It can be reckless, and depending on the method, revenge can also be illegal.

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But revenge – or at least the threat of it – can also be a very useful tool for regulating behavior. This was especially true in prehistoric times, when our species first began to live in groups, and physical retaliation — or at least the threat of it — served as a significant deterrent.

In fact, these sorts of practices are still employed in the more primitive corners of our present-day existence, such as federal prison or the subject of this particular essay: professional baseball.

RITE OF RETRIBUTION

On the afternoon of July 7, 1987, a rookie pitcher for the Chicago Cubs faced something of a dilemma.

This pitcher, a fellow named Greg Maddux, had been told by his manager that unless he earned a victory in that day’s game against the San Diego Padres, he would be demoted to the minor leagues.

Things started fairly well for Maddux and his team. The Cubs homered twice in the first inning, and they led 4-2 in the bottom of the third when the team’s best hitter – a guy named Andre Dawson – came to the plate. Now, Dawson was responsible for one of those first-inning home runs I mentioned. He was also in the midst of a tremendous season.

But during his second at-bat, Dawson was struck directly in the face by a fastball thrown by Padres pitcher Eric Show. In the baseball vernacular, Dawson was “beaned,” meaning he was struck in the head as opposed to being “plunked” or “dotted,” which would indicate the pitch hit the batter below his shoulders.

Whether the beaning of Dawson was intentional remains a subject of dispute.

The Cubs, however, were furious. They charged at the opposing pitcher, instigating a fairly large fight made more dramatic when Dawson regained consciousness, spit blood onto home plate, and then engaged his own solo mission to try and find Show.

Dawson was ejected along with several others. Show left the game because of an injury.

What happened next was detailed in “Greg Maddux: One of a Kind,” the 70-minute documentary produced by Major League Baseball.

According to the informal codes that govern the game of baseball—its “unwritten rules”—Maddux was expected to hit one of the players in retaliation. A tit-for-tat exchange would demonstrate that hitting a Cubs player in general, and Dawson specifically, carried a consequence.

There was a problem, though. Maddux needed to be credited with the win to avoid being sent down. In order to qualify for the win, he needed to pitch through at least the fifth inning.

Veteran Rick Sutcliffe offered Maddux a solution: Pitch the fourth and fifth innings as he normally would, and then in the sixth, he could do whatever he wanted.

“He looked at me,” Sutcliffe recalled during an interview for the documentary, “and he went, ‘No, I’m hitting the first guy.’

“I said, ‘If you don’t go get three outs, they're going to send you to the minor leagues.’ And with tears in his eyes, he said, 'I don’t care if I get another win.’

“I’m getting goose bumps right now,” Sutcliffe continued. “I can still see his face.”

Maddux didn’t hit the first player the Padres sent to the plate in the fourth inning. He did, however, hit the third. A fastball that struck catcher Benito Santiago square in his hip.

As expected, Maddux was ejected.

As the manager had warned, Maddux was sent down to the minor leagues.

“I certainly would have lost a ton of respect if I didn’t hit anybody,” Maddux says now. “That was way more valuable than any win I could have ever gotten.”

Some will see this story as a testament to Maddux's character. He prioritized sticking up for a teammate over securing the victory that would have benefited him personally.

Others will see this story as an example of the primitive, maybe even barbaric codes that exist not just in baseball but in many competitive sports.

Neither perspective is wrong. Both are, to a certain extent, true.

But to me, this story isn’t about right and wrong so much as it’s a clear example of how revenge functions in the real world and why it can be seen as necessary and even noble.

ROOTS OF REVENGE

For baseball to be played in its current form, the batter must have some assurance that the pitcher will not try to bean him.

For one thing, it’s super dangerous, potentially fatal.

For another, it’s a tactical disadvantage for the hitter. If a batter is afraid of being hit by a pitch, it will compromise his ability to hit the ball with the stick he’s holding.

There are examples of players whose careers were forever altered after being hit in the head by a pitch. They were never able to fully overcome the fear that it would happen again.

It is understandable, then, why intentionally hitting an opponent is forbidden.

This rule, however, is difficult to enforce because it requires officials to judge intent.

How do you determine whether a batter was hit on purpose?

Pitchers are human beings, and as such, they are fallible. They are throwing a spheroid as hard as they can at a target that is 60 feet, 6 inches away at speeds that often approach, perhaps even exceed 100 mph.

Even in suspicious circumstances, a pitcher can create plausible deniability by insisting the ball “just got away from him.”

One solution would be to take intent out of the equation. Just eject any pitcher who hits an opposing batter.

The downside: A lot of pitchers would be ejected for honest mistakes.

Another solution is to leave it up to the umpire’s discretion. In this case, some pitchers who’ve intentionally hit an opponent will get the benefit of the doubt.

This is where baseball’s informal code comes into play.

If a batter is hit by a pitch, one of his teammates may then throw at an opposing batter.

Sometimes, this is done immediately, as it was in the Cubs vs. Padres game in 1987. In other instances, it can wait weeks, months, even years.

Theoretically, the targeting of opposing batters should cease once payback is administered.

Reality can (quickly) get more complicated. Perhaps one team remains adamant that a specific hit-by-pitch was accidental. Or perhaps that team objects to how many times the opponent threw at its hitters before someone finally got plunked. Or perhaps the first plunking was in the butt, the second one up at the head, which would create an imbalance.

Or maybe one of the hitters actually is injured.

Things can escalate. Quickly. You can have full-blown fights and even years-long feuds. These are the outcomes that some people – including those within the game – focus on when objecting to this particular system of retaliation.

Earl Weaver, a longtime manager of the Baltimore Orioles, was famous for his fervent objection to throwing at an opponent on purpose. He’s not alone. Others have been equally adamant that it’s a stupid system that unnecessarily elevates the risk of injury.

• Baseball must end its beanball legacy

  By Buster Olney | ESPN.com

I don’t necessarily think they’re wrong about that. There’s a reason that vigilante justice is not just frowned on, but forbidden.

However, it’s worth noting that this system of retaliation creates an incentive for pitchers to avoid hitting opponents with pitches, or at the very least to be more careful.

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Peaks and Valle

In the 1993 season, a catcher named Dave Valle was hit by a pitch 17 times.

This was the most of any player in Major League Baseball that year, and it was surprising for a couple of reasons.

1. Valle was a solid and experienced catcher, but he was never considered to be a particularly fearsome hitter. He had three seasons in which he hit more than 10 home runs, and never hit more than 13. He wasn’t the kind of hitter a pitcher would want to scare off the plate.

2. Valle was never hit more than nine times in any of the other 12 Major League seasons he played.

The reason that Valle was hit so many times that season was related to one of his teammates.

Randy Johnson.

Now, Johnson was one of the most feared pitchers in the league. He stood 6 feet 10, he threw extremely hard and – at least early in his career – was not particularly accurate.

He did not care about this last fact as much as he could have.

Johnson hit 16 opposing batters in the 1993 season, most of any pitcher in the league. The previous year, Johnson hit 18 opposing batters. This was also the most in the league.

Now, as an American League team, Seattle’s pitchers didn’t bat. But Valle – who was Johnson’s catcher – did.

You see the correlation, right?

Valle certainly did.

“There were a number of times that we had conversations about that,” Valle said during a Mariners television broadcast in 2025.

The following year, Johnson hit just six opposing batters.

Some of this was due to improved accuracy. Johnson walked fewer hitters as well. But a big part of it was Johnson became more careful or, to put it more bluntly, stopped plunking people.

Retaliation generated peer pressure, exerted by Valle, for Johnson to modify his approach. The result was an overall reduction in the number of times he hit opposing batters.

This is not how revenge always works in baseball.

In fact, I wouldn’t say this is how it usually works.

It is more like a cherry-picked example that shows it is possible for retaliation — or the threat of it — to regulate behavior.

On the other hand, pitchers have been known to throw at opposing hitters for reasons that are not nearly as noble as sticking up for an injured teammate.

Perhaps they’re frustrated because they’ve been hit hard either by that player or his team.

Perhaps they didn’t like how someone celebrated a play.

Perhaps they soaked in a whirlpool set to the hottest temperature possible, and then, before donning their uniform, had applied liniment to their testicles to achieve a level of unbridled fury. This was an approach favored by Roger Clemens, according to one passage in Tom Verducci’s book “The Yankee Years.” Clemens was known for not only a willingness to throw baseballs at opponents, but he once took the shattered barrel of a bat and winged it at Mike Piazza.

I’m not defending this system. I’m not saying it should be perpetuated. But by looking at the reasons why this system was created, it provides some insight into the motivations.

Revenge — the act of retaliating for a hit batter by plunking an opponent — was used to solve a problem: Umpires could not judge a pitcher’s intent.

So players began doing that among themselves, and by looking at how they talk about these incidents, you can see how it’s become part of the culture that surrounds the game.

In 1987, a rookie pitcher named Greg Maddux did not throw a pitch at a batter named Benito Santiago because he was bloodthirsty or angry. He did it because he was expected to, and the fact that he was willing to follow through, even though it came at a personal expense, was seen as a sign that he was a good teammate.

“Look, children,” Spade said to the audience, “It’s a falling star. Make a wish.”

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The joke took less than 15 seconds to deliver. It was part of Spade’s “Hollywood Minute,” which was chock full of catty cheap shots aimed at folks in show business.

The audience reacted with a collective “Oh,” which fell somewhere between a laugh and a groan. Murphy was — and is — the show’s most famous alum.

“Yeah,” Spade said. “Yes. That’s right. You make a ‘Hollywood Minute’ omelet, you break some eggs.”

Two days after the show aired, Murphy was calling the SNL offices, looking for Spade. Spade ducked the call. Murphy called back. A couple of times. When Spade returned his call, Murphy was furious.

Murphy then waged a cold war against SNL that lasted more than a decade. It didn’t fully thaw until 2019, when he came back to host the show.

It’s tempting to conclude that Murphy overreacted to a single joke.

But that’s because we tend to see grudges as the result of a specific incident.

That’s not how grudges usually work, however.

The triggering event isn’t the only factor. In fact, in most cases, it’s not the biggest factor.

It certainly wasn’t the case with Murphy’s grievance against the show, which was a launching pad for his career. It wasn’t in my 20-year grudge against my stepfather, either, but I’m getting ahead of things.

Let’s start by looking at the three things that determine not just if we’ll hold a grudge, but how tightly we might cling to it:

1. The triggering event

This is the flashpoint. The thing that gets cited when someone asks, “Why don’t you like such-and-such?” However, this triggering event is often the proverbial straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

2. The surrounding context

These are the 9,999 straws beneath the proverbial backbreaker. Less proverbially, it’s the circumstances surrounding the triggering event, especially our history with the person (or institution) we’re angry at.

3. Your own personal perspective

This has nothing to do with the other party and everything to do with us. We all come equipped with our own vulnerabilities, tendencies, and personality traits. This individual psychology can make us more sensitive or reactive to certain things.

OK, let’s get back to the case study.

The event that triggered Eddie Murphy’s grudge against Saturday Night Live was fairly minor.

Spade’s joke about Murphy came after the less-than-optimal box office returns of the film “Vampire in Brooklyn.”

The context is important, though. Not in terms of Murphy’s relationship with Spade because he didn’t really have one, but with the show.

Murphy: “When he said that (stuff) about my career on ‘SNL,’ it was like, ‘Yo, it’s in-house! I’m one of the family, and you’re (messing) with me like that?”1

Because of his experience on the show, Murphy knew the checks and balances that existed.

“I know that he can’t just say that,” Murphy said. “A joke has to go through these channels. So the producers thought it was OK to say that.”

And then comes the personal perspective. Murphy felt that he’d been ridiculed in a way that was different—more pointed—than former SNL cast members like Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd.

“All the people that have been on that show, you’ve never heard nobody make no joke about anybody’s career,” Murphy said.

It felt not just pointed at Murphy, but personal.

“I thought that was a cheap shot,” Murphy said. “And it was kind of, I thought — I felt it was racist.”

So let’s sort Murphy’s grudge into the three different fuel sources.

1. The triggering event: the joke

“I thought that was a cheap shot,” Murphy said.

2. The surrounding context: Murphy’s history with the show

“It was like, ‘Yo, it’s in-house! I’m one of the family, and you’re (messing) with me like that?”

3. Murphy’s own personal perspective

“I felt it was racist,” Murphy said.

So was Murphy right to be that mad?

I think that’s an unproductive question.

The fact is that Murphy did get very mad for a few different reasons and perhaps a few more he either hasn’t revealed or isn’t aware of.

When it comes to defusing a grudge, though, it’s important to understand the actual source of the anger. This is true both for the person who's holding the grudge and anyone looking to soften it.

Telling Murphy, “It was just a joke,” is unlikely to have much effect. To Murphy, it wasn’t just a joke. He felt he was being singled out in a way that other cast members had not been.

He eventually got over it. It just took a while.

A first-person perspective

Let’s put my own history into this framework.

I held a grudge against my stepfather for a solid 20 years.

The triggering event: My mom concluded that he’d been unfaithful. After he’d repeatedly denied this for two full years, he called her one morning to say he had tested positive for HIV and she needed to undergo a blood test, too. She tested negative, which provided a great deal of relief, but this didn’t erase the fact that (I believe) he put my mom’s health at risk.

The surrounding context: The diagnosis came after two years of increasingly dysfunctional behavior in which he:

• lost his job as a public-school superintendent after scrutiny of his unchecked spending;

• moved out on my mom’s birthday;

• depleted their retirement savings by—among other things—leasing a series of increasingly fancy cars.

I found his behavior wildly hypocritical given how strict and self-righteous he’d acted back when I was a teenager. When I did something he didn’t like, he would call me into his bedroom, close the door, and explain that he would never dream of being as selfish and arrogant toward his family as I was toward mine. He would also ground me, but it was those lectures — and the way he would ramp up the pressure until I cried — that had the biggest impact on me.

My own personal perspective: I tend to feel I am something of a pushover. That I prioritize the needs and desires of others to such an extent that I often don’t know what I actually want. Then, if things don’t turn out as I hoped, I regret not having stood up for myself sooner.

My grudge was not rooted in the triggering event. It was more like the tipping point.

When I heard about my stepfather’s diagnosis, it was one of the only times in my life I felt any real sympathy for him. This compassion, however, was mixed with the anger and fear I felt because (I believe) he put my mom’s health at risk.

What I was really angry about was his refusal to apologize or be accountable for what had occurred. He flat-out refused to talk to me about it.

A little more than a year after he moved out, he invited my brother, my sister, and me to visit him for Christmas. He gave me an email address and asked for an RSVP. I sent a note saying I felt it was disingenuous to have a holiday gathering without first having an honest conversation about what had happened in our family. I told him if he wanted to continue to have a relationship with me, we’d need to have that talk. He never responded to me.

The next time I saw him was two and a half years later at my brother's college graduation. My stepfather walked up to me as if nothing had happened and spread his arms in anticipation of a hug.

My cheeks flushed, I became slightly dizzy, and I remember trying to keep my face perfectly still. Then, I accepted his hug.

Some of that was because I didn’t want to distract from the graduation. Some of it, I feared, was because I still couldn’t defy his expectations. Not even at age 30, knowing the ways he’d hurt my mom.

I spent years resenting not just my stepfather for putting me in that position, but myself. The fact I returned his embrace became Exhibit A of how big of a pushover I was.

So, should I have been as mad as I was?

Again, I don’t think that’s a productive question.

I was that mad. It’s a fact.

To let go of the resentment I carried toward my stepfather, I had to understand where it was coming from.

Some of it was the inciting incident, and the fact (I believe) he put my mom’s health in jeopardy.

More of it stemmed from my history with him, though, going back to when I was a teenager. He wasn’t as honest or as selfless as he’d insisted he was. Worse: He couldn’t ever admit that, let alone apologize.

Finally, I felt a level of shame for never standing up to him. Not when I was growing up. Not when his marriage to my mom collapsed in fairly spectacular fashion.

This stemmed from my own personal perspective, a narrative that I told myself.

In other words, it was complicated.

But grudges usually are. Rarely is it as straightforward as a single event, and it was only after I could see all the things that contributed to my roiling cauldron of resentment that I was able to start turning down the heat.

Reference links

• Does venting anger feed or extinguish the flame?

  Brad Bushman, 2002 | Iowa State

• No health benefits from venting anger

  Baseline of Health Foundation

Over the course of all this stewing, I became convinced that it would have been easier for me to get over it if, at some point along the way, I had been able to express to my stepfather some of this anger I harbored toward him.

You know, read him the riot act after discovering he’d been unfaithful to my mom …

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Or told him he had a lot of nerve expecting me to hug him after she’d finally divorced him …

Or if, just once, I had shouted, “You’re not my real father!” when he grounded me as a teenager before stomping up to my room and refusing to speak to him for a couple of weeks …

I never did any of that. Instead, I kept those feelings bottled up. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to make things more difficult for my mom. I feared it was because I lacked the strength to stand up to him.

Whatever the underlying reason, I became convinced I would have felt better if I had gotten some of this off my chest at some point.

There’s a term for this idea: catharsis.

Aristotle believed in it. So did Sigmund Freud.

Catharsis is defined as the process of releasing a strong, often pent-up emotion, thereby creating a sense of relief.

The premise is that acting on a repressed emotion, expressing it, reduces the pressure that is building up, thereby preventing a more potent eruption later.

This concept has become baked into our language from the expression "blowing off steam” to the belief that you’re better off “getting something out of your system.”

There’s just one problem: For years, social scientists have been showing that this isn’t how anger actually works in human beings.

🧪 Testing, Testing 🥼

In 1959, the psychologist R.H. Hornberger ran an experiment in which subjects had their writing insulted by someone considered to be a peer.

All the subjects were then asked how they felt about the person who criticized what they had written.

Half the subjects were then given a hammer and instructed to pound nails for 10 minutes. The other half were not given a hammer and did no physical activity.

After 10 minutes had passed, the subjects were given the opportunity to insult the person who had criticized their writing.

If catharsis theory were true, the subjects who’d spent 10 minutes hammering would show decreased levels of aggression. In fact, the hammerers showed more aggression.

Another, more nuanced study was conducted in 2002.

• Does venting anger feed or extinguish the flame?

  Brad Bushman, 2002 | Iowa State

The experiment consisted of 600 subjects, each of whom was asked to write a one-paragraph essay on abortion.

The subjects were then told their essay was being swapped with a partner. They were asked rate their partner’s essay on a scale of -10 to +10 and to provide feedback.

The subjects then received their original essay back with marks they assumed were from their partner. The subject’s essay was graded harshly, given a score between -10 and -8. It also included the handwritten comment, “This is one of the worst essays I have read!” The author of the study dryly noted, “Previous research has shown that this procedure makes people quite angry.”

The 600 subjects were then given a series of questions to determine their mood.

They were then split into three groups:

1. The rumination group

   This group was given a punching bag and boxing gloves and shown a picture of their ostensible partner on a computer screen. These subjects were instructed to hit the punching bag while imagining it was the partner who they believed had criticized the essay. The exercise lasted 2 minutes.

2. The distraction group

   This group was also given a punching bag and boxing gloves, but these subjects were not shown a picture of their ostensible partner. These subjects were instructed to hit the punching bag, but were told to imagine they were getting in shape. The exercise lasted 2 minutes.

3. The control group

   This group was given neither a punching bag nor boxing gloves. Instead, these subjects sat quietly for the 2 minutes.

After the test, the three groups were asked additional questions to assess their mood.

In the last stage of the experiment, the participants were told they would be competing against their partner in a test of reaction time. The winner of the challenge would be able to administer an electric shock to the other participant (i.e. the person they believed had criticized their essay).

The experimenters measured the length of “shock” that was administered by the subjects.

Conclusions

The members of the control group — the ones who did no punching — were less angry and less aggressive, meaning they administered less intense shocks in the final stage of the experiment.

The members of the distraction group — the ones who were told to punch for exercise — were not angrier than the control group, but they were more aggressive in the administration of shocks.

The members of the rumination group — the ones told to punch the bag while thinking about their critic — were angrier than the control and more aggressive in terms of shock administration.

The rumination group and distraction group were not significantly different in levels of aggression.

The author of the study concluded that doing an aggressive activity did not lessen the level of anger, nor did it decrease the desire to punish the object of your antagonism. It would appear that instead of getting it out of your system, it created a behavioral trend.

• No health benefits from venting anger

  Baseline of Health Foundation

Closure doesn't require catharsis

I never did yell at my stepfather.

Not even when I flew across the country to interview him in December 2023.

We talked quite a bit over the two days I spent in the Northern California town where he lived. I told him that I had been very angry with him for a number of years. I also took him through the timeline of his marriage to my mom as I understood and gave him a chance to provide his recollection.

He answered every question I asked. He was not, in my opinion, always truthful, but I didn’t confront him on what I believed were lies. I gave him a chance to provide his perspective, and when we were done I thanked him for his time. He never apologized to me.

There was a time when this lack of accountability would have infuriated me. When I first started writing about my relationship with him back in 2019, a part of me wanted to hold him accountable by spelling out exactly what he did.

Back then, I thought if I put the anger I was feeling on the page, it would decrease the space it occupied in my life.

This didn't work any better than hammering nails or punching a bag.

What did work was practicing radical acceptance.

My mother'ssecond marriage was difficult, and it ended in a way that was tremendously painful for everyone involved. I believe that if my stepfather had been honest about what happened, it would have made it easier for me, my mom and my younger siblings. That isn't what happened, though. That was his choice, and nothing I reveal now is going to change what happened.

I can’t force him to show any accountability, and while this lack of personal responsibility can still make me angry, I don’t think about it nearly as much as I used to.

I think that’s because I’ve given up the idea that I would feel better if I just stood up to him.

You don’t deal with your anger by getting rid of it.

You get rid of your anger by dealing with it.

Namaste fools.

Begrudgingly yours,

- dannyo

You start off looking to settle a score. You end up obsessed with getting payback.

Or you own the most iconic sports franchise in America, and you develop a grudge against one of your best players that becomes so intense you wind up giving $40,000 to a degenerate gambler and getting yourself banned from Major League Baseball for the rest of your life. Or two years, whichever comes first.

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We’ll get to George Steinbrenner in a second.

First, I must say I don’t entirely buy the idea that revenge is wildly addictive.

I think we, as a species, are predisposed to wanting payback. Social scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that, in general, humans tend to want to hurt people they believe have hurt them. This likely traces back to primitive times when our ancestors first began living in groups, and turning the other cheek was a recipe for getting your (stuff) stolen. From an evolutionary perspective, it was beneficial to make others think you were the wrong person to (mess) with.

However, most of us experience this desire for revenge without ever acting on it, let alone becoming an indiscriminately punitive maniac. Or if we do act on our resentment, we do so within the bounds of human decency or at least criminal law.

There are some people, though, whose behavior appears more compulsive. They become so fixated on making someone suffer that they behave in ways that ultimately boomerang back on them.

Which brings us to Steinbrenner. The Boss. Before he was a caricature (or a character on “Seinfeld”), he was the famously demanding owner of the baseball team that wears the pinstripes. He forbade players from sporting facial hair and seemed to relish public displays of authority.

He spent the 1980s becoming increasingly antagonistic toward David Winfield, who was one of his very best players. Even now, it’s hard to understand exactly what made Steinbrenner so determined to undermine Winfield.

And boy did he try to undermine Winfield.

“A decade of the worst years of my playing career,” Winfield said during an interview on “All The Smoke” with Matt Barnes. “You can’t tell by my performance … But there were some things, you’d stutter. You can’t imagine.”

It’s a hell of a story that includes three lawsuits, some thoroughly bombastic quotes, and an allegation that Steinbrenner paid a known gambler $40,000 for incriminating information on Winfield’s charity.

Characters

The grudgor: George Steinbrenner

A brassy, tough-talking boss who grew up in Ohio and worked in the shipping business. He came to New York in 1973 as the frontman for an investment group that bought the New York Yankees from CBS.

The grudgee: Dave Winfield

A 6-foot-6 tower of power and one of the very best American athletes of the 20^th century. The Padres picked him No. 4 overall in the baseball draft coming out of the University of Minnesota. Winfield, who also played college basketball, was drafted in the NBA as well. The Vikings took him in the NFL Draft even though Winfield did not play college football.

The backstory

A four-time All-Star in San Diego, Winfield was the top free agent in baseball after the 1980 season.

The Yankees signed him to a 10-year contract that was then the richest in professional sports. The contract famously included a provision for cost-of-living increases, which Steinbrenner (reportedly) did not realize when the deal was signed.1

The contract also required Steinbrenner to donate $300,000 annually to Winfield’s charity.

The turning point

Winfield played great from the start in New York. He appeared in all but two of the team’s regular-season games in the strike-shortened 1981 season. He hit .350 with two doubles and a triple in the first round of the playoffs and made an iconic catch in the American League Championship Series, robbing a home run from Oakland’s Tony Armas.

But Winfield slumped through the World Series, getting just one hit – a single – in his 22 at-bats as the Dodgers beat the Yankees 4-2 in the series.

Steinbrenner did not take the loss well. After the Yankees lost Game 5 in Los Angeles, Steinbrenner said he became involved in a fight with two Dodgers fans in a hotel elevator. Steinbrenner said he broke his left hand in the tussle.

Following the World Series, Steinbrenner publicly apologized for his team’s performance in the World Series.

The grudge

Over the course of the 1980s, Steinbrenner became increasingly combative toward his star player.

He repeatedly failed to make the annual donation to Winfield’s charity. Winfield’s foundation filed suit against Steinbrenner three different times: 1982, 1983, and 1989.

In 1982, Steinbrenner told reporters Winfield “isn’t a winner, the way Reggie Jackson was. Winfield can’t carry a team.”

In 1985, in the midst of an important loss to Toronto, Steinbrenner asked the reporters in the press box, “Does anyone know where I can find Reggie Jackson? I let Mr. October get away, and I got Mr. May Dave Winfield. He gets his numbers when it doesn’t count.”

The situation deteriorated from there.

Following the 1985 season, Winfield had sufficient tenure to void any trade. He made it clear he intended to use that veto to stay with the Yankees.

After Winfield’s memoir “A Player’s Life” was published in 1986, Steinbrenner called his player a liar.

In 1988, Howard Cosell wrote a column stating the Yankees planned to sue Winfield for mismanagement of his own charity. Sports Illustrated dispatched E.M. Swift to cover the rising tensions between the Yankees owner and his star player.2

Swift interviewed Eric Swenson, a paid consultant for Winfield’s charity.

“Steinbrenner’s had auditors and lawyers combing our books for years,” Swenson said. “It’s a case of blind hatred. He’s trying to bring down David any way he can.”

Swift asked Winfield whether he thought Steinbrenner was responsible for Cosell’s article.

“If you can’t trade him, slime him,” Winfield said.

Now, let’s pause here before we get to the conclusion.

It is not uncommon for tension to arise between a player and the owner of the team he plays for. Obvious antagonism is less frequent, but not unheard of.

Usually, it relates to one of two things:

1. The player believes he is underpaid and resents the owner’s unwillingness to rectify this;

or

2. The owner believes the player is overpaid and resents him for insufficient performance.

The conflict between Steinbrenner and Winfield didn’t fit either category.

Winfield was certainly not a bargain, but he was a devastatingly effective hitter. He was very durable, too.

Yet from 1982 on, Steinbrenner was actively antagonistic toward one of the very best players on the team he owned.

I suppose it’s possible that Steinbrenner was using some hard-ass motivational technique in the belief that angering Winfield or making Winfield fearful would make him play better.

But I don’t think so.

I think that Steinbrenner became convinced Winfield had wronged him.

Perhaps it was the cost-of-living increase that was present in Winfield’s contract. Maybe it was the World Series slump in 1981, and Steinbrenner felt he was owed better performance. It could be that Winfield was simply a convenient scapegoat for Steinbrenner after the Yankees missed the playoffs each of Winfield’s final nine seasons with the team.

Whatever the reason, Steinbrenner was searching for ways to harm his employee, and now we’ve reached the part of the story where Steinbrenner’s fixation boomeranged back on him.

The conclusion

Howard Spira was connected to both men.

He has been described as a volunteer publicist for Winfield’s charity. However, at some point, Winfield paid him $15,000. Reportedly, Winfield owed this money to his agent, Al Frohman, who asked it be directed instead to Spira.

Spira was also a gambler. And an informant for the FBI. And someone who would eventually be jailed for extortion.

That was only after Spira had received $40,000 from Steinbrenner, allegedly in exchange for damaging information on Winfield.

This turned out to be a bigger problem for Steinbrenner than it was for Winfield.

On March 24, 1990, baseball commissioner Fay Vincent announced he was looking into Steinbrenner’s relationship with Spira.

By this time the rift between Winfield and Steinbrenner had grown so deep the franchise did not include Winfield among the three outfielders it submitted for that year’s All-Star ballot. This was incredibly petty. Winfield was clearly one of the team’s best players. He had appeared in 12 of the past 13 All-Star games, his only omission coming because of injury.

Then, in May, the Yankees announced they would be trading Winfield to the California Angels for a pitcher named Mike Witt. Winfield initially said he wasn’t going anywhere, implying he would invoke his right to veto the deal.

Eventually, he acquiesced to the deal.

Two months later, Steinbrenner was fined $225,000 for interfering with the trade negotiations involving Winfield.

Then, on July 30, 1990, the hammer fell.

Baseball’s commissioner banned Steinbrenner from baseball for having paid Spira for information to smear Winfield. Steinbrenner could retain his ownership of the franchise, but he couldn’t be involved in the day-to-day activities.

Looking back, some people have said Steinbrenner was happy to leave baseball, given his increased involvement with the U.S. Olympic Committee. If that was the case, it didn’t stop Steinbrenner from filing lawsuits related to his expulsion from baseball.

In 1993, Steinbrenner was granted reinstatement to Major League Baseball, provided he dropped the lawsuits, which he did.

The verdict

There were no winners in Steinbrenner’s vendetta against Winfield.

Steinbrenner wound up banned from baseball. Spira wound up in jail for attempting to extort an additional $70,000 from Steinbrenner. While Winfield remained one of the league’s best players, it wasn’t easy.

“The best part of my career happened after I left New York,” Winfield said during an interview with former NBA player and coach Byron Scott.

After leaving New York, Winfield played another six seasons with four different teams. In 1992, he won a World Series with the Toronto Blue Jays during a season in which he finished fifth in the league in MVP voting.

Winfield retired following the 1995 season. He finished with more than 3,000 hits, a very prestigious plateau for hitters. In 2001, he was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame, and in his plaque, he was pictured wearing a Padres hat.

It was about that time Steinbrenner reached out to his former player. The two met, according to Winfield, and Steinbrenner even apologized for some of what happened. Steinbrenner died in 2010 at the age of 80.

Looking back, Winfield doesn’t know why Steinbrenner acted the way he did back in the 1980s.

“Even when my career was over, and we had discussions, and he apologized, he couldn’t really say what it was,” Winfield said during that interview with Scott. “He couldn’t bring himself to say exactly what it was.

“Everybody can guess, and ‘Oh, he didn’t like your agent,’ or ‘Oh, he didn’t understand your contract.’ There’s no reason to do these kind of things … That was his nature. Some people would succumb to it. They would bow down to it.”

Maybe revenge is addictive.

Certainly seemed to be in Steinbrenner’s case.

When I let my bosses in Connecticut know, the site’s executive editor called me into his office.

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“You didn’t ask for my opinion, but I’m going to give it to you anyway,” he said.1 “You’re making a mistake, and you might wind up covering high-school sports for years.”

He was utterly wrong about this.

I realize you may be surprised to hear me say that, given that ESPN.com is only the most trafficked site in the world, and newspapers are something of an endangered species.

But I wasn’t going to become a reporter if I stayed at ESPN.com, and reporting is absolutely what I wanted to do.

So I did. And after three years of covering high-school sports, I progressed to covering the Seattle Supersonics. And then the Seattle Seahawks. And then, hosting a radio show in town.

As my career progressed, I would occasionally think back on that conversation with my former boss. I derived an embarrassingly significant amount of satisfaction while thinking about how wrong he’d been.

I found myself thinking about that former boss for a different reason this week, though, after I stumbled across an interview with Jeremy Lin.

The former NBA guard was hurt by something one of his former coaches had said. He carried that resentment around for years until he finally started working with a sports psychologist, who instructed him to reach out to the coach.

I wrote a full account of Lin’s experience here:

This got me thinking about my former boss.

He was the guy who hired me, fresh out of college, to work at ESPN.com. He not only offered me the chance to relocate to the company’s headquarters in Connecticut but also got the company to pay my moving expenses. They transported my little red truck for me.

While my boss could certainly have been more tactful in discussing my decision to leave, I don’t think he was being malicious when he told me I was making a mistake.

I can see why I took it personally. But I also never let him know. I did not sustain the relationship.

The last time I talked to that editor was 2002.

He had left ESPN by then, too, and he was working on the sports section of a newspaper. He called to ask if I would write a freelance story on a high-school football game. I politely declined, having just been promoted to an NBA beat.

I need to give him a call. In fact, I don’t even need to bring up what bothered me back then. I’m already past it.

Is there some perceived slight or disrespect that you’ve held on to for years without ever letting the other person know?

Lightly recruited in high school and undrafted coming out of Harvard, he turned the entire NBA on its ear during one unforgettable month back in 2012.

Lin scored 20 or more points in each of the first five games he started for the New York Knicks. He made a game-winning 3-pointer against the Toronto Raptors, and he outscored Kobe Bryant 38 points to 34 in a duel at Madison Square Garden.

He led the Knicks on a seven-game win streak, and the team went 9-3 heading into the All-Star break, a streak that has its own name: Linsanity.

While that was certainly the high point for Lin’s career, it was a long way from the end. He ultimately played 10 years in the NBA, signing two different three-year contracts and earning more than $60 million while playing for seven different teams.

But when it was over, he found himself ruminating about the chances he didn’t get, the doors that never opened.

Why wasn’t he a coveted recruit coming out of high school? He was captain of a team that won the state title and was named California’s Division II player of the year.

And why couldn’t he get back into the NBA in 2020? He went to the developmental league, after all, averaged 19.8 points, and still couldn’t get a sniff from any of the country’s top teams.

Lin described what happened next when he went on Dwight Howard’s podcast. The clip I’ll be quoting from starts at 16:40:

“So I found a sports psychologist,” Lin said.

Lin’s first assignment: Write down a list that included everyone who’d hurt him in his basketball career.

“I was like, ‘What?’ “Lin said.

The result was a fairly long list that took a lot of mental energy.

That was nothing compared to the psychologist’s next assignment: “Call them and explain to them how they’ve hurt you. Not in a toxic way, but have a grown, adult conversation, and just let them know.”

Lin knew it would be awkward. He resisted doing it.

“He made me do it,” Lin said. “All of that wasn’t for them, it was for me.”

As I listened to Lin describe this, I was struck by the courage it took not just to make those calls, but to talk about it afterward. I’ve found professional athletes to be extremely leery of admitting that anything even bothers them, let alone explaining the steps they took to get over it.

But as Lin continued, it was clear he didn’t air anyone out or even vent. He was explaining how helpful it was for him to talk about the impact these decisions had on him.

There was one conversation, in particular, that made it clear why the exercise was so worthwhile: Kenny Atkinson.

“Kenny was my guy,” Lin said.

Atkinson was an assistant coach for the Knicks when they claimed Lin off waivers in 2011. He was the one who arrived early to work out with Lin before practice and stayed late doing shooting drills afterward.

“We just did this for months and months,” Lin said, “and then Linsanity happened.”

In 2016, Atkinson was named head coach of the Brooklyn Nets, who promptly signed Lin to a three-year contract.

Lin was injured for most of his first year with the Nets, suffering from hamstring issues. The following season, he suffered a season-ending knee injury on opening night. The following year, Lin was traded to Atlanta, a team that was not trying to win.1

It was devastating for Lin. He was trying to resuscitate his career after two years of injuries, and now he’d have to do it on a team that was tanking. What made it worse was that Lin heard, before the trade, Atkinson had told the front office he did not believe Lin was the same player after the injuries.

Lin brought this up when he recalled his phone call with Atkinson: “I felt like we were so close and you were my head coach. I wish you could have given me a heads-up, or somebody could have told me straight up.”

Lin was not ready for Atkinson's response.

“He was like, ‘You know what, Jeremy? You’re right. Maybe I gave up a little too early. I didn’t realize you could come back from the injury and play the way you did. So I take that. I’m sorry.’ “

Not everyone gets that kind of closure. Spelling out your feelings doesn’t guarantee a satisfactory response.

But in this case, it repaired a breach. One that Atkinson didn’t realize had occurred and would have never known about if Lin had not called to talk to him.

And now?

“We’ll still text, and we'll still keep in touch,” Lin said. “But if it wasn’t for that, maybe I might not have spoken to him the rest of my life without him even really knowing.”

It’s really a best-case scenario.

“He made my career,” Lin said. “For us to be able to reconnect and be cool again after that was priceless.”

Here’s another link to Lin’s interview:

16:40 — Lin talks about his work with the sports psychologist

24:40 — Lin describes his reconnection with Kenny Atkinson

Most are fine.

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Some are bona fide jerks with a strong streak of high-school bully.

The same pattern holds true in the larger world, I suppose. The difference is that as a reporter, you have a pretty clear path to striking back: You can write about what a jerk so-and-so was.

That’s exactly what sports writer Jeff Pearlman did in 2008 with Will Clark, a former Major League Baseball player. But hearing him talk about how he now views that story shows that acting on a grudge usually leads to regret.

📙 Throw the book at her

Amy Zanelli, a district court judge in Pennsylvania, kept a literal book of grudges in her office.

This has become part of a professional problem for her, as she has been charged with violating the state’s rules of conduct for district judges.

According to the charging documents, Judge Zanelli “possessed what she termed a ‘Book of Grudges’ in her office, which had the appearance of an ancient leatherbound tome with papyrus pages.”

First of all, shout-out to whoever wrote this document because “leatherbound tome with papyrus pages” is flat-out lyrical.

Now, I must confess that I possess a 5-by-7 notebook that has “PETTY VENDETTAS” printed in shiny gold on the cover. However, I’m not a district court judge.

Justice is supposed to be blind, right? Not seething with anger.

The judge had allegedly made some entries in the book, including referring to one local attorney as “just a dick.”

Other issues spelled out in the charging papers included a calendar with sexually explicit jokes, her use of profanity and unauthorized absences. There was also an instance in which Judge Zanelli ordered a defendant, who was representing himself, out of the courtroom during testimony. In fact, she moved his chair into the hallway, told him to sit, and then denied him the chance to cross-examine the witness.

There has been no resolution to the charges, and Zanelli continues to sit as a judge in the Bethlehem area.

In 2008, he did something that I had always (quietly) dreamed about doing.

He wrote a story in which he absolutely let loose on someone who had treated him poorly:

Will Clark is a former major-league baseball player, a smooth-swinging first baseman who began his career in San Francisco before moving on to Texas. Pearlman found Clark particularly difficult. The story he wrote for Deadspin spelled out why.

Over the past 20 years, I have felt a fairly deep-rooted desire to write something similar about my stepfather.

To enumerate each and every way I felt he had wronged my family in general and my mother in particular. To let the world know just what a hypocritical jerk I felt he was.

Now, obviously, the stakes for my vendetta were more personal, but my motivation would have been the same: score settling. Fighting back. Standing up for yourself.

The way that Pearlman feels about that article now, however, makes this a bit of a cautionary tale, though.

Getting payback seldom turns out to be as satisfying as we think.

First, I want to link to the video that Pearlman made about this particular story. I do that for two reasons:

1. It’s a primary source for this post.

2. Pearlman himself is a fantastic storyteller, and his attempts to imitate Clark’s voice are — in and of themselves — worth the time it takes to listen.

OK. Now that I’ve tried to be ethical, let’s get to the story.

🥩 Beef background

August 26, 1997 – Pearlman was 25 years old and in his second year covering baseball at Sports Illustrated. He was assigned to write a story on the Texas Rangers, whose roster included Clark. Clark was recovering from a broken foot, and as reporters stood around Clark, asking questions about his recovery, Pearlman threw one in.

“Does it hurt?”

Clark paused, looked at Pearlman’s press credential to determine his name, and then responded: “Jeff, I broke my effing foot!”

Only he did not say effing.

“It was mortifying, and it was horrible,” Pearlman said in a recent podcast episode talking about his history with Clark. “And Will Clark just kind of moved on and snickered at me, and I shuffled off. And that was the beginning of my very, very strong disliking for Will Clark.”

Spring training 2000 – Pearlman saw Clark in spring training. By this time, Clark was playing for the Orioles, and after confirming Pearlman’s identity, Clark asked if he had written a specific story on John Rocker.

If you’re a sports fan, you probably know what story I’m talking about. If you’re not a sports fan, John Rocker was a tightly wired relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves, whom Pearlman had profiled for Sports Illustrated.

In researching the profile, Pearlman spent time with Rocker in Georgia, where he made racist and homophobic statements. Pearlman (accurately) reported what Rocker said, which led to a great deal of condemnation and what turned out to be a 14-game suspension from the league.

Clark took issue not with what Rocker said, but with the fact that Pearlman reported it.

“Jeff (flipping) Pearlman,” Clark said, mispronouncing the word flipping. “Now, why the (heck) would anyone in here want to talk to you?”

2006 – Pearlman was in Arizona doing research for the book he would write on Barry Bonds (which is exceptional by the way).

Clark had retired by this point but was still working for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Pearlman asked if Clark would be willing to answer questions about Bonds.

Clark agreed to talk to Pearlman.

When Pearlman began to ask questions, Clark provided only one-word answers. Pearlman eventually asked why Clark was being non-responsive.

Clark’s response: “I would never talk to you. Look at what you did to Rocker. You think I forgot that? You think you could walk in here and talk to me?”

This time, Pearlman pushed back in what he now calls one of his favorite moments from his sports-writing career.

“I actually said something like Will Clark (would). ‘You know what, I don’t (effing) need this. I don’t have to talk to you.’ And I walked off.”

At the time, Pearlman found this very satisfying.

“You have these moments as a writer, now and then,” he said, “when you feel like Joe Frazier beating someone up and you feel pretty good. And in that moment, I felt really good.”

The reckoning

In 2008, Pearlman wrote the piece that Deadspin published under the headline “Will Clark was a cackling douchebag.”

“Even though I didn’t write the headline, I loved the headline,” Pearlman said of the piece. “To me, Will Clark was a cackling douchebag. And (forget) Will Clark and (forget) you and go to hell and I’m glad I wrote this about you and you shouldn’t have treated me that way.”

This is very much how I imagined I would feel if I published a piece calling my stepfather a self-righteous orifice.

The long tail of regret

Earlier this year, Pearlman was criticized by former NBA player Matt Barnes, who hosts the popular podcast “All The Smoke.”

Barnes observed that Pearlman was seemingly always negative in his observations and reflections on sports and the athletes he covered.

“My initial reaction was, ‘Go (eff) yourself,’ “Pearlman said of the criticism. “But I thought about it. Like, I really thought about it, and he’s not without a point.

“And then I started thinking about Will Clark.”

More specifically, he began looking at other aspects of Clark’s life beyond their interactions, beyond the game of baseball.

Clark has a son, Trey, who was born in 1995.

Before turning 3, Trey was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum, and much of Clark’s post-baseball life has been devoted to his son, both in celebrating his accomplishments and spending time with him.

Clark and his wife have also spent years raising awareness about autism and working with organizations that support individuals with autism and their families.

“You see this other side to this guy you called a cackling douchebag,” Pearlman said. “And yeah, Will Clark was definitely a douchebag to me. He definitely was not nice. But people are complex, and people are layered, and people are nuanced, and I just think in hindsight, what Matt Barnes said actually resonated with me.”

“In hindsight, referring to Will Clark as a cackling douchebag in print or on screen was kind of a low moment for me,” Pearlman said. “And dogging him all these years is shameful on my part. And that here’s a guy who might have not been perfect … but sitting here in 2026, what I see in Will Clark is a really devoted dad of two and husband and a guy who wants to do right.”

This really resonated with me.

Pearlman had intensely negative feelings toward Clark, feelings that weren’t unjustified, by the way. But by taking a bigger picture view of the person whose words stung him, he was able to dilute the hostility he felt.

This is where the parallel with my stepfather becomes more strained.

His actions did lasting damage primarily to my mom, but also to me, my brother, and my sister.

The closest I can come to cutting him some slack is to acknowledge that he grew up in a chaotic home, which undoubtedly affected his ability to relate to others.

That doesn’t absolve him of responsibility. It certainly doesn’t explain why he’s never acknowledged let alone apologized for the pain he caused.

But people are complex.

Even damaged ones.

Maybe especially damaged ones.

And while I’m sure I would get some satisfaction from publishing a story whose sole purpose was to enumerate my stepfather’s misdeeds, I’m pretty sure that down the road I would feel some level of regret about that.

It certainly wouldn’t change anything that happened, nor would it make my stepfather any more likely to take responsibility for what he did.

I’m still writing about him, but my main goal isn’t to detail what he did, but to explore why I fixated on it for as long as I did, the effect that this grudge had on me, and what ultimately allowed me to let go.

How do I know it’s about me?

Well, my name is in the title.

It also includes an analysis of a few specific things I’ve written, my words displayed and occasionally highlighted in a split-screen format. There’s also a literal receipt. He shows proof of a $5 refund I provided three years ago for a subscription he’d purchased to my personal newsletter.

Watching the video was an unnerving experience. There are two points, specifically, where he cursed at me while speaking directly to the camera.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve spent entirely too much thinking about this. While doing so, I realized that this incident offered a different perspective on the topic I’ve been exploring here.

I’ve written an awful lot about the grudges I’ve held, the impact that’s had and the steps I’ve taken to let go.

In this case, it would appear there’s a grudge being held against me, and I’m faced with a decision of what – if anything – I should do about it.

⚠️ A disclaimer ⚠️

I’m going to link to the video here. Before I do, I want to be explicit: I do not want anyone reading this to comment on it or interact with my former co-worker in any way.

While his name isn’t on the YouTube account, his identity is not a secret. I’m not interested in a critique of his opinions, his presentation or his motivation. In fact, I’m explicitly asking you not share those.

I am writing about how I am working my way through this emotionally fraught situation, and while you’re free to critique my actions or my own approach, I do not want that scrutiny applied to him. For my part, I’m going to try my best not to be judgmental of my former co-worker.

OK. Here’s the video:

📖 The backstory

I joined 710 ESPN Seattle as a full-time radio host in spring 2013, leaving my job covering the Seahawks for The Seattle Times. I was paired with Brock Huard on a show that aired 9 to noon on weekdays. The guy who made the video above was the producer of that show, a role he’d held for two years before I started.

As a producer, he was responsible for arranging interviews and organizing the show, and while he wasn’t a host, he was free to interject on-air.

I worked with him on a daily basis for about a year. We were never part of the same show after that. His contract with the station was terminated in 2020. I left the station the following year.

I last spoke to him three years ago. I called because I had noticed he was arguing with another subscriber in the comment section of my personal newsletter. I thought a personal phone call was the most respectful way to try and establish boundaries. He said I was reprimanding him. We have not spoken since that day.

Two weeks ago, a former colleague of ours who is still at the station, alerted me to the video, and while something on YouTube isn’t exactly the most pressing issue in our world, it does strike me as something that is unique to this particular era of human history.

⚖️ Specific objections

In the video, he points to three specific things that I did:

1. He believes I characterized him as a villain in an essay I wrote about my worst day in radio. That essay was first published in December 2022 on my newsletter, The Dang Apostrophe. A later version was published in Seattle magazine. Here’s the text from the initial newsletter essay:

   

2. Several months after the essay was published on my newsletter, I noticed that there was an argument going on in the comments. I realized that my former co-worker was arguing with another subscriber. I called him on the phone. My plan was to respectfully ask that he not argue in the comments of my articles. He felt I was reprimanding him. The conversation did not go well. I asked him not to comment any more and refunded his subscription.

3. Last year, I was asked on Twitter if I thought this producer would have been a good fit on “Danny, Dave and Moore” which is the show I hosted on from 2014 through 2019. I responded: “Depends on what era of (the producer) we’re talking about. He became increasingly volatile.”

Those are the triggers he identified, but he was also pretty clear about what he found most bothersome:

“I don’t know if you’ve gone out of your way to trash everybody post-exit. Maybe. But the fact that you can’t find one fucking thing nice to say about me is fucking hurtful. Like what the hell is your problem? What did I do to you?”

This is the point in the newsletter where I could react to the issues he brought up.

And if I was writing this as a response to the video, this is where I would do that.

But I’m not writing a response to what he said.

I’m writing about what — if anything — I should do in response.

That requires me to balance what I’m feeling (i.e. what I want to do) with some real-world pragmatism about the potential results of the different approaches I could take.

🛋️ Welcome to my psychologist’s office

Initially, I felt a certain amount of disbelief not just at the content and style of the video, but the fact I was being singled out.

I was not involved in any way with his departure from the radio station. Not the events that led up to it. Not the events that followed.

While our last conversation had not gone well, I didn’t realize how much antagonism he felt toward me specifically until I saw the video.

I was mad at what he said, and a little bit scared. I certainly didn’t think I was attacking him in the essay I wrote nor in my Twitter comment, but even if I had been, his response struck me as disproportionate. He addressed me as an “unforgiving little prick” and rhetorically asked, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Finally, I didn’t think the way he characterized the situation was entirely accurate. At the very least, I have a significantly different perspective on what occurred.

Even as I’m writing this, I can feel the visceral pull to defend myself. To push back against what he said, and that is absolutely what I wanted to do.

It is the approach that I have taken in the past.

That’s why I know better than to act on this impulse. I’ve learned from experience that a response is more likely to escalate the issue than resolve it.

A response is also more likely to draw attention.

While an online spat between two former Seattle radio personalities isn’t exactly big news, it will probably attract some onlookers who will inject their own opinions about either the issue or the individuals involved.

That’s not the outcome I want.

So I should just ignore it, right?

That’s the most common advice I’ve received not just about this situation, but any antagonism I’ve faced online. Don’t feed the trolls. It only matters if you let it.

There is some validity to this, especially on the Internet where directing attention toward conflict is like feeding oxygen to a flame.

By saying nothing, I would let his antagonism just hang there with nowhere to go.

There are two downsides I see, though:

1. I don’t get the emotional release that comes with speaking up for myself;

2. He might continue to stew, maybe even get angrier if the issue isn’t addressed. While the issues I had with my stepfather are not at all analogous to this situation, at the heart of my grudge against him was the anger I felt at the fact he never talked about what happened.

That brings me to the third option: a more conciliatory approach.

I could acknowledge the objections he has made, and while I didn’t intend to cast him as a villain, I can recognize the pain my words have caused him.

I’ll be transparent now: This is the least appealing option to me from an emotional standpoint. It feels passive, weak. Furthermore, it feels like something that has been a tendency of mine.

I can be overly accommodating. I can over apologize. I can be hesitant to draw hard boundaries on what I’m willing to do, and this can lead to situations where I make myself miserable by fulfilling the commitments I’ve been asked to take on.

If I keep following this line of thinking I’ll talk myself into the idea that I absolutely should stand up to this former co-worker who made this video about me. If I work at it, I can become convinced it’s a matter of principle.

But if I take a beat, press pause on that inner-monologue, and take a few deep breaths I can find the room to be a little less emotional, a little more pragmatic.

This situation is not necessarily a microcosm of my life. In fact, if I look at it with a more discerning eye, it doesn’t have all that much to do with the things that I have a tendency to struggle with.

This is not a person I’ve spent years accommodating nor is it someone I’ve had to tiptoe around. We don’t work together anymore, and while we were supportive of each other early in my time at the radio station, there has been significantly more distance over the last six years particularly.

What is the end result that I want here?

I don’t want this to be a conflict.

And while I can only control half the equation in that regard, I do have control over that half.

So I’m not going to object to what was posted about me. I’m not going to argue over the timeline or the characterizations. I’m not going to add any antagonism.

Instead, I’m going to address the things that upset him.

I wished that I hadn’t used his name in that essay I wrote about my worst day in radio. I regret that I used “hissed” to describe the sound of his voice in my headphones. I’m sorry I didn’t make it clear that I never, ever thought any of this was malicious. His response was a natural reaction to my honest mistake, and while the essay I wrote was intended to be about my own growth, I can see why he felt it was unfair to him. I’m sorry for how I wrote it.

I also regret the Twitter comment in which I described him as “increasingly volatile.” It was an off-handed remark and not something I thought was overly pejorative. I think there were times that I was “increasingly volatile” while working at the radio station, but applying that label to him was entirely unnecessary and I can see why it bothered him. I’m sorry for posting it.

I was bummed to see the video. It bothers me to be blamed for the pain someone else is experiencing, and while my natural inclination was to defend my own actions by pointing to the purity of my intentions, I can see and hear that he feels like he was left hung out to dry.

That’s too bad. He has a great sense of humor, is a very talented musician and he shares my appreciation for the vocal cadences of the pro-wrestling manager Jim Cornette.

If I write about my former co-worker again, I’m going to be more respectful. I’m also going to keep an eye out for opportunities to mention positive memories because there certainly were some.

I don’t know how all of this is going to land, but that’s always the case when you’re trying to plot a course through emotionally fraught terrain.

Emotions shouldn’t be used as a compass in this sort of situation. It’s best to acknowledge them first, and then pick out the destination where you really want to end up.

It might take you a while to get there. I’ve been working on this particularly route for two weeks, but I think I’ve got my route plotted out. I’ll let you know how it goes.

That’s really impressive.

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Especially when you consider the average life span for a crow is seven to eight years.

Crows, it would seem, are more than just single-generational haters.

At least that’s the conclusions drawn by a fascinating and slightly hilarious experiment at the University of Washington, which just so happens to be the school I attended. Using an ogre mask and a keen ear, John Marzluff demonstrated that crows have long memories and something of a short fuse for specific people who cross them.

It also – in a somewhat roundabout way – shows why we humans might harbor inclinations for payback when we feel we’ve been harmed. But before we get that far, I need to tell you about these birds.

🔬The experiment 🧪

John Marzluff is a professor of wildlife science at the University of Washington, an author and someone who has a special interest in and affection for crows. He’s gone so far as to dub them “black-feathered practitioners of life-long learning.”

In 2006, he set out to find out just how long crows would stay mad.

He did this with a highly technical tool:

That’s a plastic mask.

That’s Marzluff wearing the plastic mask in a screenshot from a UW TV report on the experiment.

While wearing the mask, he went out on campus and captured a total of seven crows.

This was done in broad daylight in full view of the crows in the area.

Now, as you may know a group of crows is known as a murder, but in this case, that is not any foreshadowing.

The captured birds were tagged with a band affixed to their leg and then free.

However, the crows did not exactly move on.

The reason we know this is because periodically over the next 17 years, Marzluff or a member of his research team would don the caveman mask and trudge over to the fountain where they’d be scolded by the crows.

“We learned when they see the mask of the person who had captured them, they go crazy basically,” Marzluff told the UW TV interviewer. “They dive at us and attack and shriek.”

Scolding is not a metaphor.

It’s the term used to describe the aggressive cawing that crows engage in, and any time an experimenter walked by with the mask, it spiked when compared to the reaction to non-mask-wearing pedestrians.

Seven years after the initial abductions, experimenters were scolded by approximately half the crows they encountered. It then began to taper off. However, it wasn’t until 2023 – 17 years after the triggering incident – that Marzluff was able to walk the area in the ogre mask without any of the 16 crows he encountered reacting to his presence.

Crows, it seems, have long memories. Not only that, they are able to communicate a perceived threat to other crows, who not only take note, but echo the alarm.

It’s kind of awesome when you think about it. I’d love it if a murder like that had my back!

😡 Does it qualify as a grudge?

Well first, we need a working definition.

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines a grudge as “a feeling of deep-seated resentment or ill-will.”

Oxford Languages goes a step further: “a persistent feeling of ill-will or resentment resulting from past insult or injury.”

I’ll also throw in a more plain-speaking definition from psychologist Angela Duckworth, who offered that “roughly speaking, a grudge is the opposite of forgiveness” during an episode of her podcast, “No Stupid Questions.”

In this case, the crows demonstrated sustained hostility toward a figure that had committed a clear transgression against members of their community.

Not only that, but the hostility persisted beyond the generation of crows who were subjected to or witnessed the initial abductions.

Yes, I think it’s fair to say that crows are capable of holding grudges, which means they’re absolutely my kind of birds.

❌ Disclaimer: I’m about to make this about me ❌

I have a fairly good memory.

It’s not photographic certainly, but it is — based on my own experiences — better than average.

Over the years, I have used my memory as a filing system for the various instances in which I feel I’ve been harmed or hurt.

I’ve even made it into something of a bit by doing things like expressing my disbelief at the high-school P.E. teacher who logged my height as 4 feet 11 and one-half inches at the end of my ninth grade year.

This did in fact happen, and I have joked that because she refused to round up and list me at 5 feet, I hope she died old and lonely. I didn’t really mean that, though. It’s just a humorous punchline to the story.

Other grudges have been more serious.

More specifically, I harbored a deep resentment against my stepfather after he betrayed my mother and spent through their shared retirement savings. I am not entirely embarrassed about the fact I outlasted the crows on that one, hating my stepfather for a solid 20 years.

I would joke that this grudge and the other, less serious grievances, saying it was evidence that I was ugly on the inside.

Being more transparent, I knew that this wasn’t entirely healthy.

I talked to therapists about it.

I did exercises to try and release or at least dilute the resentment I felt.

This would often times help for a little bit, but pretty soon I’d find myself ruminating again about what my stepfather had done and imagining ways I might get back at him.

When this happened, I would feel like there must be something wrong with me because I had been able to actually let go of those emotions. Twenty years after my Mom divorced my stepfather, I still wanted to scold him in public or — better yet — swoop down and peck at his noggin.

I see it differently now.

I think it’s natural to feel hostility toward someone or something you believe has harmed you.

I think it’s an instinct that is wired deeply within us. Something that can be traced back to our very primitive ancestors when reacting aggressively to threats wasn’t a way of life so much as a strategy for self-preservation.

And when that desire for retribution flares up, I imagine a crow squawking at a rubber-masked intruder. It’s a reaction that I’m having in that moment to the memory of someone who might be a threat.

It’s a remarkable piece of psychological programming in some ways. Something that was probably very useful back when our ancestors first began living in groups.

This feeling doesn’t make me a bad person. In fact, it’s part of what makes me human, and perhaps a little bit of a crow!

REFERENCES

• If you think you can hold a grudge, consider the crow | By Thomas Fuller

  The New York Times | Oct. 28, 2024

• “Crows: Smarter than you think” | A video of a lecture from John Marzloff

• “The Crow Whisperer” | UW TV

It wasn’t the content that surprised me so much as the author.

Peter Vecsey is a former pro basketball reporter and one of the most acidic personalities I’ve ever encountered. He is retired now, but as a columnist, he embodied the New York Post’s approach to … well … everything.

I was surprised to see ANYTHING from Vecsey for reasons I’ll eventually get to.

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But after the shock of seeing his words, I felt a tinge of recognition.

His words were exactly the kind of thing I might have said five or six years ago because back then, I felt a respect perhaps even admiration for people who were willing to hold onto their anger over some past slight they’d suffered.

I saw it as a sign of strength.

I no longer feel this way, though, and at a personal level, I’m a lot happier because of that. Before I get to that, though, let’s talk about the grudge in question.

😡 Thirty-five years of animosity 😡

Michael Jordan and Isaiah Thomas are two of the very best basketball players of their generation.

Thomas is from Chicago, and he won two championships with the Detroit Pistons. Jordan is from North Carolina, but he played professionally in Chicago where he won six titles with the Bulls. Many people (including me) consider MJ to be the best player ever.

There has been serious tension between the two of them for much of that generation.

More specifically, Jordan harbored a grudge against Thomas, and while he doesn’t usually spell it out this explicitly, most people who closely follow the NBA understand that it relates (primarily) to two things:

1. In 1985, Jordan was frozen out in the All-Star Game as a rookie;

2. In 1991, Thomas and his Pistons walked off the floor without shaking hands with Jordan and the Bulls after Chicago won the Eastern Conference championship.

There has always been a bit of an urban legend that these two incidents caused Jordan to conspire to have Thomas omitted from the 1992 Olympics, the so-called Dream Team.

Thomas, for his part, has denied the All-Star freezeout ever occurred. As for walking off the floor, Thomas said that’s what the Celtics had done to the Pistons several years earlier.

Up until five years ago, Thomas professed ignorance of Jordan’s (fairly obvious) disdain. That became impossible after the multi-part documentary “The Last Dance” in which Jordan called Thomas an (orifice) and discussed the Thomas’ Olympic omission. Jordan said, quite specifically, he never asked Thomas be left off let alone insisted on it.

At this point, I think it’s fair to say they’re mortal enemies though it’s worth noting two things about this:

1. Jordan is legendary grudgeholder;

2. He’s certainly not the first star basketball player to deeply dislike Thomas.

🧠 Let’s think about it 🧠

Here are two men in their 60s who are among the best to ever play pro basketball. Both have close ties to Chicago, and they are still at odds over things that were done 35 years ago.

Five years ago … there was part of me that felt this is exactly how real men handle things. You cross a line, there are consequences and those consequences don’t dissipate over time.

Jordan didn’t pretend that he and Isiah were friends. He didn’t offer bland compliments or present a façade of peace. He had nothing to do with Thomas and didn’t appear to be concerned with what Thomas might do or say about him.

Doesn’t mean you have to fight. We’re certainly past dueling with pistols at dawn, but I believed it fine to decide, “I hate that dude,” grit your teeth and mean it forever.

Some of this … no … a lot of this was tied up in my own unresolved anger toward my stepfather.

I was still mad not so much at what he’d done, but my belief he’d remained totally unaccountable for what he’d done. When I’d asked to have a conversation about what had occurred within our family, he ignored me. He never acknowledged to me, let alone apologized, for the things that happened and as a result I had no intention of letting go of that anger.

That’s how a man handles things, I thought.

In fact, it is how men often handle it, but I don’t think that’s a compliment.

Where does that get you?

That’s not a rhetorical question. What is the result of holding onto resentment, maintaining not just a cognizance of past slights but a ferocity over them?

💣 Tick, tick, tick 💣

My willingness to hold on to my anger resulted in an increasing collection of petty feuds and legitimate beefs.

A radio host at a rival station insulted my wife on Twitter after a column of hers was published in The Seattle Times.

In the early days of the pandemic, a troll began to target not just me, but my co-workers on the radio show I hosted. I was deeply bothered by his harassment.

Beneath all of that was the enduring hostility I harbored against my stepfather. It provided something of a template for how I dealt with my anger or more accurately failed to deal with it.

At the core of all these grudges was a desire to do something that would cause these people to regret what they’d done to me and/or the people I loved.

I also knew that seeking revenge in that way is seen as immature and picking fights is also known as “assault.” I decided I was just going to hold onto my anger, occasionally stoking the embers by thinking about what that person had done.

It was an increasingly unpleasant way to live and over the past few years — with the help of a therapist — I’ve come to understand the power of acceptance. It’s a useful tool that’s allowed me to move past the pain I experienced even when the person who I blame for causing that pain refused to acknowledge what he’d done.

That doesn’t mean you have to forgive. It certainly doesn’t mean you should forget, but it does provide a way to dilute the pain caused by a specific person or event.

That brings me back to that Tweet that started this whole train of thought.

🔑 Unlocking animosity 🔑

I have no idea how much time or energy Michael Jordan and Isiah Thomas spend prosecuting their feud. I don’t know how much (if any pain) they feel over it.

For all I know, it could be a source of meaning in their respective lives.

I do know that approach made me increasingly angry and more volatile, and when I look at their feud, I see two men who remain hung up on past slights, both real and imagined.

As for Peter Vecsey, the journalist whose Tweet I was surprised to see. I never met him though I did see him at several NBA games back when I was covering the Seattle Supersonics from 2002 to 2005. He was unmistakable in his suits and close-cropped beard.

The reason I was surprised to see his Tweet is not just because he’s retired. You see, he blocked on Twitter several years ago, which in fairness to him, was not entirely unwarranted.

I had responded to something he posted by referencing an incident that had occurred in Seattle back in 1996 when he was charged with fourth-degree assault for striking a man at a Toys R Us. Seriously: that happened.

That was back when I still thought feuds were a sign of strength, though, and while I’m not going to say that I was wrong for bringing this up in the way I did, I will say that I’ve been working to become less cantankerous over these past few years and will continue to do so.

In fact, I made multiple attempts—most under the guidance of a therapist—to resolve or at least dilute the anger I felt toward him.

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I wrote a letter to my stepfather, sealed the envelope and gave it to my therapist.

I wrote a letter to my stepfather, and burned it in the backyard firepit.

I participated in role-playing exercises where I ranted at my therapist as if he was my stepfather.

I participated in role-playing exercises where I played the part of my stepfather, reciting the things that (I thought) Young Danny wanted to hear.

None of this provided any sort of lasting closure, and in retrospect, I believe that was because I did not understand why I was so angry. I mean, I knew what he did. I can still lay out the exact sequence of events that led to so much pain within my family.

But in retrospect, I was only able to find that closure after I answered two questions:

1. What was I mad about?

2. What was I really mad about?

This may sound redundant and a little bit silly. Bear with me because one of the most important things to understand about resentment in general and grudges in particular is that they operate on two different levels:

At the surface level, there are the actual events that occurred. The truth of what happened. What specific incident do you feel harmed you?

At a deeper level is the context in which that event occurred. This takes into account your own personal experiences as well as the history you share with the grudgee (i.e. the person whose action or actions you believe harmed you).

The surface-level acts are what we generally cite to explain the cause of our resentment. The context, however, is what actually gives a grudge its horsepower.

Let’s use the grudge I held against my stepfather as an example.

What was I mad about?

I was mad at what he’d put my mom through:

• Cheating on her;

• Lying about having cheated on her;

• Losing his job as a public-school administrator in a very public, somewhat scandalous fashion;

• Spending through their shared retirement savings after he lost that job;

• Pushing to reconcile after they’d been separated for two years, only to inform her he’d then tested positive for HIV.

All of those things definitively happened and while the infidelity remained largely a private matter, the San Jose Mercury News wrote multiple stories about the spending indiscretions that occurred in the school district where he was superintendent. I have a copy of the 7-minute investigative report that aired on the Bay Area’s ABC affiliate.

It all hurt my Mom a great deal, which bothered me.

That was the surface-level view of why I was mad.

If those were the things I was really mad about, however, I believe my anger would have ebbed over time. My Mom tested negative for HIV. She finalized the divorce. While he didn’t wind up fulfilling the spousal support he’d agreed to, she was able to keep the house they’d shared and the car she drove. She continued to work and while she wasn’t wealthy, she was comfortable. She (eventually) cut off contact with him and toward the end of her life, she told me that she really didn’t think about him that much anymore, which I was pleased to hear.

Yet I not only stayed mad after she divorced him, it’s possible I got even angrier.

So what was I really mad about?

I was mad that he never acknowledged, let alone apologized, for the way he wronged my Mom specifically, but also the way he betrayed the trust that I’d placed in him even as I grew to dislike him.

I was 15 years old when they married, and he immediately installed himself as the authority figure overseeing my adolescence.

He was the one who disciplined me over my mistakes when I was a teenager, not my Mom. He would periodically summon me into his bedroom, close the door and spend a good 15 to 20 minutes lecturing me for something like a chore I failed to do or the way that I had spoken to my mother or my younger siblings. He would then contrast my behavior with the fact that he had always been there for his family both when he was growing up and now that he was married to my mom. It wasn’t just that he was strict, he was self-righteous and demanded an extreme level of accountability from me. I was selfish where he had been selfless.

He wasn’t entirely wrong. I was a pretty normal teenager, perhaps even a bit unruly. I did my share of stupid, self-indulgent and dishonest things.

When we found out he had some stupid, self-indulgent and dishonest things, though, he never was able to be honest about it with my mom, my siblings or me even when asked directly.

In November 2002, he’d been separated from my Mom for more than a year. He sent me a card, inviting me to come visit him in San Francisco some time before Christmas. He gave me an email address to respond to, and I sent him an email stating that there would need to be an honest conversation about what had occurred in our family before I’d visit him. I never heard back.

The next time I spoke to him was May 2005 when we both attended my brother’s college graduation at UC Santa Cruz. I knew he’d been invited, and my brother had told me I wasn’t expected to behave in any particular way.

I was standing next to my sister and two of my cousins when he approached me from the left and then opened his arms in expectation of a hug.

I felt my cheeks bloom red, the blood rushing to my head. It felt like a spotlight was trained on me. I was afraid to do anything that might cause a scene, I put my left arm around him.

I spent years resenting myself for that reaction. I felt like I was weak. Like I was a teenager again, standing there and listening to him explain what I was expected to do except I was 30 years old and knew that he was not nearly as virtuous and upright as he’d portrayed himself.

I spent years feeling ashamed for not having stood up to him either at my brother’s college graduation or the years that preceeded it. This was the deeper level of my grudge.

So looping back to the questions that started today’s newsletter.

What was I mad about? My stepfather’s betrayal of my Mom.

But what was I really mad about? The lack of accountability and the absence of remorse on his part. It made me feel weak. That I was unable or unwilling to stand up to him even when tit was clear he was in the wrong.

It turns out that this was a very important distinction. If my grudge had just been about what my stepfather had done, I believe my grudge would have faded over the years.

What really bothered me, however, was his lack of accountability, which meant that my anger actually compounded over time because he still hadn’t expressed remorse about what had happened.

His lack of accountability then became evidence of my continued weakness. I was a doormat. I had just let it happen. Even after it occurred I hadn’t stood up to him.

Honestly, I can still feel traces of that shame. But now it’s counterbalanced with some compassion for my younger self. A recognition that I was doing my best to navigate a very fraught emotional situation without adding to the pain that my mom and siblings were feeling.

The only way I could get to that point, though, was to realize what it was that really made me angry at my stepfather.

Today before the court, we have the case of the Bronx rapper Cardi B’s resolution of her seven-year grudge against Rah Ali, who like Cardi B is from the Bronx and was also a cast-member on the VH1 show “Love & Hip-Hop.”

To wit, Mrs. Cardi B, who will identified as the aggressor in these proceedings, was struck by Mrs. Rah Ali back in 2018, and because of this she believes she was entitled to, and I quote, “get her lick back” which she did in July 2025 when she threw a piece of stereo equipment at the respondent in Cannes, France.

Mrs. Rah Ali contends that the aggressor “looks so stupid” and this incident is “goofy” making everyone look bad.

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The Grudge Judge now asks that everyone settle down so we may proceed through the testimony to determine whether the aggressor’s actions were in fact justified. It should be noted that while the judge did not actually interrogate either witness, all their quotations are verbatim quotes taken from the following two sources:

• The Twitter Spaces Cardi B on hosted Aug. 1, 2025 to explain what happened in France.

• Rah Ali’s podcast discussion Ray Daniels in which she laid out her version of the confrontation with Cardi B.

The initiating event

In 2018, the aggressor, Mrs. Cardi B, was involved in a confrontation with Nikki Minaj, a fellow rapper.

This is in and of itself is not totally surprising as as both Nikki Minaj and Cardi B are from New York and people from that city tend to be rather feisty, especially in public spaces. Additionally, both women are rappers, which means they work in an industry where it is standard practice for artists to insult one another at various levels of transparency and then argue about who actually insulted (or dissed) whom.

The incident happened during Fashion Week. There is a video of the commotion surrounding the altercation, but it was impossible to see what actually happened. There were no criminal charges. However, Nikki Minaj has said that Rah Ali “beat up” Cardi B.

Cardi B subsequently indicated that she was struck by Rah Ali while being restrained by Minaj’s security.

Recorded testimony

The aggressor asserts she had not seen the respondent for years following that incident. But in the summer of 2025, both women were in Cannes, France. More specifically, at the airport.

(Editor’s note: While this courtroom scenario is entirely fiction, the actual quotes from Rah Ali and Cardi B have been taken from recorded public statements they provided about the incident. In other words, the presentation is fiction, the quotes are not.)

(Grudge Judge turns to address the aggressor, Mrs. Cardi B)

Now, Mrs. Cardi B, what were you doing at the airport?

Cardi B: “I’m about to fly to Paris to shoot my album content. Everybody’s waiting for me.”

And then you see the respondent?

Cardi B: “I’m in the line, my thing is about to go through TSA and whatever. And I turn around, and I literally see this woman, she’s in a wheelchair, and she looked like in distress or something. She looked in distress so I looked at her. I couldn’t even believe my eyes because I feel like I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”

What did you do then?

Cardi B: “I looked at her, and I said, ‘You good?’ And she said, ‘I don’t feel well.’ And I’m like, ‘OK.’ “

(Grudge Judge turns to the respondent)

OK, Mrs. Rah Ali, what can you tell me about this day in the airport?

Rah Ali: “She has like a red dress on. I’ll show you the video because I definitely took my phone out immediately and pressed record. She’s chewing a bagel.”

Why were you in a wheelchair?

Rah Ali: “Because I didn’t feel well.”

Were you perhaps also trying to get through security quicker?

Rah Ali: “I really genuinely had a cold. I did a virtual appointment with a doctor, and got a Z-pack. I wasn’t feeling that good.”

Fair enough.

(Grudge Judge turns back to the aggressor)

OK, Mrs. Cardi B, you’ve seen the respondent. She’s in a wheelchair. What happens next?

Cardi B: “I told my security, right, ‘Yo, this chick is right behind me.’ And he’s like, ‘Oh my God. She’s in a wheelchair.’

“So I asked him, ‘What should I do?’ Because at the end of the day, we are in France, and you know, it would have been really easy for me to just snuff her in a wheelchair, but I’m like, ‘What should I do?’ because we’re in France.”

OK. I must be misunderstanding something. Isn’t the purpose of security to prevent your own involvement in altercations. It sounds like you were asking his advice on whether to initiate one.

Cardi B: “My security been my security already for six years1 … so his opinion to me, matters. Not even his opinion, but I would never like to look (weak) in front of my security because I feel like if I do some (weak) (stuff), I know my security is going to be like, “(Ma’am), you’re (weak).” Because that’s the type of relationship that we have.”

(Grudge Judge turns to the respondent)

So Mrs. Rah Ali, I assume you’re watching all of this?

Rah Ali: “She goes to her security and she says to him, ‘That’s …’ whatever she says to him. I see him lean over like this, and she’s telling him in his ear, so I just take like the bag that’s in my lap and I put it on the wheelchair part because I know I’m probably going to have to stand up.”

(Grudge Judge turns to the aggressor)

Cardi B: “So I’m on the line, and I see that she’s stood up now. Now, she’s not in the wheelchair. Now she’s standing, but she’s staring at me. Like, she’s staring at me like literally staring at me. She’s not getting her eyes off of me. So now I’m already thinking to myself just like, ‘(Forget) it. It is what it is.’ “

(Grudge Judge turns to the respondent)

Rah Ali: “I’ve stood up now because I don’t know what any of them are going to do. I’m always looking to be the mature person at this point because I have too much to lose, but I’m definitely by nature a fighter. My heart doesn’t pump Kool-Aid, and I will go down like down into my last second of breathing and I’m going to bang. It is what it is.

“I just was like, ‘Girl, grow up.’

“She’s like, ‘Grow up? Grow up?’ ”

(Grudge Judge turns to the aggressor)

Cardi B: “So that’s when I threw a JBL speaker on her head. And she said, ‘You feel better about yourself?’ And then she’s acting like now she’s going to fight. But she wasn’t being like aggressive. She was like, ‘OK.’ Because I guess she was sick. I don’t know what was wrong with her.”

(Grudge Judge turns back to the respondent)

Was something thrown at you?

Rah Ali: “She takes her shoes off. She starts throwing her shoes. She starts throwing her bags. I don’t know. She starts throwing her bags.”

Cardi B interjects: “I don’t know why she’s saying that I was throwing a shoe, and why you’re not saying you got hit in the head with whatever, but whatever.”

(Grudge Judge motions to calm everyone; looks to the respondent)

What did she say next?

Rah Ali: “Immediately she starts yelling and cursing and screaming, ‘Oh, wassup?Wassup (ma’am)? Yeah (ma’am)? You thought I wasn’t going to get my lick back? What you thought? What you thought, (ma’am)?’ ”

Cardi B (interjects): “You know I’m not lying because even herself said, ‘You thought I wasn’t going to get back my lick back?’ I wouldn’t have said that if it was just me arguing with her. I wouldn’t have said that if a shoe went flying somewhere. You know I said, ‘I got my lick back,’ because you got hit.”

(Grudge Judge bangs his gavel)

OK. Is there anything else?

Cardi B: “My security was like, now he’s in between both of us because now the police is really coming. They’re really rushing to the part of the airport, and she was saying, ‘You feel good now? You good? That’s what you wanted?’

“I kept saying, ‘Yeah, that’s what I wanted. Of course I’m going to get my lick back.’ “

(Grudge Judge looks to the respondent)

Rah Ali: “She’s yelling to the top of her lungs now. Of course, now the airport people are coming over, and I was just like, ‘This is so goofy.’ Ultimately, the end result was nothing.”

(Grudge Judge looks to the aggressor)

At the end of the day, do you think this was a mature way to handle this situation?

Cardi B: “I know that I’m grown and I shouldn’t have that mentality, but let’s be (freaking) for real. If I wouldn’t have said nothing, and if I would have been an adult, she still would have come on and would have been like, ‘Oh, I saw Cardi B and she didn’t do nothing. She’s (weak).’ “

So this was about showing you’re tough?

Cardi B: “I’m not even trying to sound tough. I’m just glad this happened, and if that’s how God wanted it to happen, it happened. And for y’all talking about, ‘Cardi, you’re 32 years older, bla, bla, bla you’re a whole A-list …’

“If you think somebody was going to physically touch me while I’m being pinned down by security, and you think I’m not going to get my lick back, you’re bugging.”

OK, I think we’ve heard all the testimony we need. I’m going to take a few minutes to surf the Internet and review source material, and I’ll be back with my ruling.

(Grudge Judge turns to the aggressor)

Mrs. Cardi B you were playing a risky game here, triggering a confrontation at an airport in a foreign country. Had either of you been punished or even inconvenienced, this (totally made-up) court would hold you entirely responsible for any and all damages incurred.

However, much like the first altercation, nothing happened beyond the initial altercation. No one appears to have been arrested, charged or even inconvenienced all that much beyond the ruckus in the security line. Travel plans remained intact.

(Grudge Judge turns to the respondent)

Now, Mrs. Rah Ali. I sympathize with your situation here. You were in a weakened state and in a foreign country when you were approached by someone who became intent on achieving some level of payback for something that happened seven years ago.

Do I think it was mature on the part of the aggressor to hold onto this particular grudge? No, I do not. I’ve heard you point out that the aggressor has had three children as evidence she needs to outgrow this sort of behavior. On a personal level, I tend to agree. I know you are also a mother.

However, I also think back to a lesson that my father instilled in me when I was growing up in rural Oregon: If you strike someone else first, you can’t go complaining about what happens next. More specifically, he told me if I started a fight I had no right to object to the method someone else used to finish it.

By all indications, you struck the aggressor back in 2018. The fact that she struck you back this summer is a direct response to that.

Neither instance resulted in arrests and charges. Everyone was free to continue on with their lives. Therefore, it is the finding of this court that this matter amounts to off-setting personal fouls with no one being punished further.

The scorecard is officially even between the two parties, but I want to be very clear that no further recriminations will be tolerated.

If I see these two parties in this court again, whoever breaks the equilibrium that is now established will be held responsible for any damages that result and lectured as by me as if they were a small child.

Verdict: Grudge dismissed.

Sources

• Nikki Minaj talks about the initial altercation with Cardi B in which she says Rah Ali beat her up “really, really bad.” Vibe summarized this episode of Queen Radio, providing the specifics of the altercation.

This is a podcast episode looks into the background of the grudge I held against my stepfather and the factors that made it more difficult for me to let go.

The studio was clean and comfortable, and there was a large bay window looking out into the newsroom for the news and political stations that were part of this particular radio cluster.

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In the time I worked there, I repeatedly imagined a very specific scenario:

I would look out the window of our studio, and see my stepfather walking across the newsroom, toward the studio used by the news-talk station.

I would stop mid-sentence on my own show.

“Sorry, I’ve got to go take care of something.”

I’d remove my headphones, open the 10-pound door to the sound-proof studio, walk into the newsroom and proceed directly toward the KIRO studio where I would join that interview.

“Sorry to interrupt, but this man was married to my mom for 13 years. I’m interested to hear what he’s doing now, and I’ve also got some questions for him.”

This was not a likely scenario. My stepfather did not live in Seattle, and I had no reason to think he was involved in any endeavor that would receive media attention. It was not completely implausible, though. For a time, he lived in the same state, and as a former public-school administrator, he had received quite a bit of attention from the Bay Area press, much of it scathing. I also knew he had started what appeared to be a life-coaching business.

I then imagined asking him a series of blunt questions:

• Would you say you were faithful to my mom?

• Do you think it was appropriate that as the superintendent of a one-school district, you were driving an $80,000 BMW the district paid for?

• Marrying my mom was something of a financial windfall for you, wasn’t it?

• Why did you spend through the retirement savings you shared with my mom?

[Side note: This is perhaps the worst premise ever for a revenge movie. “I’m going to show you what real determination looks like by asking you some strongly worded questions ...”]

Over the past few years, I’ve come to understand that this recurring fantasy was an expression of how much I wanted him to see something that resembled accountability. It was only last week, however, that I read a pretty compelling description of what this fantasy was actually doing to my brain (Hint: It wasn’t good).

• “This is your brain on revenge”

  By James Kimmel Jr. | Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2025

Kimmel is a former lawyer who is now a lecturer at Yale. He’s spent years researching the subject, paying particular attention to the neuroscience.1

The first half resonated deeply with my own experience.

The second half? Not so much.

You see, Kimmel presents forgiveness as the antidote to these revenge desires, a detox.

That doesn’t reflect my experience, though. I’ve let go of the grudge that I held against my stepfather. I’m no longer indulging in revenge fantasies, and when I did ultimately get a chance to interview him, it was not the strongly worded interrogation I spent so many years imagining. It was cordial. I did a lot of listening.

But even now, I haven’t forgiven my stepfather, and in my opinion, the fact that I’ve found closure points to an underlying flaw in Kimmel’s model.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to try and pitch you on “The Interrogator.” I am going to take a look at some movies that deal with the desire for retribution, and I’ll start by establishing the one thing that any true revenge film must have. Here’s a hint: It’s missing from “Taken.”

If you’ve got any thoughts on this piece or even want to nominate a revenge flick for the Film Room, feel free to leave a note in the comments:

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I finally found out when I spoke to him in December 2023, the first time I’d seen him in 18 years. His answer surprised me more than it should have and provided a reminder of the one thing you must remember when dealing with even a moderate narcissist: It’s never really about you.

Author’s note: This is a test-kitchen of sorts for first-person narrative writing on my family.

Feel free to leave comments as if this were a workshop. You can also ask any questions. I’m still thinking through everything from the structure to the ethics. You can be as nosy as you’d like, but I’d prefer you remain cognizant that I am a real person writing about my actual family. The one request I have: be gentle with my mom. She was a supremely sweet woman whose life was tougher than anyone deserves, let alone someone who was as nice as she was. She also loved her kids very, very much, and was well-loved in return.

Saturday, Sept. 24, 1988

I know the exact date because it was my father’s funeral. He had Still’s Disease, an inflammatory condition that usually consists of extremely high fevers and arthritis. What began as puzzling soreness in his early 20s progressed to the point that it was painful to move by his mid-30s. He could barely leave the house during the final year of his life, and in the final weeks, we brought him a plastic jug so he could relieve himself in bed without getting up. He was 38 when he died.

I was 13, the oldest of the three children he’d had with my Mom. The fact we called him Pop could be traced back to the fact that my pronunciation of “Dad” sounded like “dog” when I was learning to speak.

I can’t tell you whether I wore a tie to Pop’s funeral. I don’t what my brother, my sister or my mom wore, either. I know that the ceremony was at Sacred Heart, the church that was attached to the small Catholic school we attended in southern Oregon. After the funeral, we loaded into the backseat of my grandfather’s Cadillac, and I do remember the creamy leather interior being cooler than I expected. Grandpa must have parked in the shade. We drove east to Mt. Calvary cemetery, where my father was buried.

Afterward, attendees gathered at our house. People congregated mainly in the backyard, but at some point I found myself out front and I watched as the principal of our school pushed open the screen door and stepped onto the concrete porch.

I heard my Mom before I saw her. She called out the principal’s first name.

He stopped, turned around to look back toward the house.

Now, Mom came through the screen door.

“Thank you so much for coming,” she said.

She reached out to him, taking his hand in both of hers and looked at him.

That’s it. That’s the memory I have. The meaning I drew out of this moment, however, has changed. Repeatedly.

At the time: I felt kind of flattered the principal was there. I wouldn’t say that I knew him. In fact, I can’t remember having a conversation with him before that. The fact he came to our house felt like proof that our loss was seen as significant in our community.

That changed when: My mom began dating the principal the following year. They were engaged by the fall and married on Jan. 27, 1990. That summer, we moved to the central coast of California, leaving the small town in southern Oregon where I had been born.

Then I began to feel: uncomfortable.

I had this clear memory of the principal at our house on the day of my father’s funeral, but I never mentioned it. I worried what people would think if they knew how quickly my mom remarried after Pop’s death. I thought they might assume my parents were no longer married when he’d died or they’d think that my mom was already scoping out alternatives or perhaps they’d believe I was inferring the principal was looking for an angle into my family.

Even as I grew to dislike the principal in the years following his marriage to my mom, I remained protective to a certain degree. I didn’t want anyone to think his courtship of my mom was anything other than straightforward and earnest because I didn’t he was anything other than straightforward and earnest. At least not until the marriage came apart.

That changed when: my mom divorced the principal.

She found evidence he’d been unfaithful back in 2001, and after she confronted him, he moved out of the house.1 For the next two years, he remained adamant he had not cheated. He swore that she was wrong and didn’t understand the situation. Then in the summer of 2003, after he’d made his biggest push to reconcile, he called to tell her he had tested positive for HIV and she needed to be tested. She tested negative and filed for divorce shortly thereafter, seeing this as confirmation of his extreme dishonesty.

All of this coincided with the fairly public and thoroughly spectacular collapse of his career. He’d resigned his position as a public-school superintendent after both county officials and local reporters investigated his district’s spending practices from the BMW that had been purchased for his use to the $462 Cartier fountain pen charged to a district credit card. He was the subject of a seven-minute investigative report that aired on the Bay Area’s ABC affiliate and covered repeatedly in the San Jose Mercury News. A story about him continuing to teach college classes at San Jose State while he was on medical leave from the district wound up on the front page of the paper.

Then I began to feel: angry and very confused about why he’d courted my mom.

The principal had a penchant for trying to be a savior of sorts. As a son, he’d stepped up to help care for his younger brothers after his father died. As a teacher, he sought to mentor young men who lacked direction. My mom wondered whether she had been one of his “rescue projects” as she phrased it.

I began to wonder, too. And this brought me back to that first time he came to my family’s home.

The principal had been 18 when this father died. He was the third in a run of five boys. He’d planned to go away to college, but after his father’s death, he remained home to help care for his two younger brothers who were still in grade school.

Did the principal see some shades of his own history in my family? Maybe he felt pulled to step in and provide a fatherly presence that his own family had lacked after his dad’s death.

He certainly didn’t view me or my siblings as baggage. He was absolutely willing to be a full-fledged parent.2

Even after the divorce, if I squinted hard enough, I could occasionally see through my anger and concede that perhaps the principal had nothing but the best intentions. He might have tried as hard as he could to fill this role he imagined for himself, but ultimately couldn’t hold it together after 11 years.

Perhaps he deserved more credit than I’d initially given him.

I’m skipping ahead quite a bit at this point.

We’re zooming past the 17 years during which I remained actively angry at the principal. We’re jumping over my mother’s cancer diagnosis in 2015 and her subsequent death in 2019. We’re going all the way to end of 2023 when I flew to San Francisco and drove up to Napa, Calif., for the specific purpose of interviewing the principal.

December 15, 2023

He was in his 70s now, I was approaching 50.

It had been more than 10 years since anyone in my family had spoken to him. I had not seen him since 2005 when he attended my younger brother’s college graduation.

He knew I was coming. I had spoken to him on the phone three times over the preceding year. In our last conversation, I had asked if I could interview him, saying I was writing about my adolescence, and he was certainly part of that. He was agreeable, enthusiastic even over the phone though he hedged once I was there.

He said he didn’t think he was ready to talk about his time in our family, his marriage. He said he’d just learned of my mom’s death and was still processing it. He said he was worried it would be too emotional and I would get angry. He expressed reservations about being interviewed for the purposes of “a product” as he put it, meaning my writing.

My initial reaction was one of disbelief. He had agreed to the interview, and now—after I’d flown across the country and driven up to see him—he was backing out. I thought about saying something to apply some of type of pressure for him to follow through on his commitment.

That’s not what I did, though. I made a conscious effort to keep any emotion off my face. I kept my voice calm. I said that I’d been pretty clear about my intentions. I was planning to write about my life, and his time in it. I felt it was only fair to ask him if he wanted to share his perspective and what he remembered from this period.

It was up to him, though. I couldn’t subpoena him. I could not treat him as a hostile witness. This was his decision.

We resumed walking and then went and got an afternoon snack at a nearby restaurant. When I indicated that I was getting tired and planned to return to my hotel, he raised his hand—pointer finger extended—and said, “Stewardess.”

“No, no, it’s OK,” I said.

It was cringy. I also knew it would make my siblings laugh when I told them about it.

The sun had set by the time we left the restaurant, and as I drove him back to his home in my rental car, he told me we could do the interview the following day. I made sure to provide only minimal reaction.

“OK,” I said. “We’ll see how you feel.”

The next day, we sat down in the living room of his second-floor condo the following day. I used my iPhone3 to record a conversation that ultimately spanned 5 and one-half hours. The television was playing in the background, tuned to the History channel which was airing a series of World War II documentaries. I didn’t ask him to turn it off because I didn’t want him to become more self-conscious of what he was saying.

He had a bulldog, whom he referred to as “Snuffers” before pointing out that the dog’s full name was “The Earl of Snuffington.” The dog would periodically jump on the couch, his labored breathing audible on the recording. At one point, Snuffers humped the principal’s leg.

“Oh, now stop that,” the principal said.

The principal brought up my father’s funeral on his own. He remembered coming out of the church to see my Mom sitting in the backseat of what he referred to as a limo, but was actually her father’s Cadillac.

“Your Mom was sitting recessed in the back seat,” the principal said, “and I just went to the window, and she immediately just extended her arms, she says, ‘Oh Terry! I’m so glad to see you.’

“We went over to your house for the wake.”

Actually, it was a reception after the burial.

Turns out the principal wasn’t really thinking about his family when he was at our house. He wasn’t really thinking about my family, either.

He was thinking about a letter from the church’s parish council, which the pastor—Charles Dreisbach—had delivered to him the previous week.

“He said, ‘Oh here, you’re not going to like this,’ “ the principal said. “He hands me this, I open it up and they had cut my salary in half or nearly in half because I was no longer principal of a high school.”

When the principal came to our small Catholic school in 1986, it was a K-through-12 school with dwindling enrollment. Two years later, the high school was shuttered, leaving it K-through-8^th grade.

“That was what I was occupied with as I was milling around with other board members,” the principal said.

I felt a tug of disbelief as he said this, but I was more amused than I was angry. This man had absolutely no feel for his audience. He’s talking to me about the day my father was buried, and saying that what was really on his mind was his paycheck. I tried to remain attentive to what he was saying, it is possible that some sort of emotion flashed across my face because he acknowledged the potential faux pas.

“I remember it probably was not appropriate,” he said, “but it all kind of fit.”

He then named two different families whose children were classmates of mine, and who were at our house that day.

“I remember telling them, ‘The gall of that Dreisbach, he’s not going to cut my salary,’ “ the principal said. “I’m the one that closed the high school. You want to go through that, you get somebody else to go through that. You need to compensate me for the work I’ve done.’ “4

And then?

“I remember walking out your door,” he said, “and I saw that there was a rip in the screen.”

This was the moment I remembered. When my mom called his name and he turned around and she thanked him for coming.

There was, in fact, a rip in the screen. It was from our cat, a calico named Benny. When he wanted to come inside, Benny would jump up and grab hold of the screen with his claws, hanging with his back feet off the ground and causing the aluminum frame to bang against the frame, which would let us know to open the front door.

The principal said he then asked the school’s janitor—a fellow named Philip—to come and repair our screen. Then he stopped and corrected himself.

“I didn’t ask him, I told him,” the principal said, “ ‘I want you to go over to the O’Neils and repair their screen door.’ “

I don’t remember the screen being repaired, but I don’t doubt that it happened. I told the principal it was funny he’d remember something so specific.

“It’s those little things that start to sort of cascade over time,” the principal said. “So you’re Mom appreciated that and that and that.”

It seems like a nice gesture. It WAS a nice gesture. It’s also fairly telling that he was focused most on my mom’s reaction.

How I feel now: Some people think that narcissists never think of anyone but themselves. This is absolutely not true.

They think about others. They just don’t necessarily care about the needs of those people. They certainly don’t care about their needs as much as they care about getting their own met.

The principal’s interest in my mom specifically and my family in general never had anything to do with what we were going through or what we might need. It was entirely about how my mom responded to him. She was an incredibly nice and kind woman, who shared her warmth freely. That’s what he took from that day when he attended my father’s funeral and subsequently came to my family’s home.

I found one in last weekend’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, though:

That covers the way I felt about my former stepfather from the age of 27 up until three years ago when I finally found something that could be called closure. That’s a solid 20 years of resentment in which I frequently fantasized about confrontations with him.

The root of my anger was pretty clear: my stepfather had been unfaithful and dishonest to my mom. He spent through their shared retirement savings. He broke her heart. I was also indignant at what I perceived to be his lack of accountability.

After he separated from my mom, he asked me to come visit him. I told him there would need to be an honest conversation about what was happening in the family if he wanted to maintain a relationship with me. He never responded to that request, and after my mom divorced him, I began to feel deeply ashamed that I had not done more to stand up to him first when I was a teenager and later when the marriage collapsed.1

I never actually did anything to the man. I didn’t even yell at him. I spent years, however, imagining a confrontation with him. It was—to use the framework presented in the Wall Street Journal essay—generating a hit of dopamine to mask the pain and anger I felt over how things ended. I was trying to apply psychological spackle to cover up a hole entirely too big to be patched in this manner.

This was, it turns out, the most compelling part of the article:

• This is your brain on revenge

  By James Kimmel Jr. | The Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2025

Kimmel is a former lawyer, someone who identifies himself as previously being obsessed with revenge. He’s been researching the subject for several years now, and is a lecturer at Yale. He has a book out on the subject, “The Science of Revenge” and has recently appeared on podcasts with everyone from Dr. Phil to “The Armchair Expert” with Dax Sheppard.

As someone who has spent a great deal of time thinking and even envisioning methods for harming people who I believe have harmed me and my family, I found parts of Kimmel’s essay provided tremendous insight:

Kimmel says that drugs have a similar effect upon the brain, and from there characterizes the human desire for revenge as being a disease and potential addiction. In one interview I listened to, he compared revenge to the opiode crisis.

I found this part of his article significantly less convincing.

Revenge is frequently characterized as a disease or disorder. This happens in literature all the time, Western classics like “The Count of Monte Cristo.” It is done by academics, too. Psychologist Karen Horney did it in her paper “The Value of Vindictiveness,” which was published in 1948.

In these works, revenge is characterized as an alluring temptation we all feel, but once a person gives into it, it can co-opt and destroy their entire life.

What this model fails to account for is the fact that the desire for revenge is an instinct that exists across our species. It can be traced back to the value it provided to our primitive ancestors who used punishment and retribution as a way to organize their (small) societies.

But the bigger issue with describing the desire for revenge as a disease rather than a trait or a tendency is that it creates a scenario in which there should be a cure or a fix. This—almost invariably—is forgiveness. An emotional elixir. Something you need to practice in order to avoid having your life dominated by an insatiable appetite for payback.

Sure enough, that’s exactly where Kimmel winds up, citing research that showed forgiveness lessened neural activity within the brain’s pain network and increased activity in the region associated with self-control.

I’m not going to touch the religious references here.

I will say two things, however:

1. Presenting forgiveness as a cure or antidote for the toxin of revenge puts an onus on people who have been harmed and in some cases abused.

2. There is no evidence that someone who suffers trauma must forgive the person who inflicted that harm in order to recover from that trauma.

Now, forgiveness may help in that regard. In fact, it may often help. It’s not always necessary, however, and I believe that’s an important distinction to make because when people start talking about forgiveness as some sort of detox as Kimmel does, it applies pressure on people who’ve been harmed to forgive the people who harmed them.

Amanda Ann Gregory has spent 17 years counseling trauma victims. She’s also someone who experienced trauma herself. Her book “You Don’t Need to Forgive” was also published this year, and while she’s not against forgiveness nor does she dispute its power, she’s very specific in pointing out that forgiveness is not some sort of non-negotiable requirement for someone who is recovering from trauma.

Speaking only for myself, I have significantly reduced the amount of pain I feel over the actions of my stepfather. I do not spend as much time ruminating about his actions or imagining what I could do to harm or humiliate him. I am not as angry.

Also: I have not forgiven him.

Now some of that is due to the fact he’s never asked me to forgive him, either. Perhaps that’s because he can’t bring himself to recognize the impact his actions had on me. Perhaps it’s because he truly doesn’t believe he’s responsible the harm I feel I’ve suffered.

I’m not mad about this, but I wouldn’t say that I’ve forgiven him, either. I’ve simply chosen to stop relitigating what happened and declared that this specific chapter in my life is over. I’m not waiting to see if he expresses remorse and questioning if he feels bad. I’m not looking up his online profile to see where he’s living or what he might be up to. I’m not going to do something that I hope will set things right. There’s no score left to settle. It happened. It’s over. I’m moving on, and while I could see how someone might see this newsletter as an attempt to have the last word, I’m honestly not doing this to hold my stepfather or anyone else accountable for what happened.

I’m writing this newsletter for three primary reasons:

1. I think there’s value in exploring why I was unable to let go of this for 20 years.

2. I think it could be helpful to delve into the exact process that allowed me to let go of this animosity I felt or at least temper it dramatically.

3. I want to describe the relief and sense of peace I’ve found now that I’ve come out on the other side of what was an unyielding desire for retribution.

While I wouldn’t choose to characterize the desire for revenge as either a disease or a drug, I do believe that it can compound the suffering we experience as humans. I think it does this by fueling decisions we later regret as well as trapping us in mental cycles that keep us ruminating and therefore re-experiencing the pain we have previously suffered.

And while I think forgiveness is an admirable, maybe even noble goal, I do not think it applies in every instance. It certainly didn’t in mine. Here, I’ll quote again from Amanda Ann Gregory:

I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to revenge flicks. Not because I have refined taste in movies as I most certainly do not.

I might notice good cinematography. I might not. I’m not a stickler for realism, either, or even particularly good dialogue. I think Arnold Schwarzenegger is funny, and I don’t particularly care if that’s intentional.

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In other words: If you film some elaborate action sequences and stitch them together with a halfway competent plot, I’m unlikely to offer much of an objection.

However, if you try and tell me that “Taken” is a revenge film? That is a hill that I will in fact die on.

“Taken” is not a revenge film, and the reason it is not a revenge film is because it is not about revenge. It is about a man with a special set of skills going to extraordinary legnths to retrieve his daughter. The fact that this man with a special set of skills kills copious amounts of criminals along the way is simply a means to an end as opposed to an actual revenge, in which the killing of copious amounts of criminals is the end in and of itself.

Now the actual number of criminals killed is not what defines a revenge flick. Nor is the creativity employed in dispatching them. There are great revenge flicks in which absolutely no one dies.

The one essential, non-negotiable characteristic of the revenge flick, however, is that it include a character who makes a clear decision to seek retribution. They want payback for harm they believe has been inflicted on them or someone they care about.

This can be carried out in a spur-of-the-moment killing spree or it can be the result of years of meticulous planning. In can be violent or it can be so sneaky that the people who are on the receiving end of this retribution don’t fully realize what is happening.

The one thing it absolutely must include, however, is that moment when a character decides that someone is going to pay for what has been done.

I’ll show you you what I mean: “Man on Fire” is a 2004 movie starring Denzel Washington, (a young) Dakota Fanning, singer Marc Anthony and (briefly) Mickey Rourke.

Now let’s apply my revenge-flick test to this movie:

• Does it include a character who makes a clear-cut decision to inflict harm on a specific individual or group as payback for the harm and suffering they have previously suffered?

Yes. Quite memorably in fact.

Washington stars as John Creasy, who is a bodyguard for Pita, a young girl whose family is living in Mexico City. The girl is kidnapped, Creasy is shot, and after he gets out of the hospital, he is very clear about his intentions.

“What are you going to do?” the girl’s mother asks him.

“What I do best,” Creasy says. “I’m going to kill ‘em. Anyone that was involved, anybody that profited from it, anybody that opens their eyes at me.”

“You kill ‘em all,” repeats the mother.

Her tone is tough to decipher. It’s not a question, but it’s not an order, either. It’s more like she’s echoing, perhaps endorsing, his resolve.

Now, most often in a revenge flick, this will be followed by a cinematic montage in which the character who is now committed to retribution does one of three things:

• Inspects weapons;

• Compiles weapons;

• Conducts an inventory of implements which may be used as weapons.

Creasy does all three after telling Pita’s mother of his intentions.

OK. So now that we know we’re dealing with a revenge flick, let’s do a little bit of sorting to determine the exact species of revenge flick we have.

Are there unexpected or extreme methods of retribution?

Yes. Creasy employs duct tape in his first interrogation, using it to hold a perpetrator’s palms on the steering wheel of his car with each of his eight fingers jutting out almost like broken spokes. Creasy advises him sever a finger if he feels the perpetrator is not forthcoming and honest during the interrogation. Creasy then shows him a cigarette lighter which he says he will use to staunch the bleeding by cauterizing the wound.

Creasy ultimate cuts off two fingers and a slice of his ear before providing him with a cigarette, which he lights before shooting the man in the head. The car is then sent sailing off a cliff with the man’s body inside.

Creasy also uses a rocket launcher to blow up a car containing four corrupt cops. He then kidnaps a police officer who is something of a kingpin within the criminal element of the department. Creasy uses a plastic suppository to insert a small amount of plastic explosive in the man’s rectum. He programs his watch to send a page in 5 minutes that will cause the explosive to detonate, which is exactly what happens.

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Is there a moment in which the character who is seeking revenge must decide how far he or she is willing to go to accomplish this end?

Yes. When Creasy begins his campaign, he thinks Pita is dead, and he gives himself completely and totally over to revenge.

This is demonstrated quite compelling as Creasy prepares to use a shoulder-mounted rocket-launcher, and an older man speaks to him in Spanish, telling Creasy that the church teaches to forgive.

“Forgiveness is between them and God. It’s my job to arrange the meeting,” Creasy says.

Up until the movie’s climax, the closest Creasy comes to showing mercy is after he discovers that Pita’s father—played by Marc Anthony—was aware of the plan to kidnap her. Creasy gives him a gun, allowing him to shoot himself.

However, when Creasy finally captures the significant other of the man atop the kidnapping ring, he founds out that Pita is still alive. He then agrees to trade himself in exchange for her, a transaction made more palatable by the fact Creasy is already fatally wounded. He dies while being driven away after the exchange.

Creasy’s ultimate kill tally: 13.

Signature quote

“A man can be an artist. In anything, food whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasy’s art is death. He’s about to paint his masterpiece.”

Rayburn, a former military associate of Creasy, played by Christopher Walken

(1 scammy company + 2 rival billionaires)/a heart-felt profanity = a billion-dollar loss

But before we get to Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn calling each other names live on CNBC, I will admit to being disappointed when I got to the end of Danzy Senna’s novel “Colored Television.”

Not because I disliked the book. On the contrary, I enjoyed it a great deal. The perspective it offered on both art and marriage resonated with me at a very deep level.

However … there is one character who does something that is absolutely and unambiguously wrong. Not criminal, but clearly unethical, and to make it worse, this character clearly benefits from the scummy behavior. I’m not going to be more specific than that because I don’t want to give away any plot points, but I wanted this character to suffer a comeuppance.

And it doesn’t happen. At least not in a direct way. Just desserts go unserved.

While I wouldn’t say the protagonist takes this with a smile, she doesn’t actively prosecute her grudge, either. She accepts what has occurred with grace and resolve.

The protagonist finds her own slice of happiness not by prevailing over the low-down, no-good charlatan who does her dirty, but by opting out of that world. She wins because she remains true to her art and her family.

I get it. And on an intellectual level, I agree with it, but on an emotional level … I had a visceral desire for that creep to get what he had coming.

I suspect this is more than just a matter of personal taste. There is a collective expectation that if you see a villain doing some villainous shit in a story, that character is probably going to get his (or hers) by the time the credits roll.

This reflects our cultural attitudes on fairness and justice. However, I believe it also speaks to a deeper tendency shared among humans: We value fairness. And while we may understand that the real world isn’t always fair, it doesn’t keep us from wanting to see justice served in fictional stories.

Thankfully, the participants in this week’s grudge match aren’t nearly as mature as Jane Gibson, the protagonist of Senna’s novel.

Principals: Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman

They are both incredibly rich men, and as rich men sometimes do, they went head-to-head in a fairly public battle of wills. Someone less sophisticated than myself might be inclined to dub this a “pissing contest.”

What was most noteworthy about this particular engagement was the amount of money that started this particular grudge: something like $4.5 million. That’s a lot to most people, but to these two? A rounding error.

The grudge that was left after the resolution, though? That wound up costing Bill $1 billion.

Explain this to me like I’m a kindergartner …

Bill and Carl spent seven years arguing over the ownership of a specific $10 bill. In 2011, their parents got together and agreed the $10 bill belonged to Bill. Then, Carl — who was several years older than Bill — called to say he was now ready to be friends with Bill. Bill offered a very profane instruction to Carl.

Several years later, Bill had gotten richer and had generally forgotten about this. Carl, however, had not. And when Bill bought a whole bunch of milkshakes, Carl saw the opportunity to stick it to Bill, and boy did he ever do that. Bill wound up having to pay a bajillion dollars for all of those milkshakes.

OK, let’s talk like adults …

In 2004, Bill Ackman sued Carl Icahn for $4.5 million. He argued that Icahn had refused to honor a provision included in a previous deal between the two.

The case dragged on for seven years. Ackman finally collected after Icahn ran out of options to appeal. Icahn wound up paying something like $10 million to cover interest and legal fees.

• Two Wall Street titans and a seven-year tiff | The New York Times, Nov. 26, 2011

After this was done, the two spoke on the phone. According to Icahn, Ackman asked to be friends. According to Ackman, it was Icahn who wanted to be friends, saying he would invest with Ackman. Ackman replied, “Forget you, Carl.”

Except he used a different F word.

The following year, Ackman publicly shorted the stock of a company called Herbalife. Ackman had a big elaborate presentation in which he stated Herbalife was a pyramid scheme. He called it a scam.

“I gave this sort of epic presentation laying out all the facts,” Ackman recalled in a 2024 interview with Lex Friedman. “Stock got completely crushed, and we were on our way.”

After dropping 20 percent that first month, the stock price not only stabilized, it rebounded. Icahn had quietly accumulated a significant amount of Herbalife stock.

“His motivations here were not really principally driven by thinking Herbalife was a good company,” Ackman said. “He thought it was a good way to hurt me.”

In other words, Icahn had a grudge.

In January 2013, both were on the phone for a live interview on CNBC. They spent nearly half an hour relitigating their previous disagreement and calling each other names. It’s truly hilarious.

Ackman said Icahn is a guy you can’t trust. Icahn said that after having dinner with Ackman, he couldn’t decide if Ackman was the most sanctimonious person he ever met or the most arrogant. Icahn on several occasions told the CNBC host he had no idea who he is.

That was the last of the public fireworks though the impasse over Herbalife dragged on.

Ultimately, Ackman said his fund lost $1 billion on the Herbalife investment while Icahn’s fund made $1 billion.

Explain this to me in business terms …

Well, that’s going to take some time. If you’re interested in the full timeline, you can click here.

So the bad guy won?

Kind of. While Icahn wound up having to fork over something like $10 million in that initial lawsuit, he made a bundle by propping up the stock price of Herbalife, which may indeed have been a pyramid scheme.

However …

It’s worth noting that Ackman’s criticism in Herbalife was rooted primarily in self interest as opposed to social reform. He saw an opportunity to make his investors a great deal of money, and any consumer protection or social good that would result from the regulation or collapse of the company was a biproduct of Ackman’s financial goal.

Honestly, Ackman is really hard to root for. He comes off like a hall monitor who’s set up a situation where his fund will profit from his tattling, and I can not deny that I found it satisfying to see him on the receiving end of a financial wedgie.

Is there a movie about this?

Yup. The documentary “Betting on Zero” was released in 2016, and it focuses on Ackman’s investment in Herbalife. I watched it on Tubi, which is free. The conflict with Icahn is explored, but it’s not the focus.

The movie does a great job of explaining the issues with Herbalife’s business model, but as hard as Ackman tries to position himself as a moral figure, he’s never quite able to do it.

So what did we learn from all that? Well, first of all, shorting stocks is a dangerous investment strategy. Secondly, you should probably be judicious about swearing at the uber rich.

During Ackman’s 2024 interview with Lex Friedman, he was asked if he had second thoughts about having done so:

Friedman: Is there any part of you that regrets saying, ‘(Forget) you,’ on that phone call to Carl Icahn?

Ackman: No. I generally have no regrets because I’m very happy with where I am now. I feel like it’s a but like you step on the butterfly in the forest and the world changes because every action has a reaction. If you’re happy with who you are, where you are in life, every decision you’ve made – good or bad – got you to precisely where you are. I wouldn’t change anything.

I see his point, but still …