Sports

Baseball, Ted Williams and Ethics Zugzwang

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Baseball has an potential ethics problem involving baseball legend (and Red Sox icon)Ted Williams that I don’t think can be resolved.

Williams, or “Teddy Ballgame” as he liked to call himself (He also called himself “Ted Fucking Williams the Greatest Fucking Hitter Who Ever Lived”) is renowned as the Last of the Four-Hundred Hitters, Batting .406 in 1941. (He also lost the MVP vote that year to Joe DiMaggio because Joltin’ Joe hit in 56 straight games, a statistical anomaly.) That .406 average looks especially impressive in 2025, when only one player in the National League, Trea Turner, even managed to hit .300.

But just for fun, let’s imagine that Turner hit exactly .400. Ted Williams would no longer be the last of the .400 hitters, right? But there is a problem. When Ted hit .406, baseball counted sacrifice flies—when a batter makes an out with a fly ball that is deep enough that a runner on third base can tag up after the catch and score—like any other out. They counted against a player’s average. In 1953, though, baseball changed the rule so a “sac fly” didn’t count as an out. If Williams’ sac flies had been hit under the new (and current) rules, his average (he had 8 that year), would have been .413. If Turner were playing under the 1941 rules—-he hit 2 sac flies this season—those two outs would drop him below the .400 mark.

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Baseball Ethics Dunce: St. Louis Cardinals Manager Oli Marmol

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

On this date in 1941, Ted Williams got six hits in eight at-bats during a season-ending doubleheader in Philadelphia, boosting his average to .406. He became the first player since 1930 to hit .400., and no one has done it since. Of course, Connie Mack, the Hall of Fame A’s manager, could have walked Williams every time up and prevented him from reaching the .400 mark on the theory that he was the best Red Sox batter and that not letting him swing the bat would help Mack’s lousy Philadelphia team win one or two meaningless games. Mack didn’t do that, of course, because it would have cheated Williams, cheated the fans, and cheated baseball

Fast-forward to 2025. Yesterday, the Chicago Cubs led the Cardinals 7-3 with a runner on third and two outs in the bottom of the 8th inning. Michael Busch was up, and he was flirting with baseball history: the Cubs player was 4-for-4 with two home runs already, and needed just a single to complete a cycle—a homer, triple, double and single in the same game. Cycles are for hitters what no-hit games are to pitchers: rare historic accomplishments, in fact, there have been almost exactly the same number of each in baseball history. But Cardinals manager Oli Marmol ordered that Busch be given an intentional walk, ending his pursuit of the cycle. The Cubs fans booed, and I’m pretty sure that Cardinal fans would have booed the decision too if the game had been in St. Louis.

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Mets Announcer Gary Cohen Was Right and Cubs Rookie Matt Shaw Is…What, Exactly? And What Am I?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Chicago Cubs rookie third baseman Matt Shaw skipped the Cubs’ game against the Reds on Sunday after receiving a call from Charley Kirk’s widow. Instead, the player attended the memorial event for the assassinated activist at State Farm Stadium in Arizona. Shaw is not just a Kirk admirer: Shaw had something of a personal relationship with Kirk that he described as important to him, though they were not close friends.

During Tuesday’s Mets-Cubs game at Wrigley Field, game, Mets play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen said, “Shaw had Cubs world in a tizzy this weekend when he was not here for the Cubs game with the Reds — a game they lost (1-0) and in which his lack of presence was felt. It was later revealed that he had been given permission to attend Charlie Kirk’s funeral.”

Cohen added, “I don’t want to talk about any of the politics of it, but the thought of leaving your team in the middle of a race for any reason other than a family emergency really strikes me as weird.”

Naturally, Kirk-worshiping Mets fans erupted on social media, with some pledging to boycott any games announced by Cohen and others insisting that he be fired. Now, Cohen didn’t say anything negative about Charley Kirk at all. Moreover, he was 100% right. It is very weird, although weird would not be my word for it. Skipping an important game in the waning days of a baseball season when your team seeks your services is selfish and unprofessional. Shaw is a rookie and “only” makes the MLB minimum of $760,000; nonetheless, that salary commits him to being available to play if he is healthy. This wasn’t his wife giving birth or a desperately sick child or the death of a parent—the MLB Players’ Union bargained for special leave for such events.

Some wags have pointed out that the rookie is hardly a star: he’s about a league average hitter, though his fielding at third is outstanding. That misses the point. He was obligated to play baseball, not to go to a memorial ceremony. An actress bailed on an ethics program she was supposed to assist me on, with almost no notice, because her grandmother died. ProEthics, as in me, blackballed her after that, and I told her not to bother auditioning for any professional shows in the D.C. area I directed. Woody Allen said that 80% of success is just showing up, and I couldn’t trust this alleged professional to do that.

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The Villain In The Phillies-Marlins Ball Heist Was NOT the Obnoxious Phillies Fan…

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

No, indeed.

The incident that has “gone viral” from the stands at a Phillies-Marlins game in Miami is covered in the videos above. Phillies outfielder Harrison Bader hit a home run into the left field seats. The ball hit the bleachers and rolled around as four fans tried to nab the souvenir. A man appeared to win the battle, returned to his seat and gave the ball to his young his son, who rewarded him with a hug.

Enter Cruella DeVille. A woman who had been scrambling for the ball, wearing Phillies gear, confronted the man and demanded the ball, claiming she had a hold of it before he got it. The father complied, taking the ball out of his son’s glove and handing it to the woman. Of course the incident was filmed and posted on social media, with the unidentified woman being quickly dubbed “Phillies Karen.”

Sensing a public relations opportunity, the staff at the Marlins’ LoanDepot Park (another horribly named baseball park: money isn’t everything, guys!) wanted to make things right, so they sent a stadium employee to give the son and his sister a goody bag full of baseball stuff.

Awwwww…

The villain in this incident was not the horrible woman. (She doesn’t know her baseball ball-chasing rules, incidentally. In those scrambles for bouncing balls, whoever gets a firm grip on the ball first wins fair and square. I have been in many of these tussles, one of which featured a little old lady snatching the ball from me —a Mickey Mantle foul!—just as I thought I had it in my grasp….) No, the villain was the weenie father.

What a disgrace. This guy gave up in the face of an unjust and unreasonable confrontation because he didn’t have the guts to tell the woman to buzz off, de-gifting his son of a prize—it was his birthday!—in the process. In that moment, he taught to boy many things, none of them good. Don’t fight for what’s yours. Let bullies win. Avoid unpleasant confrontations at all costs, even when it means letting unethical tactics prevail.

He also taught his son that his father is a weenie. Good to know, I guess.

Wow…Not For the First Time, President Trump Doesn’t Know What the Hell He’s Talking About…

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

The topic, fortunately, is baseball, not the economy, foreign policy, or making America great again. Still, it is not a good sign when the leader of the free world spouts off like an ignorant fool professing absolute certainty without any genuine expertise whatsoever. If he does this about baseball…well, you can complete that sentence.

President Trump now demands that Roger Clemens be admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame despite enough evidence that he used banned steroids late in his career to put him in the Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Sammy Sosa et al. Rogues Gallery of cheaters with great stats who fail the Hall’s character requirements. In a post on Truth Social today, Trump said that he had just played golf with the 11-time All-Star pitcher, and apparently this makes him an authority on The Rocket’s dubious past.

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Was Jen Pawol the Most Qualified Umpire or Was She Just “Historic”?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Over the weekend, minor league umpire Jen Pawol became the first woman to umpire in a Major League Baseball game, handling the bases in Game 1 of an Atlanta Braves-Miami Marlins doubleheader then moving behind the plate to call balls and strikes for Sunday’s game. Of course, MLB made a great hullabaloo over the momentous occasion. At various times during the season, minor league umpires are brought up to the big leagues to fill in for umpires getting their union-dictated vacations. Pawol is the only woman currently umpiring in the minor leagues. Thanks to baseball’s (and Commissioner Rob Manfred’s) wokeness obsession, she took her place in baseball history with a lingering and unavoidable doubt: would a man with her record and credentials have been chosen by MLB for the weekend umpiring chores? Were there more qualified and deserving male umpires who were passed over because they had y-chromosomes?

This is the scourge that the DEI fad has created. I feel sympathy for Pawol, but there is no avoiding it.

Naturally, MLB was ready for the questions and the suspicion. “Jen Pawol’s MLB debut is no PR stunt — she earned it the hard way” blared a Fox News headline, following an MLB press release. Methinks they doth protest too much. My suspicions were raised because just a few days earlier, the Boston Red Sox created team “history” by having an all-female broadcast team for a game. Why? Well, you know, because. The women were fine, professional play-by-play and color announcers, but nothing special except for their high voices. I’m sure there were plenty of long-time minor league male broadcasters who would have loved the chance to do a big league game, but, again, they wouldn’t be “historic,” so they were out of luck.

As with umpires, almost all baseball broadcasters are male and white. There’s no demonstrable discrimination at the heart of this: it’s self selection. Women don’t play hardball; blacks tend to be drawn to other sports as well. Why should that circumstance provide a special advantage to the minorities who do enter the field? Baseball doesn’t benefit from diversity of umpires: what matters is getting the calls right. Baseball fans want engaging, knowledgeable game broadcasts, and couldn’t care less about the sex and color of those providing it.

Meanwhile, there is still room for Manfred to carve out some more gratuitous history: baseball still hasn’t had a heterosexual female ump in the major leagues.

I’m Shocked…SHOCKED!…That Major League Baseball Is Facing a Gambling Scandal

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Cleveland Guardians (you know, the Indians?) pitcher Emmanuel Clase has been placed on non-disciplinary administrative leave through August 31 as part of Major League Baseball’s ongoing investigation into gambling. Clase’s teammate, pitcher Luis Ortiz, was the first player placed on leave under the ongoing investigation.

“The Guardians have been notified by Major League Baseball that as part of their sports betting investigation Emmanuel Clase has been placed on non-disciplinary paid leave per an agreement with the Players Association,” the team said yesterday in a statement. “We have been informed that no additional players or Club personnel are expected to be impacted. The Guardians are not permitted to comment further at this time, and will respect the league’s confidential investigative process as we continue to fully cooperate.”

Clase, an elite closer (the relief pitcher who pitches in the 9th inning when his team is ahead) signed a five-year, $20 million extension in April 2022. He’s being paid $4.5 million this year and has a $6 million guarantee for the 2026 season under the terms of that contract. Why would anyone making that much money risk it all to get involved with gambling in a sport where doing so guarantees banning from the game? That’s easy: professional athletes are not, as a rule, very bright, but are greedy,and have the ethics alarms of 12-year-olds.

I covered this issue in a longer post in February. I was right, the professional sports leagues are wrong, any fool could see it (but these organizations are not run ny just any fools, but very special fools), and the result is unavoidable. The embrace of gambling by sports organizations is going to be a disaster. It is hypocritical, incompetent and irresponsible.

Little League Ethics: A Bat Flip Controversy Goes To Court

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Little Leaguer Marco Rocco of Haddonfield, N.J., 12-years-old, hit a majestic home run in a Little League tournament game against a team from Harrison last week. Marco emulated what many big league players do in similar moments of triumph: he flipped his bat into the air to celebrate as he began to circle the bases. His homer put his team up 8-0 and a step closer to the Little League World Series.

But Marco was ejected from the game, and, by the Little League rules, the ejection included a one-game suspension for the next game too. Marco’s innocent bat flip meant he would would be barred from playing in a showdown against Elmora Township, with a the New Jersey state Little League title on the line. Marco’s father was told that in the umpire’s judgment, his son broke a rule that “At no time should ‘horseplay’ be permitted on the playing field.” No rule mentions bat-flipping.

So Mr. Rocco, who is a lawyer, filed a motion asking a New Jersey court for a temporary restraining order, and got it. The judge that Marco could play, in the next game, which took place yesterday, holding that “Little League is enjoined from enforcing its suspension.”

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Comment of the Day: “Ethics Quote of the Week: The New York Times”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Steve-O-in NJ has some trenchant comments about what the Democrats are doing, or trying to do. Personally, I think the operative word here may be “denial.” Or cowardice. Or a political party that has become wedded to lies as its primary tactic whatever the issue, and can’t kick the habit even when it obviously isn’t working any more.

At the 1968 Masters Tournament, pro golfer Roberto De Vicenzo (above) signed an scorecard without checking it, thereby costing him a spot in an 18-hole playoff for the storied championship. He said, “Oh what a stupid I am!” and it stuck with me, as well as with many others, remembered as a poignant expression of regret and self-recrimination. I wasn’t in the ethics biz back then, but I admired the golfer for an honest, brutal assessment of his accountability. I am certain that he never again signed a scorecard without checking the strokes.

What the apparent plan of the Democrats in the wake of last November’s disaster—that is, the Harris-Walz ticket and their stunningly incompetent campaign—is to admit nothing, learn nothing, and to keep existing in as miasma of self-deception. Good luck with that. And I can’t wait to hear the argument asserting why anyone should ever trust a party that responds to failure like that to run anything, not just an economy, but a shoe-shine stand. President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced last week that about $4 billion in unspent federal funding for California’s absurdly delayed and overbudget high-speed rail project has been terminated.  This boondoggle was originally passed as a ballot initiative in 2008, a 800-mile rail line to be completed by 2020 in two phases on a $33 billion budget, connecting San Francisco with Los Angeles and branches stretching north to Sacramento and south to San Diego. In 2019, Newsom announced that there was no path to completing the original plan after costs ballooned, so the project was cut back to a 171-mile section between Merced and Bakersfield. Of course, the responsible course would have been to end the project entirely. High speed rail, however, as one wag wrote last week, is to transportation what wind farms are to energy: woke, virtue-signaling fantasies unmoored to reality.

Here is Steve-O’s Comment of the Day on the post, “Ethics Quote of the Week: The New York Times”:

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Ethics Quiz: The Non-Star All-Star Game Selection

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is fun: a different kind of MLB annual All-Star Game ethics controversy! We’ve never seen this one before: usually the controversies over baseball’s “mid-summer classic” (This is All-Star Game week, with the teams taking a break around Wednesday’s game televised on Fox News.) involve fairness in the selections (there are always more deserving players than the limited rosters can hold, whether every team should have at least one representative even when that means selecting a mediocre player having a so-so season, whether there was bias in the selection of the reserves, whether aging great players should be included on the squad because they really are the players the fans want to see, whether the fan voting system is absurd, stuff like that. (Some past controversies are discussed here,)

Never this, however: MLB added Milwaukee Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski to the National League All-Star team last week. “Who?”you well may ask? Misiorowski is a highly touted rookie who has only been in the major leagues for about a month. He’s been the starting pitcher in just five games, and now holds the record for fewest games ever played in by a player making an All-Star team—by a lot. Wails Yahoo Sports,

“The main goal of the Midsummer Classic is to recognize the players who have performed at a high level through the first half of the MLB season. With that, it also allows fans to see the stars of the game they might not watch on a regular basis. But by adding Misiorowski to the NL All-Star roster, MLB has sent a message to players that not only does the game not matter, but performance doesn’t matter, either.”

Misiorowski is what baseball jargon refers to as a “phenom.”

He’s viewed as a future superstar, and has looked like it, beginning his career with 11 perfect innings, no hits, no walks. Nobody had done that in the history of the game, He regularly tops 100 mph on his fastball, which has been clocked as speedy as 103. Yes, he’s an exciting newcomer who may do great things…eventually.

But picking him for the All-Star Game is like, oh, let’s pick an absurd hypothetical, like giving a Nobel Peace Prize to a newly elected U.S. President before he’s actually done anything related to peace at all. Not that such a thing could ever happen….

Your Ethics Alarms All-Star Ethics Quiz of the Day is…

Is it unethical for Misiorowski to be selected for the All-Star Game?

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