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 indicted 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….