Some baseball player have worn their caps at asymmetric angles for over a century. Here’s Ted Williams in the Thirties:
More recently, Yankees ace C.C. Sabathia made a crooked cap his trademark…
…and C.C. was just inducted into the Hall of Fame. Though he never did it in a game, Hall of Famer Ken Griffey, Jr. made a habit of wearing his cap backwards in public appearances and even on the field in batting practice, like this…
Baseball has rules about what players can wear on the field, though these have been liberalizing rapidly. Players can’t write personal messages on their caps, for example. Once, but no longer, they were prohibited from having bright-colored gloves or flamboyant shoes. Umpires are empowered to enforce the written rules, but there is nothing in writing about players having to wear caps straight.
Ethics issue #1: Edding exceeded his authority, and, arguably, it affected the young pitcher’s performance. But were the umpire’s motives admirable? Was he telling a young pitcher that when he could pitch like C.C. Sabathia he will have earned the right to be flamboyant, but right now he is required to be professional, whatever that means in baseball. For example, another rookie pitcher is allowed to do this:
No umpire has told him to “Grow the fuck up.”
Ethics Issue #1 A: But umpires are permitted to intervene when a player or team is making “a travesty of the game,” and that is left entirely to an umpire’s discretion. Is Eddings worried that a crooked cap is a slippery slope? Because, you know, it might be.
Ethics Issue #1 A (1): It’s more likely to be a slippery slope because of Eddings. The umpire may have triggered the dreaded Streisand Syndrome.
Ethics Issue #2: “When ethics fail, the law steps in.” Now MLB will have to issue a rule about caps. It will either open the door to increasingly absurd cap creativity on the field, or it will crack down on this particular, and traditional, form of personal expression.
Ethics Issue #3: Eddings is white and Rincon is black. Naturally, woke baseball fans are convinced that the episode was all about white supremacy and race. From the comments on the story in The Athletic, whose readers are Times subscribers:
- “I bet that ump would have had no problem with a white player wearing his hat that way.”
- “Racism still exists. It is a style almost exclusive to Black players.”
Ethics Issue #4: Unions screw up more than just schools. Eddings should be disciplined by MLB, especially for deliberately misusing the pitch clock rule out of spite, but the betting is that he won’t be. MLB doesn’t need a fight with the Umpires Union right now, with an impasse looming in its negotiations with the MLB Players’ Association.
Ethics Issue #5: No event is too remote for the Trump Deranged to resist making it about their hatred for the President of the United States. The very first comment on the story in the Athletic was: “The umpire is a Class A D-Bag. Probably bought himself a Lake America Hat too.” Then, when a sane reader pointed out that bringing Trump into the discussion was objectionable, we got: “So you’re a big supporter of the president whose biggest achievement other than raping girls and getting us into new wars and driving the deficit sky high is renaming bodies of water?”
And this, dear readers, is how ethics train wrecks start rolling….
“…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.