baseball

Oh, Shut Up, Kate: Let’s End The Obligatory “God Bless America” Rendition

/ Jack Marshall / 31 Comments

kate_smith-sings_god_bless_america

My father hated “God Bless America.” He particularly hated jumbo 40’s singer Kate Smith’s rendition of it, which he believed exploited patriotism and combined it with sentimentality and schmaltz to get ratings and sell records. Smith had an unadorned clarion belt that particularly suited Irving Berlin’s blunt melody, and for 30 years she used the song as her signature, as much as Judy Garland used “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Whenever Smith appeared on a TV variety show like The Hollywood Palace, he would order me to change the channel (yes, I was the family remote) for fear that he would have to hear her sing that song.

I assumed that was the reason why I have felt queasy about Major League Baseball’s 7th inning stretch ritual, installed in 2001, of having a recording of Kate or a live singer ring out the Irving Berlin standard at every major league baseball game since the Twin Towers fell.  In today’s Washington Post, however, a Methodist minister—my father was also a Methodist, as much as he was anything—explained why he refuses to stand for the song. He nailed it.

James Marsh writes, Continue reading →

“Who Cares?” Ethics: The Key Question…Was This Employee Fired?

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

During a Kansas City Royals broadcast this week, the following graphic was displayed for the TV audience:

Mistake Screen

It has the following mistakes: Continue reading →

Angel Hernandez’s Botched Home Run Call, Continued: Now THIS Would Justify Over-Ruling It

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments
"You blew that call deliberately! Didn't you? DIDN'T YOU???"

“You blew that call deliberately! Didn’t you? DIDN’T YOU???”

Yesterday I wrote about the terrible, tomato-worthy botch of a home run call by Angel Hernandez in an Oakland-Cleveland baseball game, and how as bad as it was, the rules of the game don’t permit such rules to be over-turned, and thus over-turned they must not be, lest the game’s integrity be damaged. But on the Dan Patrick radio sports show today, renowned baseball writer Peter Gammons theorized that Hernandez may have refused to credit Adam Rosales of the A’s with a home run, despite the instant replay proving to anyone with eyes that it was not a double as he had ruled, because he, like many if not all major league umpires, hates the concept of allowing instant video replay to over-rule umpire judgments.

And, of course, Hernandez has a well-earned reputation as a spiteful jerk.

Hernandez would never admit to so unprofessional an act, but I think Gammons’ speculation is fair, and also very possibly correct. The alternative is to conclude that Hernandez literally can’t see, which seems unlikely. What seems far more likely is that he and his umpiring crew decided to register a nasty and unprofessional protest over the gradually expanding trend in Major League Baseball of letting technology do better what umpires have traditionally done well. Continue reading →

Once Again, Fairness vs. Integrity In A Baseball Controversy

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments
George Brett was a bit chagrined when his home run was disallowed...

George Brett was a bit chagrined when his home run was disallowed…

It has happened again, as it has thousands of times since the great game of baseball was invented. A result that is permitted by the rules violates the sense of fairness of  objective observers, who thereupon demand that the result be “fixed,” after the fact, by baseball’s powers that be. The most infamous recent example of this scenario was in 2010, when umpire Jim Joyce robbed a deserving pitcher of the perfect game he had pitched (27 batters, 27 outs) by calling the final batter safe at first on a close play, when the player was obviously (to all but Joyce, that is), out. The umpire quickly and openly admitted his error after the game, but there is no provision in the baseball rules for the League or Major League Baseball reversing an umpire’s judgment call after the fact, no matter how bad it was or how unjust the results. Baseball’s Commissioner Bud Selig, to his credit, refused to yield to the popular outcry to give the unfortunate Detroit Tigers pitcher, Armando Galarraga, the achievement and place in baseball history that should have been his. The rules say that unless umpires have actually misinterpreted the black letter rules of the game, there is no remedy. Umpire errors, like player errors, are part of the game.

Last night, what should have been a game-winning home run was called a double by umpires, and what was worse, they held to their mistaken call even after the mandated video review MLB now allows for disputed home run calls. The umpires viewed video that clearly shows the Oakland A’s Adam Rosales’ hit clearing the wall, but crew chief Angel Hernandez bizarrely claimed that the video wasn’t conclusive enough to justify a reversal. Since the A’s lost the game by one run, this altered the result, and there have been calls for an official reversal with the game being replayed. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Boston Red Sox Star David “Big Papi” Ortiz

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

“This is our fucking city!”

—Boston Red Sox designated hitter and icon David Ortiz, aka “Big Papi”, representing the team in a pre-game ceremony at Fenway Park honoring Boston in the wake of the past week’s violence, heroism and travails.

"Big Potty-Mouth"

“Big Potty-Mouth”

I love you, David, and you got us past the Yankees in 2004, but your choice of words  was classless, crude and unnecessary.

There were children in that crowd and watching on TV, as I was. You are a role model, and locker room language belongs in the locker room, not in public events. Your obviously calculated incivility moves the culture one more step away from public manners and toward obscenity as standard expression.

I’m disappointed in you, and you also embarrassed your sorority sisters at Delta Gamma.

Ethics Dunce: Tony Kornheiser

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Ugh.

No pardon for you, Tony...

No pardon for you, Tony…

Tony Kornheiser is a sportswriter and humorist as well as a television and radio personality. I’ve been reading, watching and occasionally laughing at him since I moved to D.C. eons ago, when he was a Washington Post columnist. This post has nothing to do with sports, however, though the issue arose in a sports context. It has to do with the depressing fact that Tony’s mode of ethical analysis is still based on consequentialism and an ignorance of moral luck, and that he is, despite being an educated, erudite and clever man, typical of the public in this respect.

It is depressing, and thus I say, “Ugh.”

For the second time in two days,  the ten minutes I had time to watch TV randomly brought me to a discussion of umpire Marty Foster’s botched third strike call to end a close game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers. Tony was arguing with Michael Wilbon on their hit ESPN show, “Pardon the Interruption.” [ Aside: And why did my channel surfing pause there? Because the project that has eaten my life the last couple weeks requires me to mention, in a speech, the HBO Larry David show “Curb Your Enthusiasm, ” and I keep wanting to say “Pardon the Interruption.” I blew it again last night, so naturally, the first thing I see this morning is the show I’m trying to purge from my brain.] They were debating whether Foster should be disciplined for his bad call, an idiotic issue, since the answer is “Of course not; are you nuts?” Umpires make hundreds of judgment calls every game, and mistakes are inevitable. As I wrote yesterday, Foster’s handling of this botched call was exemplary, because he admitted that he had erred. Punishing him or any umpire who misses a visual call would be unfair and destructive; such punishment could only be valid in the case of actual misconduct or negligence, as in the case of an umpire ignoring or not knowing the rules. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of The Week: Umpire Marty Foster

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“I saw the pitch and of course don’t have the chance to do it again. But had I had a chance to do it again, I wouldn’t call that pitch a strike.”

—– American League Umpire Marty Foster, in the wake of the controversy over his game-ending strike call in the Texas-Tampa Bay game last night.

In other words, “I missed it. I was wrong.”

Strike Three?

Strike Three?

Good for Foster. His wildly inaccurate call was strike three on Rays batter Ben Zobrist, who thought that he had worked a base on balls. This would have placed Rays runners on first and second with two outs, creating a reasonable opportunity for the Rays to tie or win the game.  Instead, the Rangers got a gift. Rays manager Joe Maddon, in interviews and in a tweet to his followers, said, “That can’t happen in a major league game,” meaning that the call was beneath major league umpiring standards.  Of Maddon, Foster said,  “He was frustrated and I understand .He acted probably the best he can under that situation.”

Obviously, there have been many, many worse calls, nearly as bad calls, and only a smidge better calls, and there will be this season. In the vast majority of those, umpires have and will remain mum, maintaining that they were in the best position to judge the pitch or the play, and that even video showing their gaffes are misleading. Foster, however, did the hardest thing for many of us: admitting a mistake. Admitting so, to himself as well as the world, doesn’t make him a worse umpire; it makes him a better one.

Note: I apologize for the sparse postings the last few days. I am involved in a night and day project that is preventing me from doing thinking and working on anything else…even baseball. Naturally, the only game update I happened to watch, at 2:20 AM, was an ethics story.

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Sources: NBC Sports (and Graphic); Townhall

Valentining Bobby Valentine, Victim of Three Biases

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

MLB: Boston Red Sox at Toronto Blue Jays

Hindsight bias is bad, confirmation bias is worse, and naked bias is the worst of all. 2012 Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine was the victim of all three with a vengeance during that disastrous Boston baseball season, and is still. I have been tempted to write about Bobby’s plight since last August, when the Red Sox management threw in the towel on the season and the long knives really came out in the Boston press corps. Now Valentine has been gone for six months, half the team has been replaced, and spring is dawning, yet hardly a day passes in which one of these ink-strained wretches  doesn’t take a pot-shot at the deposed manager, leaving the absolutely false impression that he could have done anything to forestall or mitigate the cataclysm that befell the Red Sox in 2012. Continue reading →

Bimbo Ethics in Spring Training

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Stipulated: If you work for Hooters, and accept a job as an on-field ball girl for a Major League Baseball team, in this case, the Philadelphia Phillies, you may not object to the unflattering sobriquet “bimbo,” especially when you act like this:

Admittedly, the team is at fault, endangering its players and undermining the integrity of the game, by putting someone on the field who clearly 1) doesn’t know a foul ball from a nectarine 2) doesn’t have the sense God gave a muskrat and 3) hasn’t been told that her minimal duty is to pay sufficient attention to the game to avoid becoming part of it.

Still, this lovely blonde woman is allegedly an adult, and should be able to figure these things out for herself. She has a job that a seven year-old T-ball player could do with a minimum of thought, and still can’t do it right. It’s unethical to accept jobs you’re not qualified to do or not willing to learn to do, which in this case, apparently means any job that requires being more than vicarious visual sexual stimulation for middle-aged baseball fans.

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Pointer: Craig Calcaterra

Proofreading Kudos: David Elias, who was the first to flag “Sping Training”

Dog Owner Ethics: The Suicide and the Pitcher

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments
Does one of these nice creatures not belong in this picture? Ontario says yes. The correct answer is no.

Does one of these nice creatures not belong in this picture? Ontario says yes. The correct answer is no.

Our life-changing events often become crises for our canine companions. In the news today: ethical  and unethical responses in such circumstances, by two individuals in the public eye.

The Unethical

Mindy McReady, the troubled country music star, committed suicide Sunday on the front porch of the home she shared with her boyfriend, who had recently committed suicide there as well. She apparently killed the couple’s dog before taking her own life. McReady’s friends insist that she didn’t kill the dog out of malice, but because she didn’t want to leave the dog alone. Granted, McReady deserves consideration and compassion, since her actions that day were not those dictated by a healthy or fully functioning mind. Still, I read of dog owners doing this a lot, and I’ve known a few—not committing suicide, but killing their dogs when they knew they wouldn’t be able to keep them any more, on the theory that the dog would be happier dead than with new owners. Continue reading →