Sports

The Last Word on “Taser Boy”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Today the New York Times weighed in with an editorial on the Phillies taser incident, not surprisingly siding with the kinder, gentler majority who have argued against the position taken here, sometimes, like my passionate friends over at Popehat, in a not so kind or gentle way. “The best course there [Philadelphia], as anywhere, is smarter, more attentive security in the stands,” the Times said. “Maybe it’s also higher Plexiglas, stiffer trespassing fines, less beer. Force must always be the last resort. Tasering a showboating kid is just plain excessive.”

<sigh!>

Continue reading →

The Problem of Fairness, and David Ortiz: A Case Study

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Fairness is a core ethical value. It is also one of the most difficult to embody. We all know what fairness is in the abstract: treatment of others characterized by impartiality and honesty, and an avoidance of self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism. In complex situations involving many interested parties, however, seeking fairness becomes a dilemma wrapped in a conflict surrounded by contradictions. One of these complex situations now faces the Boston Red Sox, as the baseball team deals with the travails of its designated hitter David Ortiz. Sports has a fascinating habit of crystallizing ethical problems, and the Ortiz case demonstrates how hard it is to be “fair.” Continue reading →

The Fan, the Taser, and Respect for the Law

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

A teenaged fan ran out on the field in the middle of a Philadelphia Phillies game a couple of days ago. This happens many times, too many times, during the baseball season, and it is always followed by a merry chase, sometimes with fans laughing or cheering, featuring over-weight security staff or police trying to capture the fool, and occasionally a featuring a  surprise, like a player intervening and decking the guy. There was a surprise this time, all right: when the fan wouldn’t stop after the pursuing officer told him to, he was shot with a taser. And some fans cheered at that, too.

A tsunami of criticism is now crashing over the security officer, condemning the tasering of 17-year-old Steve Consalvi, sometimes in terms more appropriate to discussing Abu Ghraib. If I were Consalvi’s father, I would counsel him to immediately issue a statement taking full responsibility for the incident and absolving the officer. The teen’s conduct was irresponsible and illegal, and for it to result in any adverse employment action against the security officer who tasered him would only compound the offense. This is especially true because the critics of the officer are dead wrong. They are in the grip of a dangerous, illogical but increasingly popular idea in our culture that submitting to  legitimate police authority is one of those things that we can do or not do without consequences or stigma. The fan on the field is one of the mildest examples of disrespect for the law, but it is a perfectly good place to start getting our ethics unmuddled. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: New York Met Jason Bay

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Sometimes all it takes to be an Ethics Hero is being nice, especially if it’s in a way that most people like you have abandoned.

New Mets left fielder Jason Bay has moved to Larchmont, New York, where his presence is causing something of a buzz among the residents, especially the younger baseball fans. Gabriel Tugendstein, who is 11, was especially excited, and here we defer to his mother, writing in the New York Times… Continue reading →

Broken Bats, Barn Doors, and Murder

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Craig Calcaterra, a former lawyer who now does baseball blogging over at the NBC sports site, has once again called for baseball stadiums to include protective netting along the stands from home plate to first and third base. This time the impetus is a frightening incident in Milwaukee at a Brewers game, in which a broken bat handle went flying into the stands and hit a child. These types of incidents have been happening with greater frequency in recent years, although these is some disagreement about why. Some say it is the more brittle maple bats, others that it is the whip-thin handles of the bats now in vogue, and still others blame the new glut of baseball parks seating fans closer to the field. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: P.G.A. Golfer Brian Davis

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

I don’t follow golf, but if this sort of thing happens very often, I may have to become a fan…in spite of Tiger Woods.

P.G.A. tour veteran Brian Davis was facing Jim Furyk in a playoff at the Verizon Heritage, and trying to finally win a P.G.A. event. His approach shot to the first hole in the playoff bounced off the green and landed in the rough. When Davis attempted to knock the ball back up to the green, his club barely swiped a weed on his backswing. The rules of tournament golf decree that touching anything lying around the ball during a player’s backswing violates  the prohibition against moving loose obstacles or impediments to a shot. The required penalty: two strokes, enough to guarantee that David would lose the play-off and his best, maybe only, chance for PGA glory, not to mention a seven figure prize.

Davis may have been the only one to notice the infraction, but golf is a game that calls for self-reporting. That’s what he did: he called the violation on himself, and made himself a loser. Continue reading →

Obama Joins Coakley, Hillary and Kerry in “The Baseball Trap”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

A new poll finds the American public’s trust in its government at an all-time low, and as silly as it is, this sort of thing doesn’t help a bit.

President Obama pointedly wore a Chicago White Sox cap when he threw out the first ball at the official Major League baseball season opener in Washington, D.C. rather than the cap of the home team, the Washington Nationals, who need all the fans they can get. Last week he stopped by an actual White Sox game, and visited the broadcast booth, where he chatted with Rob Dibble on the air about his baseball loyalties, and how he was, at heart, a White Sox fan, having lived in the South Side (the North Side is Chicago Cubs territory) during his Chicago days, which extended from 1985 to when he moved into the White House—about 23 years.

Then Dibble asked the President who his favorite White Sox player was “growing up.” It was clear from his answer—stuttering, followed by the explanation that he grew up in Hawaii and thus began life as an Oakland A’s fan—that Obama couldn’t name a single one. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Sportswriter William Rhoden

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

“What is character? In the N.F.L., character is need.”

—–New York Times sports columnist William Rhoden, explaining how teams seek to draft players “with character,” a.k.a. “who don’t commit felonies off the field,” unless, of course, the player is especially talented and they need what he has to offer on the field in order to win.

This intellectually dishonest standard is not restricted to pro football. Voters want ethical and honest elected representatives, unless they keep taxes low and deliver goodies to their neighborhoods. Corporations want executives with character too, unless a manipulative, deceitful, scheming whiz makes the company’s profits soar. The student with great promise will be excused or merely admonished for offenses that a school will suspend lesser students for.

The well-documented human tendency to endure unethical conduct from high-level performers while holding less gifted and accomplished individuals to higher standards of character serves to undermine ethics generally, confirming as it does the principle that the prettier, smarter, richer, more powerful, more famous you are, the less obligated you are to care about others, do the right things, or obey the rules.

For this is the Star Syndrome. In the coming months and years, Ethics Alarms and its readers will encounter it often. Continue reading →

A. J. Pierzynski, Baseball Cheating and Moral Gray Zones

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The baseball season is certainly off to an unethical start.

In Tuesday’s game between the Blue Jays and White Sox, Toronto pitcher Ricky Romero’s gestating no-hitter was aborted in the 8th inning in part because of some deceptive play-acting by ChiSox catcher A. J. Pierzynski. Every era  has one player who acquires a reputation for being tricky, a.k.a. “dirty,” and Pierzynski is the current title holder. When he came to bat against Romero, the catcher with the unspellable name took advantage of a pitch that bounced in the dirt near him to hop up and down as if his widdle toe had a ball-induced boo-boo. Incredibly (for even the White Sox announcers were chatting about how obvious it was that the ball hadn’t touched A. J., noting that he wasn’t even hopping on the most plausibly injured foot), home umpire Tim McClelland stood by silently as Pierzynski trotted to first base. Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston protested to no avail, and, not for the first time, A. J. Pierzynski had stolen first base. Now Romero had to pitch from the stretch rather than a wind-up, and the no-hitter (and the shut-out) was no-history seconds later, as Toronto’s Alex Rios hit a home run.

Did A. J. Pierzynski cheat? Should he be fined or punished for feigning an injury,  as some have suggested? Continue reading →

The Conundrum of the Unsuccessful Cheat

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A sharp-eyed Chicago White Sox fan with a blog at his disposal caught something interesting in yesterdays Twins-White Sox game, which ended in a ChiSox victory when Twins baserunner J.J. Hardy was thrown out at home to end the game. As Hardy rounded third, Twins third base coach Scott Ullger stepped on to the playing field, planted one foot on third and for all the world looked like a runner holding the bag until he saw if the relay throw was going to be fielded cleanly. Was his intent to fool Twin Mark Teahan, who had just received the throw from the outfield, into believing—just for a crucial second—that he was Hardy, thus delaying the relay throw home? If so, it didn’t work: Teahan threw home quickly and well, and Hardy was a dead duck. As the blogger,Jim Margalus, writes,

“…it would’ve been interesting to see what would’ve happened if the relay were botched, because what Ullger is doing seems to be in violation of rule 7.09(h), in which…‘With a runner on third base, the base coach leaves his box and acts in any manner to draw a throw by a fielder;… is defined as an act of interference’.” Continue reading →