The Evil That Men Do, Especially Lately

I was idly skimming through Google News, as is my wont, when I saw that a major tech executive had just died at age 62.

I’m 61, so headlines like that catch my eye.

So I dug deeper and learned that he had taken a leave of absence from work for health reasons a month earlier, but the company (and no one else) had specified his cause of death.

He left behind a grieving wife and children, as would be expected.

But the article in the Wall Street Journal also specified something unexpected.

Turns out the exec, whom we’ll call Smith, had an affair of some sort with a woman who was a supplier at a prior employer, and the affair cost him his job.

Turns out that Smith’s tennis partner, Jones, runs an even bigger tech company, was outraged by his firing and brought him on to help run that company.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Now I started to wonder, who’s this Jones guy?

So I Googled him and discovered that he’s a dozen years older than Smith, dates a supermodel, and has been married four times, but not lately.

No wonder Jones was outraged at Smith’s firing and quickly brought him on board.

Now, Smith had assumed room temperature only hours before the stories appeared.

But this is his epitaph: tech guy; husband; father; had an affair 10 years ago and his career was saved by a guy who, um, likes to date.

The Wall Street Journal even included a mention of a statement by a “spokesperson” for Smith, who assured us all that Smith, in his relationship with the woman in question, “did nothing wrong.”

Hey, whatever you say. I’m from New York. I don’t judge.

I mention all this because the grieving widow and just as likely the grieving children of the deceased will surely read the articles in the Journal and elsewhere, detailing, with varying degrees of discretion, Smith’s decade-old dalliance.

That’s no fun.

All this brought to mind, naturally, Bill Buckner.

In case you’re not a baseball ban, Bill Buckner was a world-class first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers and then the Boston Red Sox.

He had never been on the field at the moment when a team won the World Series, but that was about to change in October, 1986.

Buckner’s Red Sox manager, John McNamara, decided to leave Buckner on the field for the 9th inning in Game 6 of the Series, in which the Red Sox were just a few outs away from beating the New York Mets and winning the crown for the first time since the Norman Invasion in 1066.

Famously, Mookie Wilson hit a dribbler down the first baseline, which trickled between Buckner’s arthritic knees, keeping the Mets’ hopes alive.

The Red Sox lost the game and then Game 7 and the entire World Series.

What’s the connection between Buckner and our late, lamented friend Smith, you ask?

For the answer, let’s go into our Wayback Machine to the Friday morning in 1986 after Buckner booted the ball.

Every Friday on NPR’s Morning Edition, then-host Bob Edwards would interview legendary baseball announcer Red Barber for his take on things, and I never forgot what Barber said about Buckner.

“Well, Colonel Bob,” Barber drawled, “it reminds me of what Mickey Owen did in 1944 when he was a catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers and he kicked a dropped third strike into the Dodgers’ dugout, and the Yankees won the World Series.

“It just goes back to what Shakespeare said, Colonel Bob. ‘The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.’ It means that we have to watch our behavior carefully as we go through this vale of tears.”

How’s that for baseball commentary?

The point is that for Smith, and maybe for Jones, the legacy wasn’t just the career, the marriage, and the family.

It was the extracurricular activity a decade ago, in which he “did nothing wrong.”

Rest in peace.

Memo to the grieving family members: for the next few days, stay away from Google News.