baseball

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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Ethics Observations On the Sale of Babe Ruth’s “Called Shot” Jersey for $24 Million

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The jersey worn by baseball legend Babe Ruth when he “called his shot” in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series sold over the weekend for $24.12 million, setting the auction record for most expensive sports collectible. The previous record price for any sports collectible was the $12.6 million that a rare mint condition Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle card fetched in 2022. Babe’s jersey far eclipsed the $10.1 million a Michael Jordan Chicago Bulls jersey from Game 1 of the 1998 NBA Finals achived at auction that same year, the record for athletic attire until Babe broke it, like he shattered so many records when he was alive.

The sale raises many ethics issues, but the main one is that the exorbitant price is almost certainly based on a fabrication, a lie. It is similar to paying millions for the axe little George Washington used to cut down his father’s cherry tree.

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On Jarren Duran, T-Shirts, LGBTG Bullies, and My Dead College Room Mate

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

In an earlier post that few people read (it was about baseball, see) I pointed out the excessive, virtue-signaling punishment handed down by the team on Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran. His unforgivable offense was calling an abusive fan a “fucking fag” in a moment of temper during a game. The fan had apparent been ragging on him for the entire game from behind home plate, and the slur was picked up by the Red Sox game broadcast microphones and was audible to viewers. Duran apologized (immediately and well), but was fined and suspended for two games, which, given his status as arguably its best player, harmed everyone on the team while the Sox battle for a play-off slot. I have seen no indication that the fan taunting Duran was in fact gay, so the use of the slur “fag” was apparently just a random insult, but never mind: we are now in the world of censorship, word- taboos and hate speech hypersensitivity. I was called a fag once. I remember my response: “Is that the best you can do?” (It was.)

Duram served his two game suspension, but now he is on the LGBTQ Mafia’s hit list. In The Athletic today, “out” Boston sportswriter Steve Buckley goes after Duran again (no vendetta there!) because he wore the T-shirt above while being interviewed about the incident. You know, because sportswriters never use or hear the word “fuck,” and somehow the T-shirt’s legend means that Duran doesn’t take his outburst that employed a taboo word seriously enough.

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Good To Know: Major League Baseball Demands More Accountability Than The U.S. Government.

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Chicago White Sox announced this morning that manager Pedro Grifol has been fired. “As we all recognize, our team’s performance this season has been disappointing on many levels,” general manager Chris Getz said in a statement within this morning’s press release. “Despite the on-field struggles and lack of success, we appreciate the effort and professionalism Pedro and the staff brought to the ballpark every day. These two seasons have been very challenging. Unfortunately, the results were not there, and a change is necessary as we look to our future and the development of a new energy around the team.”

Ya think? Under Grifol, the White Sox just finished tying the all-time American League record for consecutive losses at 21. He leaves with the third worst winning percentage of any manager in Major League history who has managed more than a single season. But believe it or not, his two and a two thirds-season tenure at the helm of the ChiSox was even worse than those stats indicate.

Last season, Keynan Middleton publicly criticized the White Sox’ clubhouse culture after he was traded to the Yankees. The pitcher said that there were “no rules” and “no consequences;” he said he knew of instances of “rookies sleeping in the bullpen during games” and players skipping team meetings and fielding drills. Veteran pitcher Lance Lynn was asked if Middleton’s comments were just the complaints of a disgruntled ex-, and he said that Middleton was “not wrong.” This year there were reports that the White Sox had a “fractured” clubhouse that wasn’t helped any when Grifol told his players that they would be remembered as the worst team in MLB history if they didn’t shape up. One player told a local sportswriter, “It’s been really tough in there. Pedro is a really good guy, just not the man for the job.”

So he was fired. That’s what’s supposed to happen to the leader of an organization that falls flat on its metaphorical face with terrible consequences. Was the White Sox losing all those games—nobody expected the team, which is a re-building mode, to be good this season, just not so spectacularly bad—as spectacular an organizational failure as, just to pick a random example out of the air, the Secret Service? Nobody has been fired for its astounding incompetence in Butler, Pa., although many culprits have been identified. Nobody has been fired from a leadership position during the entire Biden Administration, although the culture of incompetence is throbbingly obvious. (I guess Joe himself comes the closest to having been fired.)

In an essay on substack, conservative law professor and blogger Glenn Reynold sees the culture rotting from the head down:

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Yet Another Baseball Ethics Hero: Seattle Starting Pitcher George Kirby

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Popular former Boston Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield died of an inoperable brain tumor in his 57th year at the end of last season. Wakefield was famously a knuckleballer, a rare breed in the game, and a athlete admired and loved by fans and all who came in contact with him, another rare breed. One of those admirers was Seattle Mariners pitcher George Kirby, known for being a virtuoso with pitch grips.

Kirby was the starting pitcher in yesterday’s afternoon game between the Mariners and the Red Sox at Fenway Park. It was an important game for both clubs, which are among those battling for a playoff slots in the American League. Statcast now reads pitches instantly, announcing whether a pitch is a fastball, curve, slider, cutter, splitter, change-up, etc. based on its database on each pitcher and the speed, spin-rate and course of the ball. When Kirby began the game by throwing his first pitch to Boston leadoff man Jarren Duran, Statcast shocked observers by stating that Kirby had thrown a pitch that wasn’t normally in his repertoire: a knuckleball.

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Ethics Hero: Orioles Catcher James McCann, No Weenie He!

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

Wow.

Blue Jays rookie pitcher Yariel Rodríguez threw a first-inning 95 mph fastball that hit Baltimore Orioles back-up catcher James McCann directly in the face. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth, and he immediately dropped to the ground. Team trainer Brian Ebel began providing treatment at the plate, but McCann got to his feet, still bleeding, and went to first base. O’s manager Brandon Hyde summoned him to the dugout while the Jays were replacing their wild pitcher, but McCann was adamant that he could continue. It was the first game of a doubleheader, and McCann didn’t want the O’s young star catcher, Adley Rutschman, to have to catch both games, an invitation to injury.

“I felt like if I could get the blood to stop flowing then I could stay in the game, and that was what I was able to do,” McCann said. When play resumed, McCann went back to first, wearing a fresh, unbloodied jersey.

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Baseball’s All-Star Game : Another Tradition Rotted

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I watched it last night because there was really nothing else worth seeing on TV, but I hate what the All-Star game has become, and have hated it for a long time. Before inter-league play and huge contracts, the “Mid-Season Classic” was a real game, played as intensely as the World Series, for the honor of the two separate leagues. (Ask Ray Fosse how intensely.) Managers would try to get and keep the strongest possible line-up in the game: it wasn’t unusual for several stars to play all 9 innings. Starting pitchers went three innings, not just one. Players slid into bases and dived for balls. It was a real contest. In ethics terms, the All-Star Game had integrity.

For decades now, it has just been a bunch of rich guys going through the motions, joking with each other, making sure no one got hurt. The obvious objective of the managers is to get all 30 players on the roster on the field if possible, not to win. It’s a parade: viewers barely get to see a player display the skills that made him an All-Star. The event has the seriousness of a celebrity softball game…there’s no tension, no drama.

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