Sports

Mother’s Day 2024 Ethics Warm-Up

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Happy Mother’s Day. It’s not going to be a happy one at the lonely Marshall house, though my sister and I will be having dinner to celebrate her motherhood as well as the two dead mothers in the family. She talked me out of bringing Grace’s urn to the dinner, as I expected she would. I’m still tempted.

In more dark news, it seems a cruel twist of fate that the major event in U.S. history that occurred on this date was the discovery of the kidnapped Lindbergh baby, dead. Happy Mother’s Day!

On to the ethics inventory…

1. About that Trump trial…I haven’t written much about Alvin Bragg’s blatantly political and partisan prosecution of Donald Trump in New York. I’m not there and it’s not being broadcast; meanwhile, the news media is setting new records for completely slanted and biased coverage: going back and forth among Fox News, MSNBC and CNN is like visiting parallel universes. But even a legal analyst on CNN confessed that the prosecution had yet to prove any crime had been committed, and it seems clear that the judge’s decision to allow Stormy Daniels to testify extensively about the alleged sexual activities engaged in with the former President guarantees a guilty verdict being thrown out. From what I can determine, the judge should throw out any guilty verdict as a matter of law, because guilt beyond a reasonable doubt cannot be legitimately found when the two primary witnesses for the prosecution are as inherently unbelievable as Daniels and Michael Cohen, who is a disbarred lawyer, a disgruntled former employee of Trumps, and an admitted perjurer. Jonathan Turley, who has registered his utter contempt for this case (recent posts here, here, and here), had a funny line about waiting to see if the courthouse is struck by lightning when Cohen takes the oath before testifying.

It is so clear, in listening to the MSNBC and CNN commentary on the trial as well as print and online accounts like Maureen Dowd’s column“Donnie After Dark” that the real objective of this trial is to humiliate Trump and expose his “bad character.” This is not an ethical or legitimate use of the justice system, but Democrats are committed to it. How desperate they are. I was thinking about this even as I laughed at Jerry Seinfeld’s movie sharply tweaking Democratic icon Jack Kennedy’s serial adultery and sex addiction: after JFK, after Bill Clinton, and with a their own current President credibly accused of rape and caught on film sniffing and touching young girls as his own daughter’s diary documents them showering together, this is the best they can muster to impugn Trump? And how many Trump supporters are under the delusion that he has embraced high moral and ethical values in his private life? if anything, Trump’s handling of the lawfare assault on him has raised my opinion of his character. His determination and resilience are amazing. He epitomizes the lesson of “Laugh-In” comic Henry Gibson’s favorite poem (by Frank Lebby Stanton), “Keep A-Goin’.”

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Baseball Uniform Number Ethics?

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

And they say baseball isn’t the national pastime, the fools!

Today the Athletic has the tale of Atlanta Braves back-up catcher Chadwick Tromp. He’s from Aruba. Tromp says he pays no attention to the politics of the nation in which he has spent half the year every year since 2013 and that now supplies him with over a million dollars each annum. For that reason, I have little sympathy for the problems he has encountered because some jerk in the Braves clubhouse gave him uniform number 45 in an election year, making Tromp a walking target and a bad pun. Supposedly this was accidental. Is everyone on the Braves from Aruba?

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The NFL Has Allegedly Safer Helmets. Hmmmmm….

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

I wouldn’t trust the NFL as far as I could throw a football, so excuse my cynicism.

The most unethical sports league on the planet announced that its players will be able to choose between 12 new helmets next season. Five of the new helmets, we are told by the league and the NFL Players Association, “performed better in laboratory tests” than any helmet that has ever been worn in the NFL. Quarterbacks will be able to choose choice a helmet made by Vicis and another one made by Riddell designed specifically to reduce a quarterback’s head trauma from hitting the ground, the cause of most quarterback concussions. Other positions have their own specially-designed helmets to choose from.

The NFL first introduced position-specific helmets in 2022 for linemen. So far all of the new “safer” helmets are voluntary (except in practice games) and players have not been enthusiastic. The NFL also provides optional “guardian caps,” soft shell covers on top of helmets that provide extra cushioning and enhanced safety for head-to-head contact. These have no been popular with players, perhaps because they look like that thing above.

The NFL and the NFLPA now distribute a poster illustrating how helmets rank based on their performance in lab tests. This season there will be three individual posters , one for offensive linemen, defensive linemen and quarterbacks, supposedly to educate players about their helmet choices.

Now comes the cynicism: why is this so complicated? Why is the choice of helmets left to the players? Why aren’t the safest helmets mandatory during the season? Imagine a seat belt law that gave motorists a choice of a dozen different seat belts, with the option to choose none at all also being in the mix.

It looks to me like a lawyer-devised strategy to reduce the league’s liability for CTE cases. If a player sticks with the old-fashioned helmet and ends up with IQ of a summer sausage in his fifties, the NFL can claims that it was assumption of the risk.

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Sources: NFL, NBC

Encore: From “The Law vs Ethics Files: The July 24, 1983 Pine Tar Incident, When Baseball Chose Ethics Over Law, And Was 100% Wrong

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Several things led me to re-posting this Ethics Alarms entry from 2017.

First of all, the MLB network showed a documentary on the career of George Brett today, and scene above, with Brett erupting in fury at the umpire’s call voiding his clutch, 9th inning home run, is one of the classic recorded moments in baseball history. There was also a recent baseball ethics event that had reminded me of Brett’s meltdown: Yankees manager Aaron Boone was thrown out of a game because a fan behind the Yankees dugout yelled an insult at the home plate umpire, and the umpire ejected Boone thinking the comments came from him.. When Boone vigorously protested that he hadn’t said anything and that it was the fan,Umpire Hunter Wendelstedt said, “I don’t care who said it. You’re gone!”

Wait, what? How can he not care if he’s punishing the wrong guy?

“What do you mean you don’t care?” Boone screamed rushing onto the field a la Brett. “I did not say a word. It was up above our dugout. Bullshit! Bullshit! I didn’t say anything. I did not say anything, Hunter. I did not say a fucking thing!” This erudite exchange was picked up by the field mics.

There was another baseball ethics development this week as well, one involving baseball lore and another controversial home run. On June 9, 1946, Ted Williams hit a ball that traveled a reported 502 feet, the longest he ever hit, and one of the longest anyone has hit. The seat was was painted red in 1984 (I’ve sat in it!), and many players have opined over the years that the story and the seat are hogwash, a lie. This report, assembling new data about the controversy, arrives at an amazing conclusion: the home run probably traveled farther than 502 feet.

But I digress. Here, lightly edited and updated, is the ethics analysis of the famous pine tar game and its aftermath:

***

 I have come to believe that the lesson learned from  the pine tar incident is increasingly the wrong one, and the consequences of this extend well beyond baseball.

On July 24, 1983, the Kansas City Royals were battling the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium. With  two outs and a runner on first in the top of the ninth inning,  Royals third baseman George Brett hit a two-run home run off  Yankee closer  Goose Gossage to give his team a 5-4 lead.  Yankee manager Billy Martin, however, had been waiting like a spider for this moment.

Long ago, he had noticed that perennial batting champ Brett used a bat that had pine tar (used to allow a batter to grip the bat better) on the handle beyond what the rules allowed. MLB Rule 1.10(c) states: “The bat handle, for not more than 18 inches from the end, may be covered or treated with any material or substance to improve the grip. Any such material or substance, which extends past the 18-inch limitation, shall cause the bat to be removed from the game.” At the time, such a hit was defined in the rules as an illegally batted ball, and the penalty for hitting “an illegally batted ball” was that the batter was to be declared out, under the explicit terms of the then-existing provisions of Rule 6.06.

That made Brett’s bat illegal, and any hit made using the bat an out. But Billy Martin, being diabolical as well as a ruthless competitor, didn’t want the bat to cause just any out. He had waited for a hit that would make the difference between victory or defeat for his team, and finally, at long last, this was it. Martin came out of the dugout carrying a rule book, and arguing that the home run shouldn’t count.  After examining the rules and the bat, home-plate umpire Tim McLelland ruled that Brett used indeed used excessive pine tar and called him out, overturning the home run and ending the game.

Brett’s resulting charge from the dugout (above) is video for the ages. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: The Heisman Trust [Expanded!]

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Ugh. This gets the Steve Buscemi foot-in-the-woodchipper GIF from “Fargo,” because that’s what stories like this make me want to do: dive into one and end it all.

The Heisman Trust announced today the formal “reinstatement” of the 2005 Heisman Trophy to former USC college football star Reggie Bush 14 years after he had been stripped of it. That 2010 decision was made when the NCAA sanctioned USC for multiple rules violations, which included Bush receiving “improper benefits,” as ESPN coyly puts it, during his Trojans career from 2003 to 2005.

USC and Bush cheated, you see. They cheated, and nothing has changed regarding their guilt. They broke the rules. But because the NCAA, the Heisman Trust, football, American sports organizations generally and the American public that supports them all have the approximate ethical literacy of dung beetles, Reggie’s cheating doesn’t count.

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Curmie’s Conjectures: Why There’s a Teacher Shortage, Exhibit A

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

by Curmie

I’ve promised two essays that are indeed partially written; I could finish one of them in 20 minutes or so if I could just concentrate, but something else always seems to come up.  So let me try yet a different topic.

One of my friends and former students (we’ll call him L for the purposes of this post) teaches theatre in a public school.  He recently posted on Facebook about a confrontation he’d had with the father of one of his students.  The boy had failed to do three significant assignments, and, curiously enough, his grade reflected that fact.

Ah, but you see, the lad is an athlete, and a failing grade made him academically ineligible.  So Dad screams for “about 15 minutes.”  My friend responded like this: “I want him to be able to play […], too. I understand how important it is for him to have that outlet. But if I want lights on in my house, I gotta pay bills. If I wanna drive a car, I gotta pay to put gas in the car. So, if _______ wants to play […] then he’s gonna need to stop being lazy and do what is required in this class. Not to mention the other three classes he is failing.” 

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Ethics-DEI-Baseball Dunce: Ja’han Jones

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

I know, we’ve been seeing a lot of Sidney Wang lately.

Ja’han Jones is the blogger for Reid Out, the MSNBC race-baiting show (well, one of them) starring Joy Reid. As such, the fact that he has such a bone-headed and biased position regarding diversity is like finding out that water is wet, but it is still surprising to see anyone who can put his shoes on (I’m assuming Ja’Han can) write something as ignorant and idiotic as “The decline of Black players in MLB should be a warning about the war on DEI.”

If DEI proponents keep making arguments this bad, eventually even the dimmest members of the public will figure out that it’s a hustle. (Won’t they? Don’t they have to?) Another rule Ja’Han seems to have missed is “Don’t write about subjects you know nothing about when a lot of your readers do, because they will figure out that you are a fake.”

To summarize one of the worst published screeds I have read in a long time, this supposed “futurist,” journalist and pundit argues that Major League Baseball needs DEI programs to increase the percentage of black baseball players. (Baseball’s number of black players has been declining for a welter of cultural, financial and attitudinal reasons, none of which involve discrimination.) It’s difficult to know where to start a rebuttal of an argument that is only worthy of “What the hell are you talking about?” Might as well just dive right in…

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Ethics Quiz: The Tanked Free Throw

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

Unlike most ethics quizzes, I’ve made up my mind about this incident, but I acknowledge that others may feel differently and have good reasons—maybe—to do so. I hate it, however.

The NBA’s LA. Clippers and Chick-fil-A collaborated on a promotion that if a player on an opposing team misses two consecutive free-throw attempts, fans will win a free Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich. And thus it was that when Houston Rockets’ Boban Marjanovic went to the free-throw with 4:44 to play in the fourth and final quarter of the Rockets’ game against the Clippers with his team leading 105-97 (not an insuperable margin), he had a twinkle in his eye. He missed his first shot, and the Clipper fans stared cheering—for chicken. Marjanovic looked around, pointed at himself, and bounced his shot off the basket rim. The fans went wild, and Marjanovic seemed to revel in his failure.

Yecchh.

…not that I want to influence you, now.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz on this Patriots Day (in Boston) is…

“Was it ethical or unethical for Marjanovic to tank his free throw so the fans could get a free sandwich?”

Just listen to those idiots in the broadcast booth…

I absolutely think it was unethical; in fact, the NBA and his team should fine and suspend Marjanovic. But this is emblematic of why I detest pro basketball only slightly less passionately than I do the NFL. The sport has no integrity. Regular season games are virtually meaningless. Players literally play about 60% harder during the play-offs: you can see it.

This episode was disgusting, and unethical in more ways than one:

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Ethics Hero: The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

In a 20-0 vote, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA for short), the governing body for small colleges, ruled that it was unfair to allow transgender athletes to compete against biological women in women’s sports. The NAIA now becomes the first college sports organization to have the courage and integrity to make such an obvious and necessary rule to protect women’s advances in athletic, as the other groups, like the NCAA, waffle, stall, engage in double-talk and duck the issue while female athletes are hurt.

Yesterday the National Organization for Women, which has betrayed women in this controversy in order to keep its Far Left creds burnished, quietly took down its tweet of last week claiming that “White supremacist patriarchy”was behind objections to cheaters like Lia Thomas (above) dominating female competitors in college competitions. South Carolina’s women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, similarly bowing down to Woke World and making no sense in the process, blathered that “If you consider yourself a woman and you want to play sports, or vice versa, you should be able to play.” Wags on social media had fun musing about what “vice-versa” meant in that statement: “If you consider yourself a sport and want to play women”? (Staley’s an idiot.)

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Baseball Gets the Gambling Scandal It Deserves.

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Shohei Ohtani is, when healthy, the best baseball player alive as well as the most remarkable. No one since Babe Ruth (and no one before Babe either) managed to be a star slugger and an ace pitcher simultaneously, and Ruth never filled both roles in equal measure in the same seasons like Ohyani has. It may well be that the imported Japanese star isn’t as great a hitter as Babe or as overpowering a pitcher either, but never mind: he’s star quality on the mound and at the plate, and that is unprecedented.

The undisputed most valuable player in baseball signed a massive free agent contract with the best team in baseball (and, after the despicable Yankees, the best known), so Major League Baseball was confident that it had hit the metaphorical jackpot. And then…disaster struck.

During a Seoul, South Korea, series between the Dodgers and San Diego Padres, it was revealed that Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s interpreter since 2013 who followed the star to the United States in 2018, had been illegally gambling on sports; a law enforcement investigation of a bookie uncovered his activities. Ohtani’s name was bank transfers to the bookie to cover Mizuhara’s gambling losses, but Mizuhara insisted that his boss and friend knew nothing about the gambling. The Dodgers fired Mizuhara and the official story coming from Ohtani’s lawyers was that Mizuhara had been stealing money from Ohtani.

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