baseball

How Cultural Norms Change…or Rot, Depending On Your Perspective

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Jefry Yan, a minor league pitcher renowned as an oddity for his bizarre and unique manner of celebrating strikeouts finally got to perform on the major-league stage this week. In the New York Mets’ 6-5, 10-inning win over with the Cleveland Guardians this week, Yan preserved a one-run New York lead in the sixth inning, striking out two Guardians in the process and punctuating each strikeout with his characteristic, er, flair.

Not long ago, maybe a couple of decades, a rookie pitcher who acted like that during a game would be taken to the metaphorical woodshed by a coach or a veteran player and told, “Kid, that’s not how we act in the Big Leagues. Don’t do it again.” One reason would be that the team he “showed up” by celebrating would make sure their pitcher hit his team’s star player in the ribs with a fast ball as soon as the player came to bat. Before the Designated Hitter, when pitchers had to bat, a hurler who behaved like Yan would be taking his life into his hands.

Now MLB has adopted the attitude of “let the kids play” to appeal to younger fans. Being a “Get off my lawn” guy, I don’t like Yan’s antics much, and I suspect a lot of batters don’t either. But I also remember how Dick Radatz, aka “The Monster,”the huge Red Sox closer in the Sixties who for three years may have been the greatest relief pitcher ever, used to throw up both arms over his head in a victory gesture when he ended a game with a swinging strike-out, as he inevitably did. It wasn’t as outrageous as Yan’s split, but at the time it was considered audacious.

And the fans loved it.

Mets Manager Any Green isn’t worried that Yan’s antics will cause any issues with the opposition. “I worry far less (today) than 20 years ago,” Green said. “I think he has developed a reputation throughout the game that this isn’t showing up anybody else, and people have accepted, largely, that this is a good-natured human who’s enjoying being on the field playing baseball. We didn’t have many minor-league teams take issue with his enthusiasm. They end up smiling at it if they’re not the one getting punched out.”

Yan is a bit defiant. “I’m going to continue to go out there the same way, to go out there with the same emotion to have fun as if I’m playing a kids’ game, like I always have,” Yan said before his Mets debut. “I’m going to enjoy that first (strikeout), like it’s my first and last one. I’ve worked a long time for that moment.”

I would offer two points. One: his displays of joy will become less tolerable if he doesn’t have consistent value to his team. The second is that I worry about the gimmick becoming a slippery slope. At what point do such eccentricities constitute “making a travesty of the game,” an offense that remains in the rulebook? What’s next? Pitcher’s doing “the worm” after strikeouts? Trotting out a home run backwards, as emotionally-troubled baseball star Jimmy Piersall once did? Cultural norms exist for reasons. Sometimes we don’t remember those reasons until it’s too late.

(Inside) Baseball Ethics: Changing a Rule Without Telling Anyone

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I know people skip my baseball posts, but let’s look at the principle involved. Baseball’s umpires just changed how a rule was being enforced without telling anyone. It’s like double secret probation (if you don’t know the reference, you should). It’s unethical.

Baseball’s pitch-clock rule, which has shaved more than a ha;lf hour off of average game times, isn’t juist for pitchers. “Batters must be in the box and alert to the pitcher by the 8-second mark or else be charged with an automatic strike.”Alert to the pitcher means looking at him. In June, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider criticized the habit of Yankees shortstop José Caballero, when he bats, waits until the last possible second to look up at the pitcher. It is widely believed that he does this to annoy pitchers. It works.

This week, Pirates pitcher Dennis Santana appeared to start his wind-up with nine seconds on the pitch clock and Caballero still looking down at his feet. The umpire stopped play to warn Santana he had to wait for eye contact. The pitcher was angry, and after Cabellero grounded out, Santana made a kissy-face at him. Benches cleared as Cabellero shouted back and the two seemed about to come to blows.

In the first game of the Yankees-Pirates doubleheader yesterday, Caballero did his usual last second act but this time was called for a pitch-clock violation. In the video, umpire Quinn Wolcott says to the Yankee player: “You don’t get to do the ‘three, four seconds in the box’ thing anymore.” “I was looking up at nine seconds,” Caballero replies. “You’re picking on me!”

Indeed he was. That near brawl, writers were told, prompted MLB to tell umpires to crack down. “It’s not allowed anymore,” umpire Adrian Johnson explained. “It was the cause of a benches-clearing situation on Monday night. Major League Baseball stepped in. They want it enforced.” Part of the rule prohibits “conduct by batters designed to deceive a pitcher into beginning their windup or coming to the set position.” Even though for years umpires have accepted that Cabellero’s late look up was just his way of getting ready for a pitch, they reversed themselves without warning the player.

(Caballero’s) been warned all season,” Johnson said. “We were instructed not to warn him. We were instructed to violate him. That’s what it is. It’s a violation.”

Caballero argues, “(The umpire) said they were making new rules today, and it’s on me, because I was deceiving to the pitcher, which doesn’t make sense because, for me … deceiving means you’re trying to trick someone, and I’m not trying to trick someone, because I do the same thing over and over. If you’re gonna make a change of the rule, at least (notify) us before the game.”

All but the last part is ethically debatable. If Cabellero’s routine does confuse and annoy pitchers, and he certainly knows that, then whether his routine was originally devised to deceive pitchers or not, it does deceive them and he keeps doing it anyway.

Changing how a rule is going to be enforced without telling players that, however, is indefensible.

Ooh, Apparently The New ABS Challenge System That Stops Umpires’ Wrong Ball and Strike Calls From Changing The Outcomes Of Baseball Games Has Hurt Umpires’ Feelings…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Tough. Do your job better.

The major MLB baseball rules addition this season, and one that is, as I so sagely predicted many years ago, both popular and beneficial to the game’s integrity, is the ability of players to challenge ball and strike calls instantly and have a computer image almost immediately appear that either confirms or overturns the home plate umpire’s call immediately. The results of many games have already been affected by the new technology. Of course umpires hate it, especially bad umpires, like the infamous Angel Hernandez, who is an embarrassment to the game. For the best umpires, the system is mostly beneficial, because it shows how accurate they are. Umpires in general have tightened up their pitch calling because of the technology. In the past, they used to defiantly talk about “my strike zone.” The ABS system makes it indisputable that there is just one strike zone, and that’s the one in the rule book.

In yesterday’s game between the Washington Nationals and the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park, Boston’s best hitter, Willson Contreras, was called out on strikes after the first base umpire Nick Lentz ruled that his attempted check-swing had indeed crossed the plate. That call is (currently) unappealable and entirely within the umpires’ discretion. But as Contreras walked away from the plate to the dugout, he tapped his helmet in the manner in which a player signals that he is challenging a ball or strike call. Lenz threw him out of the game.

Contreras and Red Sox manager Chad Tracy were shocked, and came out of the dugout to argue against the ejection. Red Sox broadcasters were initially confused, since Contreras hadn’t said anything to the home plate umpire. (There are a few “magic words” that will guarantee a player’s exit). Then they saw that the video showed Lentz indicating the ejection and tapping his head to explain why.

“I called him out on appeal for the check swing, and as he was walking back to the dugout, he started gesturing, tapping his helmet, like he wanted to challenge something that is not a challengeable call,” Lentz explained to reporters. “And so [it was] disrespect, and again gesturing towards what he thought was an incorrect call, got him removed from the game.” The umpire claimed that it is an automatic ejection if a player makes that gesture in a mocking way. “It’s a lot like drawing a line in the dirt,” Lentz said.

No, it’s really not. Players standing at the plate and drawing a line to show how far a ball was out of the strike zone was obviously an attempt to show up an umpire and always resulted in an ejection, as did a batter curling his fingers around his eyes to say “you need glasses.” Those gestures neverfhappen any more, because the computer settles the issue. Most fans in the stands didn’t even notice Contreras’s gesture, nor did TV viewers, because the camera wasn’t on Contreras when he tapped his helmet.

Lentz added the gesture is “on the list for items for removal from the game.” If it is, I can’t find it, and if there was a memo, the players didn’t get it. Here is the current criteria for an umpire ejecting players:

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Ethics Heroes: The SF Giants’ Three Civil Disobedience Practitioners

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

The San Francisco Giants asked for this controversy; Major League Baseball asked for this controversy; LGTBQ+ culture bullies asked for it too. They got it. Good.

Three Giants pitchers, Landen Roupp, who started last Friday’s game against the Cubs, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker, who also appeared in the game, have been officially reprimanded by MLB, which notified the players that similar behavior “would not be tolerated in the future.”

The three pitchers had Bible verses written on their caps. Roupp’s cap read “Gen 9:12-16” with the writing reaching the “Pride” logo on his cap. It was “Pride Night,” when Major League Baseball forces its players to express a political and social position with which they may not personally agree. The verse in question reads like this:

It is not an anti-homosexuality passage, but then any Bible reference on Pride Night might be seen as subversive.

“The writing on the cap violates our rules, and consistent with normal practice, we have warned the players about future violations,” MLB’s chief communications officer Pat Courtney told “The Athletic.” Later, the office added as clarification,

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How’s That Computer Strike-Calling System Working?

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

My verdict: it’s an improvement over relying entirely on the fallible home plate umpires, but ethical problems remain.

The current system gives each team two challenges if they think a ball or strike call is wrong. The teams can keep challenging as long as the ABS (Automated Ball and Strike) system backs their judgment. If a challenge proves mistaken, the team loses the challenge.

We have learned that knowing when a ball or strike call is wrong from the players’ perspective is harder than it looks. A few players are really good at it, but most are not. Because the prospect of a key pitch call being blown at a crucial juncture late in the game when the victimized team is out of challenges looms large, players have become increasingly reluctant to challenge pitches early in a game.

Ironically, the system takes accountability from umpires in some cases. In a recent Red Sox game, Boston’s opponent was out of challenges. In the 7th inning with the game close, a 3-2 pitch was called out of the strike zone, and Boston’s batter walked to first base with two outs. The pitch was, in fact, a strike, and should have ended the inning. Instead, the Sox had a long rally, scoring six runs. The announcers harped on the fact that it was the miscalculations of the losing team in using up their two challenges that opened the floodgates, but that’s not why the team lost. The team lost because the umpire blew the call, and it’s his job to call pitches correctly.

This situation, and there have been many of them so far this season, convinces me that players should not have to challenge bad calls, and the results of games should not depend on whether an umpire’s botch is challenged or not. The ABS system knows when a ball is in the strike zone with every pitch. If an umpire calls a ball a strike or vice-versa, the bad call should be instantly overturned without having to be challenged.

Ethics Dunces: The San Francisco Giants

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

Unbelievable.

But then, it is San Francisco, after all.

For some reason, the San Francisco Giants first year manager, Tony Vitello, couldn’t figure out that his outfielders’ post-victory celebratory ritual was inappropriate in a public venue, on TV, while playing America’s Pastime in front of family audiences.

The Commissioner’s office finally told them to cut it out. Why it took until May, I have no idea.

I would have fined the manager, the players and the team. A lot.

Morons.

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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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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