The evil that men do lives after them....

This is just a" follow-up post" reflecting on Marc Antony's Soliloquy in Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar: "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." Providentially, yesterday, was the 25th Anniversary of George Brett's pine tar incident. He used more pine tar than was allowed (allegedly) and his game winning walk-off homer instead became just the last out of the game. The evil Yankees won.

But George Brett is a Hall of Famer. He has over 3000 hits, which is way good, and a career batting average above 3oo. But the first thing I think of George Brett is him running crazily and angrily on the field to argue this call. In fact I just found out Amy's Uncle Earl played ball with Brett down in Sarasota in the 70's. Apparently he's a heck of a fisherman and a nice guy. But when he mentioned George Brett, the first thing I brought up was the pine tar incident of 1983 (in which he is sorry for).

Oh the evil that men do does live after them. If you think of Bill Buckner (who had a great career), you think of his error that cost the Red Sox the World Series. Fortunately. If you hear the name Scott Norwood, you think of him missing the field goal that sent the Buffalo Bills to their 4th straight Superbowl loss.

If we only did this with sports figures that would be one thing. But we do this with people who have wronged us as well. I look back on my past and see myself doing this. For instance, I saw a high school classmate's name pop up on facebook and one thing popped in my mind (that was the guy who talked his way out of his responsibility for a ticket only to convince the cop it was solely my fault-its a long story and don't have time to tell it). That's the only thing I remember! of him. One of my college friends showed gracious hospitality to me over the years, paying for expensive dinners (never really sure where he got the money, though), and for a long time-not any more-the only thing that I remembered was his driving past my broken down Volvo in South Carolina.

Everything in us wants to run to the one 'evil' that lives on in our hearts and minds. But I think the gospel enables us to remember the many good things that people do to us as well. And remember those. And again, I would hope that people don't ignore the things I do well, and only remember my failures. So I we ought to do what we expect others to do for us, eh?

Here's the video of George's "evil" that has caused people to forget his great baseball achievements.