baseball

“And Now, The Rest of the Story!” MLB Bans Those Two Assholes For Life…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Hey, maybe Major League Baseball reads Ethics Alarms!

In this post in October, EA reported that in the bottom of the first inning in Game 4 of the World Series with the Yankees losing 2-0, NY lead-off hitter Gleyber Torres “hit a high pop-up into right field foul territory. Dodgers right fielder Betts caught the ball with his glove, but” Asshole #1 grabbed Betts’ glove with both hands, opened it, reached inside with his right hand and knocked the ball back onto the field, as Asshole #2 assisted him. It was on national television for all to see, so the umpires, thank goodness, got the call right and ruled fan interference. Torres was called out. I ruled it the most egregious example ever of fans deliberately trying to interfere with a player’s efforts during a baseball game, and called for Austin Capobianco (Asshole #1) and John P. Hansen (Asshole #2) to be banned from attending baseball games for life.

It took three months for some absurd reason, but Major League Baseball finally has banned them from attending games at big league ballparks, probably forever. Good.

The league sent a letter to A1 and A2 this week informing them of the decision.

“On Oct. 29, 2024, during Game 4 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, you interfered with play by intentionally and forcefully grabbing a player. Your conduct posed a serious risk to the health and safety of the player and went far over the line of acceptable fan behavior,” said the letter, released today. “Based on your conduct, Major League Baseball is banning you indefinitely from all MLB stadiums, offices, and other facilities,” the letter continues. “You are also hereby banned indefinitely from attending any events sponsored by or associated with MLB. Please be advised that if you are discovered at any MLB property or event, you will be removed from the premises and subject to arrest for trespass.”

There is justice in the universe. I would have preferred to see the letter end with a promise that if either miscreant is discovered at any MLB property or event or even so much as wearing baseball cap, he will be summarily wrapped in unwashed jock straps and have his eyelids stapled open while he is forced to watch the execrable film, “The Babe Ruth Story” starring William Bendix (which Ted Williams called “the worst movie I ever saw,” though he never saw “The Exorcist II”) on an endless loop until he can’t stop screaming and begs to have his eyes gouged out. But that’s just me.

I can live with this resolution.

Tales of the King’s Pass

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

During the baseball off-season the MLB channel on DirecTV has a lot of dead time to fill between the periodic announcements of trades, free agent signings and post-season awards and honors. Lately it has been re-running an old Bob Castas show called “Studio 42” (that’s Jackie Robinson’s number) where the perpetually boyish-looking baseball commentator, who now really is Old Bob, interviews retired players and managers about significant games and moments in their careers.

In an episode I happened across this morning after my dog woke me up and then stole the bed as soon as I got out of it, Costas’s guest was the late, great manager Whitey Herzog, like so many successful baseball managers, a mediocre-to-poor player in his Major League career. Whitey told a story that is as good an example of the King’s Pass, #11 on the Rationalization List, as there is.

He said that in one game between the old Washington Senators (the first Senators, the team that moved to Minnesota and became the Twins) and the Red Sox in Boston, Ted Williams had drawn a walk on a 3-2 pitch right down the middle of the plate that the umpire had called a ball. Williams was famous for his plate discipline and above-average eyesight, and umpires frequently let him, opposing players complained, call his own balls and strikes because unpires acknowledged that he was better at it than they were. Herzog came to bat late in the same contest having walked four times and with a chance to set a record by getting five bases-on-balls in a single game. He told Costas that the umpire called him out on strikes on a 3-2 pitch in the dirt.

“I turned around and said to the ump, ‘You give Williams five strikes and give me only two. It should be the other way around!'”

This struck me particularly squarely because I had been thinking about the Judicial Conference declining to take any action against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been the subject of a Senate Judiciary inquiry ever since ProPublica revealed that the Justice had neglected to report around half a million in luxury travel and gifts as legally required by the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.

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Ethics Observations on the $765 Million Baseball Player

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

My Aunt Bea, the family progressive and knee-jerk Democrat, died this year at the age of 96, cantankerous and opinionated to the end. She was a big Cincinnati Reds fan (she lived in Dayton, Ohio) and I remember her having many arguments with my father when free agency exploded the salaries in Major League Baseball in the late 1970s. “No baseball player is worth those salaries,” she insisted. My father would laugh and say, “Bea, by definition they are worth those salaries, because the people who benefit from their unique talents are willing to pay them.” Then she would talk about teacher salaries, and my father would say, “It may seem unfair, but a lot more people are capable of teaching than are able to hit a fastball, and the sad fact is that a a large number of Americans care more about sports than they do public education.”

I wonder what my aunt and my father would be saying now after the announcement that Juan Soto, the young (26), amazingly talented slugger widely recognized as a generational talent and a certain Hall of Famer barring some catastrophe, agreed yesterday to a 15-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets.

In his short major league career so far, Soto has already earned over 80 million dollars. Even though the previous record-setting contract was given out just last year to freakish Shohei Ohtani, who is both a great hitter (he was the National League MVP in 2024) and an ace starting pitcher, Soto’s new deal for just his batting prowess topped it. This contract automatically raises the worth of every other player, increases team payroll expenses, increases ticket prices, makes it increasingly unaffordable for families to attend baseball games, makes it more difficult for small market teams to compete, and, once again, makes Gordon Gekko look prescient when he said in “Wall Street,” “Greed is good!”

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Baseball’s Foolish, Offensive “Golden At-Bat” Proposal

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

I have long believed that baseball’s Commissioner Rob Manfred doesn’t understand the game he oversees and maybe even doesn’t like it much. My assessment (I’ve been proven right a lot lately, have you noticed?) has been confirmed in a recent baseball podcast in which Manfred was the guest. He expressed enthusiasm for the proposed rule change being called “The Golden At-Bat.” If enacted, this gimmick would allow a team to send its best hitter up to the plate in any situation whether it was his turn in the lineup or not, but only once a game.

This disgusting device is what one might expect from a leader who inflicted the “zombie runner” on the game because people who weren’t baseball fans don’t appreciate extra-inning games and the players don’t like having to play overtime without compensation.

The Athletic’s Jason Stark, who tried to write a neutral report on this monstrosity, asked former manager of the Rays, Cubs and Angels, Joe Maddon, what he thought. Maddon is as close to an intellectual as one is likely to find in baseball (which is not all that close), and he found the concept repulsive.

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Abortion Schmabortion: Women Are Finally Getting The Right To Play Professional Baseball! Rejoice!

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

This is way, way, way overdue. The Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) announced that it plans to play during the summer of 2026.

League founder Justine Siegal, the first woman coach employed by a Major League Baseball team, and lawyer Keith Steinco World Series-winning manager Cito Gaston and Japan Women’s Baseball League pitcher Ayami Sato to join them in the venture. Good.

Ever since the Penny Marshall-directed film “A League of Their Own,” based on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which operated from 1943 to 1954. I have wondered why women haven’t had a professional baseball league since then. It is not a sport that requires great strength or size. Unlike basketball or football, I could conceive of an occasional female player making it to the major leagues, especially pitchers.

The problem has always been that talented female Little League players get redirected into softball because that’s the presumed path. There are no college women’s baseball teams; hardball has been a dead end for women. Maybe not any more.

WPBL needs to land a national television deal ahead of its inaugural season to be viable: I think that this can happen. (Suggestion: It should talk Tom Hanks into managing one of the teams.) The league intends to have a full season, playoffs and a championship, with six teams initially participating. If there is one in the Baltimore-Washington area, I’ll be in the stands.

“The Women’s Pro Baseball League is here for all the girls and women who dream of a place to showcase their talents and play the game they love,” Siegal said in the WPBL’s press relaese.“We have been waiting over 70 years for a professional baseball league we can call our own. Our time is now.”

Take THAT, “Handmaiden’s Tale”!

Baseball Ethics Assholes of the Decade: Austin Capobianco and John Hansen

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

(Naturally, they were New York Yankees fans….)

The baseball season ended last night with the Los Angeles Dodgers overcoming a 5 run deficit to win the World Series over the New York Yankees four games to one. Good. It is especially good because the night before, in the only game that the Pinstripes managed to win in the short series, two jerks in Yankee jerseys interfered with the game, the Series and Dodgers star Mookie Betts as he tried to catch a foul fly ball at the Yankee Stadium wall.

In the bottom of the first inning in Game 4 with the Yankees losing 2-0, NY lead-off hitter Gleyber Torres hit a high pop-up into right field foul territory. Dodgers right fielder Betts caught the ball with his glove, but Capobianco, with the assistance of his pal John Hansen, grabbed Betts’ glove with both hands, opened it, reached inside with his right hand and knocked the ball back onto the field. This was on national television for all to see. The umpires ruled fan interference and Torres was called out.

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Ethics Dunce: Fox News

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

I guess they are right: you can’t trust Fox News.

Tuning in for literally minutes this morning, I saw Fox News this morning run the video of the Cleveland Ind…sorry, Guardians stunning the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series with an extra innings walk-off home run after tying the game with another homer in the 9th, as the Yankees were one out away from victory. Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino then spent an unusually long time expressing their enthusiasm for baseball and the play-of while making it crystal clear that neither of them knew what the hell they were talking about.

They said—twice!—that Cleveland was one strike away from elimination before that 9th inning home run. Morons. A Yankee win would have given New York a daunting 3 games to 0 lead (though the Yankees lost after having exactly that lead over the 2004 Boston Red Sox in that seasons’ famous ALCS), but the ALCS is a best-of-seven series, not best-of-five.

It’s disrespectful of baseball fans and the sport itself to presume to report baseball news and report it so carelessly and ignorantly. Perino and Hemmer obviously didn’t care enough to do their homework and to acquire sufficient basic knowledge about the play-offs to talk about the play-offs. Their feigned excitement was as fake as their commentary was incompetent. They are supposed to be professionals. A reporter thinking the ALCS is only five games while reporting on baseball’s play-offs is like thinking the popular vote determines the winner while reporting on a Presidential election.

Is a network that is this sloppy and unprofessional covering baseball likely to be more reliable when it reports on other matters?

Nope.

An Obvious Life Lesson From Baseball: Imitating Movies Doesn’t Always Work Out Well…

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

In the much-revered 1988 Kevin Costner film “Bull Durham,” veteran minor league catcher “Crash” Davis mentors a raw, talented rookie pitcher (Tim Robbins) and gets him ready for major league stardom. One of the catcher’s most audacious teaching devices is that when the cocky and none-too-bright pitcher insists on shaking off his signs, “Crash” tells the batter what the next pitch is going to be. Resulst: a massive home run and an chastened pitcher. It’s funny in the film.

The Minnesota Twins apparently have no sense of humor. The team released minor league catcher Derek Bender yesterday for emulating “Crash.” Bender was playing for the Fort Myers Mighty Mussels, the Twins’ Low-A affiliate, and in the second game of a doubleheader last week, Bender tipped off several hitters for the Lakeland Flying Tigers, a Detroit farm team, regarding the next pitch starter Ross Dunn was going to throw. Lakeland scored four runs in the second inning and won the game 6-0 to capture the Florida State League West division and eliminate the Mighty Mussels from playoff contention.

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A Manager’s Baseball Decision Has Lessons For The Non-Baseball World.

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

In a game over the weekend between the Boston Red Sox and Detroit Tigers, Red Sox starting pitcher Cooper Criswell was pitching the game of his life. In a 0-0 tie through four innings, the Tigers had no base-runners at all. Criswell, a rare breaking-ball and control specialist who serves as Boston’s fifth starter now that those above him on the depth chart have been injured, appeared to have perfect command of his pitches, as evidenced by the large number of strikeouts he was getting, and he is not a strike-out pitcher. Criswell also threw just 52 pitches in his four innings, and that is well-below any likely fatigue level.

Nonetheless, despite being literally perfect that far, Cooper Criswell did not come out to the mound for the fifth inning. Red Sox manager Alex Cora replaced him with lefty Rich Hill, because the Tigers had three tough lefties coming up to bat (left-handed batters typically hit right-handed pitchers like Criswell better than they hit lefties like Hill).

Hill walked one of the left-handed batters, and the first right-handed batter he faced as a result hit a two-run homer. The Red Sox never caught up.

After the game, Cora had no regrets, telling the press that pulling Criswell was part of a predetermined plan. “We drew it up, they had a bunch of lefties,” Cora said.. “He gave us enough. We went to Rich in that situation. We had a big pocket of lefties. Just the righty burned us.”

There are two ethics issues here.

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Confronting My Biases, Episode 14: Female Baseball Broadcasters

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

There is really no good excuse for this one, just reasons, but I’m trying, I really am.

Major League Baseball is making a concerted effort to get more women into the baseball broadcast booths for both radio and TV. I don’t know if this is a DEI-inspired initiative or just a rational response to a long-lasting gender prejudice. Either way, there is no reason why a woman who knows the game, has a pleasing voice and is an experienced broadcaster shouldn’t be doing play-by-play or color commentary.

I am not used to it, however; nobody is. Baseball games to loyal fans are the voices of Vin Scully, Earnie Harwell, Mel Allen, Curt Gowdy, Harry Carey, and the rest. It didn’t help that the first prominent national baseball female broadcaster was whoever the young softball star was who was put in a three-person ESPN Sunday Night Baseball booth next to Alex (yecchh!) Rodriguez several years ago. Cheatin’ A-Rod was terrible as always, but she was embarrassing: NOW should have petitioned to have her fired. She was cute, which I suspect was the major reason she got the job, but most of the time she was giggling or laughing. She set the cause of female baseball broadcasting back at least a decade.

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