Moral Quandary

[barrysloate]

Sayhey- I'm going to disagree. Giving up the bat is a noble choice, and a nice gesture. But Dan has no obligation to do so, and is no worse a person for deciding to keep it.

I'm going to tell a story without naming names, but for many it will be obvious who I am talking about. A very prominent collector amassed a world class collection partly by endearing himself to the widows and families of deceased ballplayers. He always told them that he would cherish all the keepsakes that they ultimately gave him for free, and that he hoped to one day build a museum to preserve them forever.

When many years later he sold his collection and kept all the proceeds, I heard that many of these families were quite upset. The point of the story is you don't know what the family will do with Dan's bat. Today it is something they would love to own. Five years from now they might decide they want to sell it. So why should Dan feel obligated to offer it to complete strangers? He might say to them if I ever decide to sell it I will contact you first, and that would certainly be the proper thing to do. But I am suspicious by nature, and wouldn't automatically assume that parting with the bat is the noble gesture. It's his bat to do as he thinks best.

I'm editing this to add I know my example isn't exactly comparable to Dan's, it's just that once you part with the bat you have absolutely no idea what will become of it. Maybe the family will be offered a great sum for it and decide to sell it themselves. You don't know, and it happens all the time.