Much of what is going on in baseball nowadays annoys me. For decades, baseball was an anchor for me to hold on to during the dog days of summer. When there was nothing better to do, my fall-back was to watch the Yankees and the Mets. At the tail end of last season, both teams, to differing degrees, tanked (gave–up) on their seasons with a quarter of their games left. I didn’t bother to watch the rest of their games. If I were a season ticket holder I’d be clamoring for a refund. It would be one thing to announce at the start of the season that this was going to be a rebuilding year and they were going to trade off their older established stars and bring up their minor league prospects. They wouldn’t do that because season ticket sales and pre-season merchandise sales would plummet. I’d love to see tanking banned, but I realize that that’s not going to happen, as it’s impossible to prove, and from time to time, it can be an appropriate, long-term re-building strategy, no matter how distasteful it is to fans like me, who are looking to see their team attempt to make the postseason. Another new development in baseball that I find annoying is the absolute dearth of .300 hitters. I occasionally look at the box scores of baseball games. I often see two teams that do not have a player hitting close to .300. When I was growing up in the late fifties and early sixties, the threshold for a quality position player, not a great player, was hitting around .300. Nowadays a .300 hitter is becoming an endangered species. Baseball today is much more about hitting home runs than batting average. While I loved to see Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays hit tape-measure home runs, they did that and were also able to hit for high averages. That’s what made them superstars. In a somewhat similar vein, I’m annoyed by the devaluing of running backs in the NFL. A top-of-the-shelf running back on average earns less than a top-of-the-shelf offensive center or guard. To me, the most exciting plays in football were watching a great running back like Jimmy Brown, Tony Dorsett, Walter Peyton, Barry Sanders, Gayle Sayers or O.J. Simpson evade and shed tackle after tackle and run for a touchdown. I’m disappointed that my favorite team, the Giants, decided not to sign Saquon Barkley to a long-term contract. There is a new development in the charitable sector that both annoys and concerns me. Americans are the most charitable people in the world. In attempting to secure additional donations, charities are increasingly turning to new tools. A fintech company, B Generous, is using NFL football star Damar Hamlin, who remarkably recovered and is again playing football after collapsing on the field during a game in January, to promote a “Donate Now, Pay Later” proprietary philanthropic credit product. B Generous allows donors to make charitable donations without paying any money at the point of a donation, but the nonprofit receives the donation immediately, and the donor gets the full tax donation right away. The donor then pays the donation over 3, 6 or 9 months without any interest, fees, or costs. If the donor does not make a monthly payment, it has no impact on the charity. According to the company, so far no donor has defaulted. B Generous does a soft credit check of potential donors and they must have a credit score of above 500. According to the firm’s founder, philanthropist Dominic Kalms, “B Generous makes money by charging a variable ‘success’ fee that nonprofits pay when a donor chooses to donate with Donate Now, Pay Later. The success fee that the nonprofits pay ranges from 4.75%-13.99% and depends on factors such as the size of the organization, transaction volume, etc. We also offer the donor the option of covering any portion of the nonprofit’s transaction cost, and opt-in rates for this are quite high, above 75%, which also reduces the percentage fee on the nonprofit.” This approach concerns me from two perspectives. First, it sounds too good to be true, based on typical loan default rates, even taking into consideration the considerable $120,000 annual income of donors and the high processing fees. I’m not convinced that B Generous will be able to maintain its current fee structure and continue to guarantee no impact on charities if there are significant loan defaults. Second, I have real concerns about encouraging people to take on additional debt that could cause them financial strain if their situation changes. Americans have far too much debt. According to an article entitled “Credit Card Balances Swell to a New High” by Ann Carrns in the August 19, 2023 Business Section of The New York Times, “Americans’ credit card balances rose briskly in the second quarter, hitting a sobering milestone of more than $1 trillion, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported this month.” In this article Michele Ranert, Vice President of U.S. research and consulting at TransUnion is quoted as follows, “It’s easy to become overwhelmed by credit card debt, and $1 trillion tells us that many Americans are making purchases with money they don’t necessarily have.” This is especially true for Generation Z, people born between 1997 and 2012, who according to a recent article in the The New York Times, October 1, 2023, entitled “Gen Z’s Debt Spending Could Derail the Future,” “are paying an increased amount of their disposable income serving their debts.” The concern is this will impact their ability to “build wealth, buy homes and save money for retirement.” I’m not at all sold on the ethics of encouraging people to take on debt in order to donate to nonprofits. Situations can change fairly rapidly. A good example of this is student loan borrowers who thought their financial situation would be dramatically improved as a result of actions by the Biden administration, which was reversed by the courts and now will have to begin repaying their student loans after a three-year hiatus. Irwin Stoolmacher is president of the Stoolmacher Consulting Group, a fundraising and strategic planning firm that works with nonprofit agencies that serve the truly needy among us.