have doctorate degrees in psychology,
and we are all professors at prominent universities. We are
certain, therefore, to come up with a correct conclusion.
Because we are scientists, we will use the scientific method to
move toward our conclusion. Therefore, as we help baseball deal
with Albert Belle, we also advance science.
The Question. Can baseball do anything to make Albert Belle stop
having temper tantrums?
Hypothesis. At first there was much debate, and we could only
agree that Albert Belle’s temper tantrums are indeed a scary thing.
We all shared the view that victims of his fury, like Milwaukee
second baseman Fernando Vina, are indeed worthy of pity.
Dr. Huxtable finally put forward a sensible hypothesis. He said
that the league is probably already doing everything it can to
appease Belle’s temper by punishing him with fines and suspensions.
But most of all, he put forward the hypothesis that the league did
the right thing in ordering Belle to undergo psychological
counseling  that is what will most likely work.
Data. One of our top psychologists  Dr. Quinn, medicine
woman  plotted a graph that shows the frequency and severity
of Belle’s temper tantrums. Unfortunately, that graph is not
available to be shown, but Dr. Jack Ramsay summed it up:
"Before he started psychological counseling, Belle had many
temper tantrums. Since he’s started psychological counseling, he
still has a large amount of temper tantrums. After all, the league
just began to administer counseling in May, and since then, he’s
been a part of two incidents. He’s not slowing down Dan, if
anything, he’s speeding up."
Dan Patrick, who attended the meeting to take care of Dr.
Ramsay, agreed.
Analysis. Our data to this point would lead to the conclusion
that psychological counseling will not effectively help Albert
Belle. It has been used in the past, and it has failed. But we all
agree that this does not completely dismiss the hypothesis that
counseling could work.
For example, Dr. Dre reminded us, "There are so many things that
could have gone wrong with this particular counseling, but could
work the next time. Maybe the psychologist used the wrong kind of
counseling. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon counseling all
together."
At that point there were many strong voices of agreement, and we
all began to talk amongst ourselves about how effective counseling
might still be. We were surprised to be interrupted by Dr. Howser,
who gave a stirring speech, which I will repeat verbatim here:
"Ladies and gentlemen, don’t you see that this solution we’re
grasping at is wrong? This is as unethical as putting him in a
laboratory and doing an experiment on him with electric
shocks!"
That statement was followed by a general murmur, with people
whispering, "Why?" and "How?" and "Electric shocks? We should
discuss that." Dr. Howser continued:
"Albert Belle has not signed up for psychological counseling. He
wants no part of his personality changed. He likes having temper
tantrums. They help him intimidate pitchers by giving him a ‘bad
boy’ image. Who are we to say that he should change?" As Dr. Howser
spoke, the murmuring increased.
"But he hit that guy in the face!" cried Dr. Jackson. "That’s
assault! He hurt that guy! Besides, are we really going to listen
to Dr. Howser? After all, Zit Face here has got better things to
worry about, like his junior prom." The laughter that followed was
interrupted by Dr. Howser’s response:
"What Belle did that was wrong was to actually hit that guy in
the face. He should be dealt with according to the things he has
done wrong. Another thing he did wrong was nailing that
photographer with a baseball. But, what should not be punishable is
his personality.
"See, we are getting into a philosophical argument: Is it fair
to regulate something that is not a problem by itself, but causes a
problem down the road? I don’t think it is fair. If we try to
eliminate all causes of problems, then we will try to eliminate the
causes of those causes, and then everything will go to hell.
"An example would be if we illegalized violent movies because
they cause people to be more violent in real life. That could be
taken to an extreme by illegalizing causes of violent movies, which
might be creative people, overly-physical people and greedy movie
people (who want their movies to make money). All of those people
could get psychological counseling. Maybe eventually, everybody
could be the same, and we would have no problems.
"That is where we are headed with this ‘psychological
counseling’ solution. He doesn’t want to change. We are trying to
force him to change because his temper leads to these unfortunate
incidents. But, we can’t go around changing everybody so that every
part of their personality is completely harmless. I say, punish the
individual after he does something wrong. Not before then.
Everybody else, who were spellbound from the beginning, left our
seats to bow down to Dr. Howser, who we proceeded to crown our
ruler. Well, all of us except Jackson, who was then excommunicated
from our society and named enemy number one.
Conclusion. We find that psychological counseling is not the
best way to go, and the league should just continue to fine and
suspend Belle for his "incidents" as they occur.
Dittmer is a Daily Bruin sports columnist.