Progress, Not Perfection

Yankee fans may well remember game one of the 1998 World Series against the San Diego Padres. It was the bottom of the seventh and the score was tied 5-5. There were two outs, bases loaded, and Tino Martinez was at the plate for the Yankees. Two balls and two strikes. The pitch from the lefty, Mark Langston, came in right over the plate for what should have been a called third strike, third out, end of the inning. The only problem was that the umpire did not call the pitch a strike, but a ball – bringing the count to three and two. You may recall how the story ends: With the next pitch, Martinez smacks a grand slam, pushing the Yanks up 9-5. They take the game 9-6 and San Diego, nebbekh, never recovers, with the Yankees going on to sweep the World Series in four games.

Last week, I watched a great feature “Man vs. Machine,” from Jon Frankel on HBO Real Sports. The ’98 World Series is one of the most famous and egregious examples of when a missed call by a home plate umpire resulted in a dramatic reversal of fortune. Home plate umpires, by virtue of being human, are necessarily imperfect. Although Major League Baseball claims a 97% accuracy rate for umpires in calling balls and strikes, third-party analysis of the data reveal only an 88% accuracy rate; that means that one in eight pitches – approximately 30,000 pitches – are called incorrectly each year. More alarmingly, when analyzing the pitches at the corners, within a few inches of the plate, the accuracy rate of the umpires drops precipitously, with 31.7 percent incorrect, or nearly one in three of all pitches. Moreover, Frankel’s report reveals a clear bias on the part of umpires in favor of the home team; for example, game seven of the 2011 World Series between the Rangers and the Cardinals, with fourteen missed calls by the home plate umpire in favor of the home team Cardinals who, not surprisingly, went on to win. 

The drama of Frankel’s piece is not so much the imperfections of home plate umpires; that fact, unto itself, is neither new nor newsworthy. The intrigue is that technology presently exists whereby balls and strikes can be tracked with pin-point accuracy by something called Pitch f/x – that square box over home plate you see when you watch a game on television. Without much effort, Major League Baseball, could, if it so chose, eliminate all the shortcomings of the imperfect human being behind home plate, replacing him with a machine. Not surprisingly, the sides of the debate are sharply split. Traditionalists continue to tout the precision of umpires and the hallowed traditions of the game. The other side is far less forgiving. As former outfielder Eric Byrnes asks Frankel, “Why do millions of people sitting at home get to know whether or not it was a ball or strike, yet the poor dude behind home plate is the one who’s left in the dark.”

At first blush, the debate is a debate about tradition and progress. Every season brings new technological innovations that affect the field of play. The instant replay in football, baseball, and elsewhere. The line-call technology in tennis matches whereby the ultimate arbiter of whether a ball is in or out is no longer a line-judge but a computer. In soccer, goal line technology that has been introduced into FIFA games more recently. By this telling the question Frankel’s story asks is not one of kind, but degree. In other words, advances in technology already exist throughout the sporting world; it is only a matter of time before yet another advance, the elimination of the home plate umpire, is introduced to America’s favorite pastime.

And yet, upon digging deeper, Frankel’s piece raises a question more subtle, more profound, and of far greater consequence than the balancing act of tradition and change. At the core of the debate, I believe, lies a question regarding the human quest for perfection. There are those who would argue, not without merit, that we should expect perfection, that anything less is unacceptable and if, by means of technology or otherwise, a more perfect game can be played, then we should embrace that as progress towards our desired goal. There are others who would counsel that not only must the integrity of the game and the umpire be maintained, but the mistakes, the blunders, even the blown calls, those too are part of the game. Human error is an implicit clause in the unwritten social contract of every spectator sport – part of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. No different than losing the ball in the sun or the roar of the home team crowd, the imperfections of an umpire, while unfortunate, are part of the game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose – and sometimes it rains – but the game is not the same game without it. One could even go so far as to say that not only are such imperfections part and parcel of the game, but it is actually by way of these imperfections that the intrinsic beauty of the game comes into full view.

Like a jeweler inspecting a precious stone, our focus this past month – culminating in our observance of Yom Kippur this past Wednesday – has been on identifying the flaws and imperfections of our lives, and then looking to remove them. We have taken spiritual inventory, declared guilt, given and accepted (hopefully) apologies – all with an eye to beginning the year with a clean slate. To a certain degree, the premise of the High Holidays is based on the possibility that although it is elusive, a more perfect existence remains our ever-present goal. So with the fast day just hours behind us, this morning I want to offer a sermon from a different point of view, a counter-argument, maybe even a little heretically so, to the mood of the season. Maybe, just maybe, we need to redirect our spiritual search away from the quest for perfection. I wonder if we are missing out on the importance of imperfection, the very thing that, perhaps, makes life worth living.

In the coming days, when we read the story of creation, the awareness of God’s majesty, omnipotence, and perfection is unavoidable. Also unavoidable is the realization that whatever the divine intentions may have been, a perfect creation was not one of them. At the conclusion of every day of creation, God reflects on the fruits of the divine labor – the light, the vegetation, the animals – with the repeated refrain va-yar Elohim ki tov, “And God saw that it was good.” As my late teacher Dr. Tikva Frymer Kensky taught me, the choice of adjective is significant. Creation was not excellent, not fabulous, not flawless, and definitely not perfect. There is actually a word in Hebrew for perfect – tam. We find it in this week’s Torah reading to describe the one thing in this world that is perfect: God. Ha-tzur – tamim poalo. “The Rock – God’s deeds are perfect.” (Deuteronomy 32:4). Our world, however, was not created tam, it was created tov: good, a B-plus, or maybe as high as an A-minus. God is perfect, creation is not. Yes, human beings are created in the divine image, but the promise of divine perfection is not and has never been ours. As Abraham Lincoln once reflected, “God must love ordinary people, he made so many of them.” God could have and maybe even should have created a perfect world, but – for whatever reason beyond our reason – God chose not to. From that very first bite of the fruit of the Garden, and maybe even before, the design flaws of creation, of humanity, have been evident for all to see.

It is a fascinating thought to consider – that the foundation for all of biblical theology is the acknowledgement that a perfect God created an imperfect world. It is a realization that, first and foremost, prompts us as human beings to partner with God to tend, till, and care for creation. It is a realization that also serves to liberate us from the oppressive insistence on perfection in our own lives. Ours is an airbrush era, and we live in an airbrush neighborhood. We are inclined to hide all blemishes, physical, emotional, and otherwise. We share and speak of only the good. “How are you?” “Fine.” “How is everything?” “Great.” If we are on social media, we post carefully curated galleries of our achievements, prides, and successes. We act as if life is perfect, despite the fact that it was never meant to be so. Sometimes life isn’t great, sometimes we are hurting, sometimes rabbis’ sermons wander off track, and sometimes cantors’ voices crack. But there lies not the problem of being human, but the promise. It is the lean of the Leaning Tower of Pisa that makes it what it is; it is in the distinctive mole, not just in the well-shaped jawline, that beauty can be found. Imperfections abound; they make us who we are, this world what it is. They are the flaws that constitute the beauty of life.

In fact, we need look no further than the man of the last forty-eight hours, Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan, to understand the power of imperfection. Dylan himself would be the first to admit that he does not fit into a neat category of classically trained musicians. In his own words: “. . . The Beach Boys, Elton John, Billy Joel. They made perfect records . . . my records,” Dylan explains, “were never perfect.” The resonance of Dylan’s voice has nothing to do with its vocal quality, the enduring value of his most precious melodies has nothing to do with their complexity or structural perfection; even his most devoted fans characterize Dylan’s music as raw and sometimes artless. One shudders at the thought of Dylan auto-tuning his voice as is the common practice of contemporary vocalists. And yet, it is exactly this gravelly and uncooked aspect of his craft that has contributed to the most original and enduring aspect of his art. Like the imperfect improvisations of jazz, Dylan’s music possesses what music critic Ted Gioia calls an “aesthetic of imperfection.” Contrary to a traditional aesthetic in search of polished masterpieces, it is an appreciation of the deeply human element – in music, painting and other endeavors – that makes true art perfect in all its imperfections. (Gioia, Imperfect Art, pp. 67-69)

And what is true of Dylan’s music and of physical beauty is all the more true of life itself. The artist Salvador Dali once counseled, “Have no fear of perfection – you will never reach it.” It is not only unrealistic to seek perfection of ourselves and of others; it is also unhealthy. The most authentic path to finding the truth of who each of us is and who we seek to be will be found in embracing an aesthetic of imperfection – not by covering up our mistakes, sorrows and stumbles, but by acknowledging them. Relationships of value can only be established and maintained by embracing those traits, including imperfections, that mark a person’s individuality. Of course we can seek to improve, of course our relationships need to grow. But the most honest and true and spirited moments in life are inevitably the times when we have tapped into, not avoided, our flawed existence. Those are the moments that make us most human. Yes, we should always learn and improve, but we must seek progress, not perfection. As Leonard Cohen taught, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

The Maggid of Dubno told the story of a great king in possession of many beautiful things. Of all his belongings, his favorite was a beautiful diamond, as bright as it was beautiful and flawless. Each day the king would remove the diamond from his vault, gaze at its beauty and return it for safekeeping. You can only imagine his horror when one day he took it from the vault and discovered a scratch in his perfect diamond.

He sent for all the diamond carvers and all the stonecutters in the land to see what could be done to return the diamond to its pristine state. One by one they came, one by one they shook their heads: the scratch was too deep; nothing could be done.

Just as all hope seemed lost, one last diamond cutter came before the king, requesting ten days to work in private to fix the diamond. As the days passed, the king grew more and more anxious, until finally on the tenth day, the diamond cutter appeared before the King. “Here it is, your majesty” he said and opened the cloth to present the diamond.

The king smiled broadly at what he saw. The scratch was still there, but it had become the stem to an exquisite flower now carved into the diamond. Unable to remove the flaw, the gem cutter had transformed it into something more beautiful than the king ever imagined possible.

I have told the story more times than I can count. Is the king God and each one of us the flawed diamond? Or maybe we are meant to be the king and the scratch in the diamond represents the imperfections of the world around us. I am not so sure, nor am I sure it matters. What does matter is the realization that no diamond, baseball or otherwise, is without flaw. Imperfections abound. They are part of life. So let’s embrace that fact and embrace each other, making the most of this mostly good but not altogether perfect world in which we are blessed to live.