So I had to go talk to the guy on the other side of the restaurant. He was wearing a San Francisco Giants baseball cap, and there aren’t a lot of Giants fans living in the state where the third largest “city” on several autumn Saturday afternoons is the University of Nebraska football stadium, home of the Huskers.

 “So what’s with the Giants hat?” I said.

 “I’m a fan. I can’t deny it,” he answered. “Been so since I was a kid.”

 “Me to,” I said. “I’m pretty sure it’s incurable.”

 “Yep.”

 “So what’s your opinion about Bonds?”

 “Oh, you had to ask that, didn’t you?”

 “Sure.”

“Well, I am just deeply ambivalent. I mean he’s always been a great player, but how can anybody think he’s going to get this record fairly? It’s bad for the integrity of the game. I’ll be glad when he’s done and we can just move on.”

For those who have been living on another planet during the summer of 2007, Giants leftfielder Barry Bonds is nearing the ultimate pinnacle of major league baseball—the hallowed all-time home run record, held for decades by Babe Ruth, and then for the past 30-some years by the revered Hank Aaron. Though proof has yet to surface, it is widely alleged that Bonds’ pursuit of the record has proceeded during the past several years on the strength of a steroid-enhanced physique.

“The integrity of the game,” was the chief concern of my new friend at the restaurant. If you care about baseball, or any other sport, or any other important thing in life, few things are more important than integrity.

In the past couple of weeks it has come to light that one of the senior referees in NBA basketball has bet on games—even some in which he was officiating. League officials, fans, and players are scandalized. The game can have no integrity if you cannot count on officials honestly calling the game as they have been trained to see it. Integrity plummets to the level of a staged wrestling match on cable TV.

It seems obvious to most of us—at least most of the time—that integrity is important. Solomon wrote in Proverbs:

The integrity of the upright guides them,
but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.
. . .
The righteousness of the blameless makes a straight way for them,
But the wicked are brought down by their own wickedness
(Proverbs 11:3, 5).

Who could argue with Solomon? We want to be able to trust others, and we want to be trusted. Yet it is remarkable how easily we humans can be led off course from this “straight way.”

 Not long ago I was pursuing one of my inexpensive and relatively harmless habits: shopping at a local thrift store. I found a windbreaker that still had some life left in it, and as I was paying for it I made a stupid crack about how easy it would be just to wear a jacket out the door without bothering to pay.

“Well, sure, you could,” said the woman at the register, “if you’re willing to besmirch your character for a buck ninety-five.”

I had not been willing to do that, but still, her comment brought me up short. It may be easy to think that honesty in little things isn’t that important—that it’s the big sins that must be avoided. It’s not the misdemeanors but the felonies that matter. But the woman at the cash register turned that idea on its head. If you’re going to “besmirch your character,” you should at least get a decent return on your investment, she seemed to imply. Rob a bank, make millions on some dishonest investment scheme. But squander your integrity for a buck ninety-five? Really stupid.

At first glance, the moderately overweight woman with the unstyled hair, unfashionable jeans, and faded generic T-shirt looked more likely to strikeout than hit a home run. Barry Bonds makes more in a month than she will make in her lifetime. But it doesn’t matter. She’s got my vote to be a member on the all star team of life. She is one who actually has it figured out.

B.W.