Tell your child that Santa Claus exists and you have lied. The aims are clear: you want her to behave better, to believe in a Christmas tradition that makes the holidays more cheerful. You have righteous intentions. Still, you have lied. 

But I won’t castigate parents who lie to their children about Santa or the tooth fairy. These are noble lies–myths knowingly propagated by an elite to maintain social harmony. That’s a clunky, painstakingly formal definition when applied to parents wielding stories about Father Christmas, so let’s zoom out and instead apply it at the intersection of politics and sports, where steroids, sign-stealing, gambling, and Covid-era mistruths combine to tell a story about the dangers of well-meaning deceit.

Noble Lies and Tales from Covid

Noble lies have a rich connection with politics. They are the myths that hold a society together, the narratives that make collective action possible and offer politicians the opportunity to exert control. That last sentence reveals a central tenet of noble lies: they are sometimes good, sometimes bad. They are sometimes purposed toward the collective good; sometimes abused, with only state power or top-down authority in mind.

The notions of the American Dream and the self-made man are sorts of noble lies. I’ll tread carefully here: I am not saying that an American cannot use the structural advantages unique to living in the United States to become nearly anything she desires, be it a movie star, painter, accountant, doctor, or president. Relative to the rest of the world and compared to nearly any other time in history, American upward mobility today is awe-inspiring. In that sense, the American Dream is an absolute truth.

But not really. Of course not anyone can become president; not just anyone can be Brad Pitt. Even in America, there are barriers to these aspirations, if only because your jawline isn’t strong enough. My point, then, is that the American Dream has to be a noble lie, in the most anodyne sense of the word “lie”–it is a narrative told to Americans so that they work harder, strive for greater things, and coalesce around a grand project called America, a sparkling ideal that incentivizes good-natured patriotism and the collective will. 

But not every noble lie resembles Santa Claus and the American Dream. There are destructive ones, too.

In the early days of Covid, Dr. Anthony Fauci promised that “there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to wear a mask.” He reaffirmed that position in a 60 Minutes interview in March 2020. 

But Fauci wasn’t telling the truth: his goal, he admitted later, was to prevent regular Americans from buying up the professional-grade masks that medical workers so badly needed. It was a worthwhile objective–managing a pandemic requires resource allocation–but a damaging mistruth, one that cast doubt on the very experts on whose truthfulness the citizenry was depending.

Fauci wasn’t done, however. As the crisis unfolded and Americans became obsessed with the idea of herd immunity, it fell to Fauci to define when that threshold was met: what share of the populace needed to acquire resistance to the virus for it to fade away? In the early days, Fauci’s estimate was 60 percent. Then it ticked up to 75 percent; soon it was 80-plus percent. Was the good doctor adjusting his expert opinion based on the developing scientific literature? Partly–but also, he admitted, because he felt that the country was becoming more ready to hear the agonizing truth he had known all along: that it would probably take 90 percent immunity for life to return to normal. 

My objective is not to attack Anthony Fauci. I’m a proud both-sideser on his efforts during the pandemic: I think he often provided thoughtful, empathetic leadership but sometimes veered into harmful paternalism. His popularity ballooned amongst Democrats because he was viewed as the antithesis to Donald Trump–but I feel no obligation to like or dislike someone because of their relationship with Trump. There’s room for nuance. My purpose in raising Fauci is not to vilify or praise him, but to provide examples of lying for a “good cause.”

And on that score, we need lots of nuance, because there are beneficial noble lies and costly noble lies. Now, a pressing question: what to do about Shohei Ohtani?

The Ohtani Question

Baseball’s international superstar, the sport’s most stunning attraction since Babe Ruth, appears to have avoided liability in a gambling scandal that could have captivated the world. As of this writing, his interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, has been charged with embezzling $16 million to fund a rampant betting operation. Federal prosecutors allege that Mizuhara placed 19,000 bets–an average of 25 per day–and lost $40 million. Ohtani has not been implicated in the scheme.

But what if Ohtani was involved? Would Major League Baseball pursue a noble lie, a righteous coverup for the good of the game?

If I were MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, I would consider it. Ohtani is not the face of baseball; he is baseball. He’s the only thing keeping a fledgling sport afloat amid the ever-growing popularity of the NFL and the NBA. 

Not convinced of Ohtani’s unprecedented global popularity? Consider these facts:

• 70 million: The number of viewers Ohtani’s introductory press conference with the Dodgers drew last December. The 2023 World Series averaged 9.1 million viewers over five games.
• 8 million: The number of Instagram followers Ohtani has, dwarfing any other baseball player (Mike Trout has 2.2 million) and more than Travis Kelce, Tiger Woods, and Patrick Mahomes.
• $337 million: Ohtani’s economic impact in the U.S. and Japan during the 2022 season–from ticket sales, merchandise, sponsorships, and broadcasting rights–according to a recent study.
• 1st: Ohtani’s position among MLB players in 2023 jersey sales. Last December, his new Dodgers jersey broke Lionel Messi’s Fanatics record for two-day sales.
• 42 percent: The share of Japanese households that watched Ohtani’s 2023 World Baseball Classic Final against the U.S., despite the game taking place at 8 am on a Wednesday in Japan. Last year’s WBC had the highest attendance of any WBC ever, with Japan’s games against Italy and Korea becoming the most-viewed WBC games of all time.

It seems clear enough: Ohtani is the sort of international leviathan that MLB has never seen. As America gradually turns its attention away from baseball, he is simultaneously pulling people back in and pushing the game’s appeal beyond North America.

All of that is why Rob Manfred, upon hearing that his Ruthian dynamo was caught up in a gambling scandal, might have been tempted to go full Dr. Fauci and shield Ohtani, to take measures to ensure he wasn’t ensnared in a federal investigation. Sure, it would have been a coverup, and so often the coverup is much worse than the crime–but noble lies are enticing. 

Manfred could have justified it, just as Fauci justified his righteous lies during Covid. Think about how much baseball fans would lose from Ohtani’s being caught up in this crime. Consider America’s pastime, already on the brink: it might not survive its savior’s suspension or–worse yet–imprisonment. It would be for the good of the game, Manfred might reason. Do it in the name of heaven; you can justify in the end.

Baseball, after all, has already endured one too many controversies. There was the steroids scandal, when all-American stars like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, and Roger Clemens were tarnished and MLB’s appeal took a lasting hit. 

Then came the Houston Astros sign-stealing ordeal, which marred the game just as it was emerging from the dark days of PEDs. That controversy, not as wide-ranging as the steroids scandal, might have been easier to cover up–but the upside of doing so wasn’t as high. Why, as MLB commissioner, nobly lie your way to saving the reputations of Carlos Beltran, Jose Altuve, and Alex Bregman? The cheating was egregious, but the advantage of hiding it in the name of paternalism–in other words, lying to the people because it’s what’s best for them, Fauci-style–just wasn’t there.

There’s a contrast, then, between MLB’s two biggest 21st-century scandals: if rampant steroid use would have been a worthwhile coverup but too hard to execute, the sign-stealing scandal was relatively easier to hide but the benefits didn’t outweigh the costs of getting caught.

This (hypothetical) Ohtani scandal seems to unite steroids and sign-stealing: it would not be terribly difficult to cover up and the upside of doing so would be massive, because the costs of Ohtani’s demise would be unbearable. In other words, the coverup would be worthwhile and feasible, unlike steroids and sign-stealing.

The Calculus of a Coverup

Scandal	Highly beneficial to cover up?	Relatively simple to cover up?
Steroids	Yes	No
Astros sign-stealing	No	Yes
Ohtani gambling	Yes	Yes

To Cover Up or Not to Cover Up?

I still don’t think I, as commissioner, would pursue a coverup. But the calculus involved–the weighing of Ohtani’s importance to baseball and the sport’s centrality in American culture against the level of difficulty concealment would entail–shows why noble lies are attractive in the first place: we think we have higher interests in mind. We think we know better, that we can make this exception to the all-too-basic rule that lying is wrong.

But make an exception to that maxim once and the floodgates open. You will die a thousand deaths before your final exception, your lasting lie, finishes you. And you will probably get caught more often than you imagine.

The preceding paragraph, to be sure, applies much more to government than to sports. A noble lie from Rob Manfred might have unintended consequences, but one from a leading health expert in the midst of a pandemic? The detrimental effects were wide-ranging. For every person who followed Fauci’s instructions in March 2020 and refrained from buying a mask, dozens more lost faith in expert opinions once it was revealed that he had lied. It didn’t matter that his mistruths were purposed for a righteous cause–why believe anything the experts say when they could be fibbing again?

My conclusion, then, is that political noble lies are never so noble. Government officials might fool themselves into believing they know better, that they can socially engineer optimal outcomes with a mistruth here, a white lie there. But they almost never can; almost always their lies haunt them and further erode trust in institutions.

Noble lies in sports are arguably more reasonable. Rob Manfred could rationally reason that little harm would be done by covering up Ohtani’s involvement in a gambling scandal. There’s no reason to give Ohtani the Pete Rose treatment when a useful fall guy–his interpreter–is waiting in the wings. Why take a sledgehammer to an international hero when a coverup would be fairly straightforward and the benefits of doing so would be immense?

But even in sports, exceptions are hard to control. Ohtani might seem like an extraordinary case, worthy of a noble lie like no other player has been or will be. Yet MLB’s getting caught in a coverup would sour young fans on the game forever. Just as in government, the loss of trust is damaging and only correctable over long, long time periods. 

Of course, this is all a thought exercise focused on a hypothetical in which Ohtani was involved in the crime. There’s no evidence that’s the case. But it illustrates the faulty reasoning of public officials who think tweaking the truth can function for the good of the people. That’s very rarely true–and it probably wouldn’t even be true with an all-world talent like Shohei Ohtani on the line.