Baseball has been doing a bang-up job lately validating my baseball ethics posts. My conviction is that the game is and has always been a cultural ethics microcosm, revealing and clarifying ethical dilemmas and conflicts with applications far removed from the game itself. Yesterday there was another example.
Behold…
During the sixth inning of the St. Louis Cardinals’ 7-6 victory over the Colorado Rockies last night, Cardinals rookie reliever Hancel Rincon, making his first appearance in a big league came, wore his cap rakishly askew. Rincon was pitching to Rockies batter Cole Carrigg when home-plate umpire Doug Eddings decided to react to the query of the previous Rockies batter, who had asked Eddings, “Hey, can he wear his hat like that?”
Batters since the dawn of baseball time have tried to find ways to wage psychological warfare against pitchers; EA had an earlier example this season, here. This one worked: the comment inspired Eddings to join the fashion police. Eddings halted the game, motioned to Cardinals catcher Leo Bernal, and told Rincon to fix his cap, punctuating the request with “Grow the fuck up!” Rincon complied. Three pitchers later, Carrigg hit an inside-the-park home run and Rincon exited the game shortly thereafter.
Later in the inning, Cardinals manager Oli Marmol was ejected from the game by Eddings. Marmol explained: “We have a kid making his debut, and in between an at-bat, he tells him that he needs to fix his hat and, ‘The kid’s not going to wear his hat like that on my field.’ Last I checked, this is Coors Field, so I took issue with it.” Not only did Eddings eject Marmol, but he also called a pitch-clock violation that gave Rockies designated hitter Troy Johnston a 1-0 count to start his at-bat against the new Cardinal pitcher. That was not a valid use of the rule, but umpires think they are God sometimes. It’s tradition!
“And then the pitch violation while I’m out there having a discussion, that’s also stupid, in my opinion,” Marmol said later. “So there’s a lot of moving parts to that one. At the end of the day, I thought they handled it poorly, and I’d like an explanation at some point.”
Ethics Alarms 
“…and C.C. was just indicted into the Hall of Fame.“
There isn’t a court in the land that would vote to convict.
Oh bloody hell. Fixed. This comes of writing about baseball in the middle of writing about criminal law. Fixed.
I haven’t watched a minute of MLB baseball in over 2 decades. Shit like this confirms that my hatred of the sport is well placed.
Maybe Jack conflated him with Pete Rose…
Dontrelle Willis is who came to my mind. The rakish crooked cap is definitely a black guy thing. I think it’s called “stylin.” Black culture must be indulged at all times.
And then there are do-rags, which now seem to be almost ubiquitous. Mostly among white guys! Bryce Harper, Corbin Carroll (maybe a sushi chef thing, he’s half Japanese), Kyle Schwarber (I think).
So funny that people seem to have lost sight of the meaning of “uniform.”
And how about the way the first thing baseball players and basketball players do following the end of the game is untuck their shirts? There’s nothing that says personal expression like untucking your shirt.
Oh, for the days when ball players were grown men.
And then there’s pro tennis. The sloppier, the cooler, evidently.
When was that?
Germany Shafer once ran the bases backwards, third to first, after a homerun. Jimmy Piersall ran them backwards the other way, with him being backwards. Cap Anson tried to upset the pitcher by jumping from the left side of the plate to the rights side and vice-versa while the pitcher was warming up. Casey Stengel, as a player, tipped his hat to the crowd and bird flew out. Ted Williams used to spit at the crowd when they booed him. Mickey Mantle admitted that he played games so drunk that he couldn’t remember what he did in them afterwards. Bill Lee, forced to pitch in the rain, came out to the pitching mound carrying an umbrella.
The exceptions prove the rule. Jimmy Piersall was institutionalized. Otto Graham’s Redskins’ center was a partner at my big firm. According to him, they all played either drunk or hung over.
I guess, being a kid, I thought they were adults.
What was Bill Lee’s nickname? Williams was famously ornery, a one off. Would you have booed him? Cherry picking over decades of baseball.
Spaceman.
No, it was insane to boo the best player on the field, but the sportswriters encouraged it.
Now Bill, you used a single instance to claim that baseball players were more mature in past decades. They just weren’t. I named a few examples: there hundreds more. These are arrested adolescents playing a child’s game. The mature ones are the exceptions, not the rule.
I guess, being a kid, I thought they were adults.
Bingo.
Could this be some sort of ritual, superstition, lucky hat thing? This does really seem blown out of proportion.