Ted Williams was a no-nonsense type of guy. His talent was so great that he didn't have to ingratiate himself to anyone. He let his bat do the talking. He refused to give sportswriters interviews and he ranked them near the bottom of the food chain. He would never wear a tie to any type of function because he didn't like them. In other words, he was his own man.

William's job was to play baseball to the best of his ability. He also served his country to the best of his ability. With his superhuman vision he left baseball twice to serve as a fighter pilot. He served in both World War II and Korea. There are not many men who could fill Ted Williams shoes.

I can't help but contrast the type of person Williams was to the kind of people who run our corporations today. People like Kenneth Lay of Enron and Bernie Ebbers of Worldcom are certainly not heroes. These two guys mislead the American public about their company's stock and in the process destroyed our confidence in our financial markets and destroyed the lives of many people who saw their jobs and their retirement go up in smoke. Meanwhile, Lay and Ebbers made millions from their deception.

In 1919 the Chicago Black Sox scandal nearly destroyed baseball because of betting by the players in the World Series. It took a guy by the name of Babe Ruth to come along and restore the public's confidence and interest in baseball. Who is going to be the saviour of the current crisis in our financial institutions and in our corporate enterprises?

I think a good start is to make sure that these guys serve hard time in prison to set an example. President Bush should appoint some well known good guy who can head up a commission to make sure these characters are sent up the river just like Judge Kennesaw Landis did when he came in and cleaned up baseball in 1920.

There are many reasons that rotten apples rise to the top of the corporate world. I majored in Economics and Business in college. We were taught theory but never ethics. I think that our educational system needs to emphasize more on ethics starting in grade school. It is apparent that our system is not producing heroes anymore.

From my 37 years of experience in the business world I can tell you that the best do not always rise to the top. The good old boy system works in corporate America just like it does everywhere else. When you go to college you are taught that the brightest and hardworking people will go to the top. Wrong! So much is dependent on how a person looks and what kind of personality they have. A tall, slender, handsome fellow has a better chance of succeeding than those opposite of those traits. Also, the ability to get along and to be able to present yourself well in conversation and to be able to ingratiate yourself with your boss goes a long way in determing how far up the corporate ladder you go. In essense, it's not so much what you know but who you know and how well you can play the game.

At the software company I used to work, the salesmen made more money than the programmers who wrote the system that the salesmen were selling. This fact alone shows that a glib person with a good presentation can be rewarded more than the person who has the brains to do something that the salesman can only dream of doing. I also have to say that those salesmen would tell half-truths if they had to in order to make a sale.

This type of corporate ethos is a good breeding ground for dishonesty and deceit. The board of directors for many corporations enable this condition to exist because these boards consist of old buddies who make up the good old boy system. Rather than serving the interests of the stock holders, many boards hold their allegiance to the corporate officers.

Wall Street needs a knight on a white horse to ride in rescue it from its doldrums. President Bush is not that knight because he himself is under suspicion of hiding some of his financial transactions. Bush better start looking for that shining knight real soon. Like Ted Williams and Babe Ruth, we need a hero who can replace the ethos of greed with honesty and integrity in our corporate boardrooms.