Sports

As the Cancer of Corruption Spreads, a Diagnosis and Treatment

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

A sign in Africa, which corruption continues to ravage. We ignore its warning at our peril.

Last week, three more disheartening cheating scandals were in the spotlight, in completely separate areas of our society: legal education, the military, and college sports. The signs that the cancer of corruption is spreading through America’s culture with increasing speed are frightening, but being frightened isn’t constructive. Working to eradicate the cancer is. Last week’s revelations:

  • The American Bar Association publicly admonished Villanova Law School for a pattern of misrepresenting—inflating—GPAs and LSATs of its applicants and admitted students in order to receive a higher ranking, which in turn would attract more and better applicants. The scandal broke in June, and the ABA was lenient, stating that the school had reported its own misconduct (the responsible parties had been discovered and dismissed). Is Villanova alone, or is it just the first law school in this increasingly competitive environment to get caught? If a law school cheats, what kind of lawyers will it produce? Continue reading →

A Batboy Sells Out His Heroes

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Don't trust him, Roy...he's doing research for a book!

Luis Castillo became a batboy for the New York Yankees at the age of 15, and for eight baseball seasons shared the clubhouse with his hometown heroes. Now he’s cashing in, having written a tell-all memoir of his experiences  that dishes on Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens and others, all of whom trusted him to be fair, respectful, and discreet.

The recurrent theme from the media’s commentators, which I heard repeated on CNN this morning as it hosted Castillo in his book-hawking efforts (in this case he told an embarrassing anecdote about Yankee catcher Jose Posada) is that “Castillo is able to divulge Yankee secrets in his new memoir because he was part of the last group of batboys who did not have to sign confidentiality agreements.”

This is accurate, but wrong. It is also typical of what passed today as journalistic ethics. Continue reading →

Would Dennis Rodman Qualify for the Baseball Hall of Fame?

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Dennis Rodman, out of uniform

Of course not. Dennis Rodman didn’t play baseball. He was a pro basketball player, and as of yesterday, an inductee into the NBA Hall of Fame for his exploits on a basketball court. There is no question that he is eminently qualified for admission to the NBA Hall of Fame, because the NBA Hall of Fame doesn’t care if players are thugs, drunks, scofflaws, deadbeat dads and couldn’t define sportsmanship with a dictionary as long as they can shoot, score, pass, dribble and block shots.

The Major League Baseball Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, however, requires that its members demonstrate “integrity, sportsmanship, (and) character,” in addition to outstanding achievements and a remarkable career record.  Because of the steroid era that has rendered a whole generation of players suspect for cheating, an expanding number of baseball greats face being excluded from the Hall because cheating by using substances that are illegal and banned in the sport while implicitly deceiving the public about the use is, by any rational definition, a material breach of integrity and sportsmanship.  The natural reaction by many sportswriters, as in other fields when reasonable standards are routinely violated, is to attack the standards. Why should a sport care about matters like integrity and character? Isn’t it the performance that counts, and winning? Continue reading →

Welcome to Carlos Zambrano’s Ethics Fun House!

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Carlos Zambrano, bludgeoning his career into submission

Carlos Zambrano is the supposed pitching ace of the Chicago Cubs, though after signing a monster multi-year contract for millions, he has shown himself to be inconsistent, over-rated, and nuts. Yesterday the flamboyant hurler gave up five home runs, seemingly attempted to bisect the Braves’ Chipper Jones with a fast ball, and got ejected from the game. Then the ethics fun started:

Ethics Fun #1: Carlos cleaned out his locker, told a Cubs trainer that he was retiring, and left the premises before the game was over. A Major League ethics whiff. Continue reading →

Major League Baseball, Forgivability, and List Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Unforgivable?*

Bleacher Reports is an enjoyable sports website, and it gives opportunities to aspiring writers and bloggers, some of whom are quite talented.  In addition to typical opinion pieces and reporting, the site has a fondness for lists, often trivial to the extreme, like “The 50 Ugliest Athletes of All Time.” The titles are all misnomers, because there is almost never any criteria given for the choices or their relative ranking. An accurate title would be, “The Fifty Athletes I Think Are The Ugliest.”  And of course, who cares? (Don Mossi, by the way, was the ugliest athlete ever, no matter what anybody says.)

A recent list, however did bother me. It is called “The Fifty Most Unforgivable Acts in Baseball History,“ and much of the problem with it lies in the title itself. If you are going to write about history, there is a duty perform diligent research, even for a silly online list. Misrepresentations online have a large probability of misleading people.  The title is a misrepresentation, like “The 50 Ugliest Athletes,” but unlike that list, there is some harm done. The list isn’t close to complete; it isn’t consistent; it isn’t well-researched. I’d bet that the author, Robert Knapel, wrote it off the top of his head.  Anyone who looked at the list and assumed, as the author represents, that these are truly the low points—“the dark side,” as the author puts it—of major league baseball would be seriously misinformed.

There are unequivocally, probably universally recognized incidents and events that are infinitely worse that most of the items on the list.  Just a  few samples: Continue reading →

Another Sexting Pol: Drawing the Lines

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

"ARRGH! I didn't consent to THAT!"

From today’s  New York Daily News:

“Garden State Democrat Louis Magazzu announced his resignation Tuesday after nude pictures he sent to a woman he had been corresponding with were posted on a Republican activist’s website. At least two of the photos showed the Cumberland County freeholder’s crotch, two showed him dressed to the nines in a suit, and a fifth showed him waist up without a shirt.“

Comments and observations:

  • Magazzu didn’t have to resign, but it was right for him to do so. Sexting is a problem among high school students, and it doesn’t help to have elected representatives indulging in it. He was humiliated by publication of the photos, and because the humiliation extended to his constituents and his party, resigning quickly was an appropriate, honorable, courageous thing to do—as it would have been for Bill Clinton, Sen. David Vitter, ex-Sen. Ensign, ex-South Carolina Governor Sanford, and others. He didn’t have to resign, however. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz: Is Bunting to Break Up a No-Hitter Unethical?

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I want to get this on the record for all time, because the controversy comes up almost ever baseball season. it came up again yesterday.

In Sunday’s baseball game between the Detroit Tigers and Los Angeles Angels, Tiger pitcher Justin Verlander was six outs from joining Bob Feller, Sandy Koufax, and Nolan Ryan as the only pitchers since 1900 with three or more no-hitters in their careers. But the Angels’ Erick Aybar tried to end the no-hitter with a bunt single leading off the eighth against Verlander. He got it, too, except that the home town scorer attempted to preserve Verlander’s historic bid by charging an error instead. (Unethical. But I digress.) Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Dear God: Stop Calling”

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The post about political candidates announcing that they have been “called’ by the Lord to run for high office continues to generate provocative, passionate and  perceptive responses, the latest from Glenn Logan,a blogger who covers the University of Kentucky Wildcats for their most discerning fans. Glenn’s comments here—sadly less frequent than they once were—are always thoughtful. Here is his comment on “Dear God: Stop Calling!”, putting to good use his expertise regarding competition of all sorts. I think you’ll agree that it is a most deserving “Comment of the Day”:

“Just because God calls us to do something does not mean that our effort will be successful, even if we do it the best we can. I would hope that most people understand this. Very often, it seems to be the case that the value, or the lesson, is in the journey rather than the outcome. This is pure assumption on my part — God has not seen fit to reveal his works to me, a fact for which I am eternally grateful.

“It is also possible that these worthies mistook their own desires as a call from God. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference, for whatever reason. If we forget, for a moment, that we are talking about politicians and just assume they believe what they say, this could be little more than a misunderstanding on their part.” Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Jim Brown

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Wne Jim Brown talks, people tend to listen.

I have mixed feelings about Jim Brown, the legendary N.F.L. running back and former movie star (“The Dirty Dozen”), stemming from the fact that loving a woman and beating her up never seemed to be mutually exclusive actions to him. His domestic problems aside, however, Brown has also periodically used his fame and status to draw needed attention to important issues, and he has just done so again, calling out the N.F.L. players’ union for apparently failing to make the welfare of retired players part of their impending deal with the league’s owners.

“Why isn’t the union talking about health care, better health care?” Brown recently told reporters. “Why aren’t they talking about better pensions? You definitely need a health plan that goes beyond five years; you definitely need a better pension plan.” Continue reading →

Integrity, Soccer, and Ties

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Kissing your sister is better than this.

Honest, this has nothing to do with disappointment over the U.S. women’s soccer team’s loss in the World Cup Finals: I couldn’t care less about soccer of any kind, at any level. But a lot of people do care (my sister and niece are probably under a suicide watch as I write this, so I think that the sport needs to address its integrity deficit.

To be specific: having a major title or tournament in any team sport decided by something as artificial and unteamlike as soccer’s shoot-out tie-breaker is a breach of that sport’s duty to its tradition and its fans. It is solution for solution’s sake, abandoning the purpose of the contest so as to have a resolution, no matter how unfair, cynical, or unrelated to what has gone before. Continue reading →