Paging Igor Smirnov: Major League Baseball may have need of your skills. Smirnov, a psychologist with the Moscow Institute of Psycho-Correction, offered his services to the FBI during the Bureau’s 51-day siege against the Branch Davidians at Mt. Carmel. With his expert advice, the FBI mounted a psywar campaign intended to break the Davidians’ will. Smirnov’s expertise might be in demand again, now that Major League Baseball has adopted Soviet-style “psycho-correction” strictures in its treatment of renegade Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker.

Rocker is a 25-year-old reliever with the mouth of Howard Stern and the self-restraint of — well, of the typical New York Mets fan. During last fall’s National League Championship Series against the Mets, Rocker made disparaging remarks about the Mets and their home city during several press interviews. The rebuttal offered by Mets fans displayed the sophistication for which our cultural capital has become famous: Rocker was pelted with batteries and beer bottles; his girlfriend was showered with beer; and Shea Stadium resounded with profane insults about Rocker’s mother.

Since the New York Yankees subsequently disposed of the Braves with little difficulty in the World Series, it seemed that the Rocker episode would be only a footnote to an otherwise unremarkable baseball season. However, Sports Illustrated’s editorial brain trust sniffed out a potentially profitable opportunity to capitalize upon Rocker’s adolescent resentments. SI sent a reporter to bait Rocker into producing appropriately caustic quotes. The reporter chummed the waters by repeatedly asking Rocker about his experiences with Mets fans and by reciting some particularly bilious offerings posted on an anti-Rocker website. Predictably enough, Rocker responded with sound bites worthy of a barracuda.

New York City is “the most hectic, nerve-racking city,” Rocker complained. “Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you’re [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.” Rocker also complained about the preponderance of “foreigners” in New York, and the fact that a visitor “can walk an entire block in Times Square” without hearing the English language being spoken. Of course, prominent mention was made of the fact that Rocker was an enthusiastic hunter from rural Georgia. Clearly, Rocker was the victim of an exercise in journalistic entrapment, but “hate criminals” such as he can expect no extenuation from the custodians of “tolerance.”

Even President Clinton took a swipe at Rocker, pontificating that “these bigoted remarks were outrageous and unacceptable and send a terrible message to our kids,” and that Rocker “should be appropriately sanctioned.” This from a man who bombs “foreigners” — in Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, and elsewhere — for political expediency.

As the controversy grew, Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig ordered Rocker to undergo psychological testing, the purpose of which, reported the New York Times, was to give him a “chance to prove that, despite the inflammatory remarks he made to Sports Illustrated, he is a rational person.” Rocker was given a Soviet-style choice in the matter: He could consent to the tests prior to being sanctioned by the league, or waive the tests and face immediate discipline. Not surprisingly, Rocker chose to undergo testing.

As sports commentator Bob Klapisch points out, Selig’s edict sets “a dangerous precedent by linking Rocker’s comments to a behavioral disorder that can be treated by medical science.” But Selig is by no means alone in making such linkage. Surgeon General David Satcher recently published a report claiming that 22 percent of all Americans suffer from a “diagnosable mental disorder” at any given time, and that “up to half the population will suffer from mental illness … at some time in their lives.” Cathy Young of the Women’s Freedom Network points out that Satcher’s “findings” offer nearly unlimited “potential for coercive therapeutic intervention in private lives” in the name of “mental health.”

The ease with which public outrage over Rocker’s comments morphed into a “consensus” that the young man was mentally ill suggests that the episode was intended to teach the public a lesson — namely, that “intolerant” people are too sick to be entrusted with certain rights, such as freedom of speech. But not all forms of intolerance betoken such infirmity.

When actor Alec Baldwin told a television audience that Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL) and former Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr should be beaten to death by mobs, nobody suggested that the left-wing actor was in need of psychological counseling. Neither the mass media nor Major League Baseball questioned the sanity of Rocker’s boss, Braves owner Ted Turner, after he made anti-Catholic remarks (including a Polish joke at the Pope’s expense) in February 1999. Rocker — a white, middle-class, gun-owning, politically illiberal native of rural America — was obviously a much more suitable stereotype of the type of people supposedly in need of the forcible ministrations of the “tolerance” police.

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