Sports

Ethics Musings As The Baseball Season Begins…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Technically the baseball season began last night, but that was just a Yankee game so I decided to hold this post until this morning.

As I wrote to my email pal, the excellent MLB correspondent for the Boston Red Sox Ian Browne, “Well, the new season is upon us! Here’s how sappy I am: just played “Tessie” and got choked up, then looked at my photo of Tony Conigliaro from 1967, and got more choked up. Where the Sox are concerned, I’m always 12-years-old.” And I posted this iconic photo…

… from legendary Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. I was there, but I didn’t see Carlton trying to guide his game-winning blast fair. I was watching, as everyone else was, that ball sail into the night and over the Green Monster.

Baseball takes up a lot of my time, and it’s time I cannot afford, one could argue. Yet I have learned as much about ethics and life from the sport, and particularly the Boston Red Sox’s epic journey through it, than from all other aspects of my experience combined. I have learned about loyalty, bravery, sacrifice, honesty, duty, responsibility, coping with disappointment and finding solace in failure, nobility, respect, the chaos of existence, and that there is always hope, promise and redemption in the future—maybe.

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The Umpire’s Wish

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

As explained here, this baseball season the new ABS system is in play, meaning that batters, catchers and pitchers can challenge ball and strike calls by the home plate umpire and have an electronic plate coverage system instantly reveal if the call was correct or wrong. No longer does the ancient rationalization protecting umpires who have botched crucial pitch calls provide cover: “The pitch is what the umpire says it is.” Not necessarily.

During a spring training game in Scottsdale, Arizona, the San Francisco Giants were leading the Cleveland Guardians 3-0 in the fourth inning. Giants pitcher Robbie Ray faced Guardians third baseman Alex Mooney with two outs and runners on first and second. After Mooney took an 0-2 sinker that home plate umpire Bill Miller called a ball, Giants catcher Patrick Bailey tapped the top of his helmet to signal for a challenge.

“San Francisco is challenging the ‘ball’ call,” Miller announced to the crowd on his microphones. Then the crowd heard him say, “Please be a strike!”

The ABS system confirmed that the pitch was a ball, as Miller had said. The guessing is that the umpire wanted his call to be over-turned because the temperature was over 100, this was a meaningless exhibition game, and he, like everyone else, wanted to get out of the sun.

That raises questions about the integrity of umpires, though maybe not Miller’s, who called the pitch a ball even though a strike might have allowed him to escape the heat sooner. His ad lib also could have been interpreted as a sign that he wanted the Guardians to win, except that nobody cares who wins Spring Training games. Even gamblers don’t bet on them.

The incident brings up a question about the challenge system that I have been musing about lately: why can’t umpires challenge their own calls?

I agree that you don’t want to have umpires second-guessing their pitch calls, saying, “Steee-rike THREE!…well, wait a minute…I think that was a ball. Yeah, let me change that. Ball three.” But former players all have anecdotes about umpires confessing to a batter or a catcher after a missed call, “Yeah, I missed that one.” If an umpire thinks his call was wrong, why shouldn’t be get to challenge his own call?

A Brief But Trenchant Baseball Ethics Note…[Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Above you can see the final pitch of the USA-Dominican Republic semi-finals last night in the ongoing World Baseball Classic. That 2-out, 9th inning pitch was called a strike on a 3-2 count, meaning that the Dominican shortstop Perdomo was out, and the U.S. had won a tight 2-1 victory sending it into the championship game against either Venezuela or surprise “Cinderella” squad Italy.

Winning is nice; winning legitimately is better. That pitch was a ball, as you can see. if the umpire had called the pitch correctly, Perdomo would have advanced to first, and the DR’s best player in the tournament, Fernando Tatis, would have come to the plate with the tying run on third base and the winning run on third.

In the 2026 MLB season that starts soon, the new ABS system will be underway. After a botched call like that one, the batter will touch his cap and say “Challenge!” and the image of where the pitch was relative to the strike zone will flash on a screen, showing that the umpire was wrong, reversing the call.

No baseball game, especially an important one, should end on a terrible call like the one that eliminated the Dominican Republic team. If this doesn’t convince the bitter-enders and “traditionalists” who oppose getting ball and strike calls right when the technology exists to do so, nothing will.

UPDATE: ESPN’s Jeff Passan just posted,

“That was a wonderful baseball game. Tension. Drama. Passion. Pride. Everything baseball can be. Everything you want baseball to be. So, for it to end on a called strike three by home plate umpire Cory Blaser on a Mason Miller slider that was clearly below the zone was such a gut punch, not just to the Dominican Republic players, whose country cares more about the WBC than any, but to a game that deserved better. ABS cannot come soon enough because this should be about the quality of the game, which was tremendous, and not the bitter taste left due to human fallibility.”

Comment of the Day: “Ethics and Human Nature Observations on Ethics Mega-Dunce Jurickson Profar”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The recent post about a highly-paid baseball player recently being suspended for the entire next season after being caught using forbidden PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs) inspired a fascinating comment by Ryan Harkins that examined an entirely separate aspect of the incident than any I had considered.

There is another angle on the case that I missed too. I had focused on how foolish it was for a player who had already achieved a guaranteed contract to risk it by cheating; so far, offender Jurickson Profar has forfeited over $20 million. But in today’s Athletic, Brittany Ghiroli observes that even though he has been revealed to be a cheat and that the one outstanding season he had that caused the Atlanta Braves to sign him to a three-year, $42 million guaranteed contract was likely the result of “juicing,” Profar still will receive all of his salary for the final year of his contract, $15 million. She writes in part, regarding why players risk taking steroids in the first place, what she has been told by other players:

“Guys didn’t take performance-enhancing drugs thinking they were risking their careers. Many of them did it so they could have careers — so they could elevate their stats, sign a big multiyear deal and set themselves and their families up for life. Sure, there was a risk of getting caught and forfeiting some pay. But baseball contracts are guaranteed. So as long as they didn’t get caught three times, teams were on the hook to pay them. Big risk, big reward. And until that reward goes away, the risk will always be worth it to certain players.”

Her solution, which she says the players union will never allow, is to make a rule that being caught using steroids allows a team to cancel the rest of a players’ contract.

Ryan’s focus is on human nature’s trap that may have snagged Profar after he had won his rich contract. Here is his Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics and Human Nature Observations on Ethics Mega-Dunce Jurickson Profar”:

***

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Ethics and Human Nature Observations on Ethics Mega-Dunce Jurickson Profar

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Observation #1: What an idiot!

Imagine: You are a mediocre journeyman baseball player past your prime and holding on the big league job by your fingernails. In desperation, you decide to cheat, using banned performance-enhancing drugs, risking suspension and a career of being regarded as untrustworthy by fans and future employers—and you get away with it, Not only that, but you have the best season of your career by far, make the All-Star team for the first time, and because you were playing out a one-year contract, you win a\three-year, $42 million guaranteed contract. It all worked! You have a job for three seasons, and you’re set for life. even if your arms fall off.

Then you cheat again, lose half of year one (2025) with an 80 game suspension, and cheat again, and get banned for an entire season. Total loss: 21 million dollars.

Meet Braves outfielder Jurickson Profar, possessor of one of my all-time favorite baseball names (along with Van Lingle Mungo , Urban Shocker and several others) who was just hit with his second PED offense and a 162-game ban, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports. Now he’ll miss the entire 162-game season in 2026 and will get a lifetime ban if he gets a third positive test in the future, which, given his apparent IQ, seems plausible if not likely. Profar will not be paid his $15MM salary this season, and he will be ineligible for postseason play in 2026 if the Braves were to get into the playoffs, which his conduct has made less likely.

Profar turned 33 a couple weeks ago, so in baseball terms he is in the twilight of an undistinguished career with the exception of that single shock 2024 year where he played like he was on steroids or…oh. Right. He’s signed through the 2027 season and is owed a $15MM salary again in that disastrous (for the Braves) contract’s final year. They likely will release him as soon as Profar’s year-long ban is up. He has probably played his last game in the Major Leagues.

Observations (other than “What an idiot!”):

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A Contrarian Ethics Take On “Body-Shaming” Performers

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I guess I’ve read too many articles like “Country Star Issues Blunt Response After Being Criticized for Her Appearance: ‘I’m Seething’” Not that I’ve read a lot of articles about country singer Lauren Alaina, yet another star in that genre introduced to the world by “American Idol”: I’ve never heard her, or of her. But I have been reading and hearing performers, particularly women, going into high dudgeon about fans, movie-goers, concert ticket-buyers and others who criticize them regarding their physical appearance, particularly their weight. Apparently Lauren’s furious because a lot of people criticized her weight based on a recent video of her performing. The singer wrote on Instagram in part,

“I’m literally so mad right now. I’m seething…We’ve got to change the way we’re talking about women on social media. We need to retire the obsession with women’s bodies. If you care about the music…talk about the music. If you don’t…. well, that’s fine too.
But this culture of speculating about women’s bodies?
It’s tired. Do better.”

Alana went on to emote about the phenomenon later. “A few weeks ago, I saw a TikTok of me up on stage singing, and all of the comments were about my weight,” she sobbed. “People were saying that my tour needed to be sponsored by Ozempic and just horrible things. It really affected me,” she said. “I am in recovery from an eating disorder that I’ve battled for a very long time. This just really upset me…I have an 8-month-old daughter, and we can’t talk about women this way. This is bull crap. If you’re a woman out there and people are commenting on your body, and saying this, myself included, we’ve gotta ignore that, and we all need to be better. This is crazy.”

“Well allow me to retort!” I say, in my best Samuel L. Jackson impression. (No, I’m not going to shoot her.)

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Robo-Umps Are Officially In Major League Baseball, and It’s An Ethical Development

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Finally, Major League Baseball has conceded that with technology available to call balls and strikes accurately, it makes no sense to permit bad calls by human umpires to change the results of at-bats, games, careers and even whole seasons. In 2026 the “ABS” system will be in play, adding integrity, accuracy and, yes, strategy to the game. Good. It’s about time.

I’ve been advocating computerized ball and strike calls at least since 2017, when I wrote,

In the top of the eighth inning of a crucial Dodgers-Cubs NLDS game, Dodger batter Curtis Granderson struck out. The pitch hit the dirt, and Cubs catcher Willson Contreras, as the rules require when a strike isn’t caught cleanly, tagged Gunderson for the final out of the inning. Granderson argued to home plate umpire Jim Wolf that his bat had made slight contact with the ball. It didn’t. The replay showed that his bat missed the ball by at least four inches. Nonetheless Wolf, after conferring with the other umpires agreed that the ball was a foul tip. Gunderson’s at bat was still alive….

After the game, Wolf watched the video and told reporters that he had indeed, as everyone already knew, blown the call.

As it happened, his embarrassing and needless botch didn’t matter. Gunderson struck out anyway. That, however, is just moral luck. The call and the umpire’s refusal to reverse it was just as inexcusable whether it resulted in ten Dodger runs or nothing. The point is that such a call could have changed the game, and the series. If it had, the screams from Chicago fans and anyone who cares about the integrity of the game would have persisted and intensified until baseball abandoned its archaic rationalization that “human error is part of the baseball,” and made use of available technology to make sure such a fiasco can’t happen.

This scenario will occur. Human beings being what they are, however, it won’t play out until a championship has been lost after a strike three right down the middle of the plate is called a ball by a fallible human umpire, and then the lucky batter hits a game-winning, walk-off grand slam on the next pitch. Then, after the horse has not only fled but trampled the barn-owner’s children, Major League Baseball will put a lock on the door.

The barn door, however, is wide open now, and the lock is available.

Two years later, I complained about this foolish attitude by the baseball powers- that-be again, writing,

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Friday Rainy Day Open Forum

/ Jack Marshall / 44 Comments

I used to complain about how much of Northern Virginia winters were spent in the rain, but the deluge overnight here, which is going to restart any minute, could not be more welcome. My neighborhood has been iced-over for weeks, with snow on the ground longer than any time during my decades long residence. (Naturally, this is just more evidence of climate change and global warming, “experts” say, and they know best.) The warm rain is ending that, meaning that walking my over-enthusiastic dog, Spuds, will no longer be life-threatening…at least not as life threatening.

I have too many things I want to write about, and as always, I am hoping to find some guest posts (as in “you write about it so I don’t have to” posts) here today when the dust settles. Olympics ethics stories will be especially welcome, because I refuse to watch the hypocritical spectacle or read about it unless someone sends me a tip. I am very tempted, however, to write about Elaine Gu, the all-American super-star skier who competes representing China in this Winter Olympics. According to the Wall Street Journal, Gu and Zhu Yi, a fellow American-born figure skater who now competes for China, were paid a combined $6.6 million by the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau in 2025 for “striving for excellent results in qualifying for the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics.” In all, the two were reportedly paid nearly $14 million over the past three years. The payments were revealed when the Beijing Municipal Sports Bureau budget was posted online with the names of Gu and Zhu. Their names have since been scrubbed from the public report.”

Nice. Gu is revolting, and it also proves how far the Olympic have come from their original roots of extolling amateur athletic competition. Gu still is paid by some American corporations to be their sponsors. They are also revolting. Gu’s betrayal of her own nation raises the ethical issue of dual citizenship. She’s a great walking, talking, greedy, ethically-inert example of why we shouldn’t allow it.

But don’t get me started. You get started…

Ethics Quote of the Month: Lindsey Vonn

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

For a while it looked like star American downhill skier Lindsey Vonn would lose the leg she broke a week ago when she crashed 13 seconds into her run and was airlifted off the course by helicopter. Vonn suffered a complex tibia fracture that will require multiple surgeries to repair. Her third surgery was completed successfully.

I came across Vonn’s post about her injury and the state of mind that led to it while I was completing the last post about inspiring poems. In the last Open Forum, there was some criticism of the athlete for subjecting herself to the risk of further injury by insisting on competing despite a recent and unhealed ACL tear. Her Instagram post below persuasively addressed such critiques. It also struck me as perfectly embodying the lessons and values contained in Kipling’s “If,” my father’s favorite poem and one of the inspiring works of poetry schools no longer teach.

Lindsey wrote,

Perfect.

A Shocking Ice Dancing Judging Scandal at the Winter Olympics

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

You can read the details of this completely predictable and in general ridiculous ice-dancing judging scandal here, here, and here. I’m not going recount the details because the details are misleading.

The ethics story is that the American ice dancing team of Madison Chock and Evan Bates lost the gold to the French team of Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Guillaume Cizeron because a French judge, Jezabel Dabouis, favored Beaudry and Cizeron by nearly eight points (make that “points”) over the three-time world champions in the free dance, a margin inexplicable when compared to the scores of the other judges, and so large that if her score were removed entirely, Chock and Bates would have won the top prize easily.

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