Ethos II: The Moneyball Approach
/While pragmatism can win games, it might clash with your lovely rhetorical virtue.
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One of my favorite movie scenes of business meetings—yeah, business meetings—appears in Moneyball, based on a nonfiction book by Michael Lewis. Personally I hate meetings, and I’m no great fan of baseball. But I’ve watched this scene countless times, not just for its flawless acting but for its illustration of two clashing tools of ethos, a leader’s perceived character.
(If you haven’t read my previous post on ethos, you might find it helpful.)
At the end of 2001, the Oakland Athletic’s star player, Jason Giambi, absconded to the New York Yankees. The A’s were a low-budget team that could ill afford to replace this five-time All Star with a player of the same caliber. Hence the meeting with manager Billy Bean (played by Brad Pitt) and his scouts, along with an unathletic recent Yale grad named Pete (Jonah Hill). The veteran scouts argue with Billy and Pete. One side follows baseball tradition, while the other takes a brutally statistical approach.
The scouts represent Aristotle’s arete, the “virtuous” side of the argument. In rhetoric, virtue has to do with the audience’s belief that you uphold the group’s deepest values—in this case, carefully observing players and picking the best ones for each position.
Billy and Pete are on the side of phronesis, or practical wisdom. The practically wise leader solves the particular problem of the moment. Phronesis is the art of contingency, a philosophy that holds every moment to be unique. The phronetic answer to every question is “that depends.” Every pragmatic parent knows that an operating manual that works for the first kid won’t work for the second kid.
It’s hard to assess someone’s character when we see a conflict between values (arete or virtue) and pragmatism (phronesis or practical wisdom). Throughout the nineteenth century, being called “pragmatical” was an insult; “bastard” often followed it.
A pragmatist risks getting a reputation for amorality. In the Moneyball meeting, Billy goes full-on amoral:
“We’re card counters at the blackjack table and we’re going to turn the odds on the casino.”
He’s talking about America’s pastime, virtually its athletic religion! The meeting heats up when Billy proposes bringing on a used-up old player. Why? “He gets on base a lot.”
One of the scouts points out that the man gets on base mostly through walks.
“Do I care whether it’s a walk or a hit?” Billy rhetorically asks Pete.
“No,” Pete replies dutifully. “You do not.”
Billy’s goal is not to win gloriously through athletic feats, fostering the beautiful game. He plans to win through statistics—producing the most on-bases for the least amount of money. It’s as if he and Pete were discussing efficiency modifications in a microchip factory.
Yet we’re supposed to root for Billy and Pete. They’re the underdogs trying to save a sinking franchise. That empathy we feel for them counts as pathos, the rhetorical art that manipulates our emotion. Look at the scene from the standpoint of ethos, on the other hand, and you have to see Billy and Pete as a pair of pragmatical bastards.
I have my own reason for rooting for them. In my last legitimate management job, I faced a corporate virtue/phronesis conflict. While I exceeded my “numbers” there, outproducing the goals that the company had set for me, I failed to conform with the company’s macho, bullying atmosphere. The CEO made fun of me in meetings. I was a nerd who dressed wrong and drove the wrong car. This made me unvirtuous, an outsider, a pragmatical bastard. (Back in the day, a bastard, being “illegitimate,” was the ultimate outsider.) I eventually took my wife’s advice and quit to write a book on rhetoric.
In my past writing, I may have made ethos sound too easy. Simply convince your audience that you know what you’re doing (phronesis), have their best interest at heart (eunoia), and share their values (arete). Practical wisdom, disinterest, and virtue. Craft, Caring, and Cause. Get all three down, I wrote, and you can save the world.
I still believe that. Yet the more I study rhetorical character, the more those three characteristics seem to bump up against each other. They certainly do in politics; I’ll spare you that for now.
In the next post, I’m thinking I’ll explore the unvirtuous side of virtue. I dissed a few saints in the previous letter. Maybe for the next one we should peel back the skin of some leaders from the past. It might make us feel a bit better about the present.
