By Christian Metaxas & Michael Jorgensen
Baseball isn’t over until it’s over
Many sports, in-spite of any late-game jockeying that might take place, have a moment of realistic finality. Baseball, however, rarely robs players of their autonomy. There is no race against the clock, fighting off the dying seconds; rebuttals are never deprived whilst mounting one final defense. Until that last pitch, that final out, the game will continue. It’s an inspiring, romantic notion that compels us to stay glued to our seats, even as others file out of the stadium to beat the traffic. It’s the intrinsic fact that you’ve never won the game until you’ve won it, and it’s why you swing on 3-0.
Up by seven, after cranking a grand slam in the top of the eighth, Fernando Tatis received a scolding from the managers of both ball clubs for his trouble. While Woodward and Gibaut would land suspensions for what happened after, and Tingler would walk back his initial remarks, their knee-jerk reactions wound up garnering a response in support of Tatis from both the new school and league veterans alike. It even prompted an article from mlb.com titled A look at baseball’s ‘unwritten rule book’. Moreover, we’re left with yet another instance of someone who’s losing invoking the arcane scripture—that that’s not baseball. What they really mean to say is that Tatis’ behaviour is poor sportsmanship. The subtext is clear:
There has been a violation of one of baseball’s unwritten rules
On one side, you have those that feel running up a score on a weaker opponent reflects poorly on the moral values attached to sport. Some would even go as far to say that this behaviour puts the transgresser(s) at risk for some form of karmatic retribution. For instance, you may recall the 2019 IIHF World Junior Championship preliminary round when Canada routed Denmark in an astonishing 14-0 victory. Similar concerns about running up the score were raised. Former Hockey Night in Canada personality, Don Cherry, took exception to the outcome and goal celebrations stating that he was,
“Very disappointed in Team Canada. I’m cheering for them, I hope they win,” Cherry said, “but to beat a team 14-0, Hockey Gods will always come back and get you.”
In direct opposition, are those who defend these sort of actions due to the competitive ethos that is at the core of professional sport. Someone has to win, someone has to lose. The primary contention is that the players are there to compete and that unwritten mercy rules have no place in a professional or high performance sporting environment. Looking to the philosophy of sport literature, Colin Pennington argues that,
“Professional sport is a business in which production and success are necessary for continued employment. Perhaps in such an environment, it is unreasonable to expect that participants are fair and generous as they participate. Winning and losing with a spirit of graciousness would seem irrelevant, though it may be a nice façade.”1
So why do unwritten rules exist in sport at all? Well, façade or not, many members of the sport community (e.g., media, fans, and parents) support the behaviours promoted by these unwritten rules due to the perception of professional athletes as role models. Robert Case suggests that this may be due to the fact that a win-at-all-costs philosophy in sport has often led to unethical and aggressive behaviors2. He further argues that promoting a win-at-all-costs mentality can have a negative effect on the development and well-being of young athletes and of society at large2. Although physical educators and youth coaches may (at times) operate under the fallacy of regarding their participants as high-profile, professional athletes, youth sport cannot be compared to professional sport1.
The relationship between athletes and rules (written or unwritten) is complex. Athletes don’t perform in a system that reflects our typical understanding of legality. For instance, an athlete may be lauded as a tactical visionary for playing in the grey area (i.e., walking the fine line between following and breaking a rule) to gain a strategic advantage. In fact, many rule changes are challenges to an athlete’s ingenuity. A recent article published by Daniel Durbin in Sport, Ethics, and Philosophy offers insight into this process:
“For athletes, rules are not absolutely authoritative words carved into stone tablets. They are regulations to be negotiated in the practice of sport. Since athletes perform on a public stage, this negotiation is public and discursive.” 3
He further argues that,
“The unwritten rules of sport illustrate the persistent press of moral conventions on the process, outcome, and meaning of sport.” 3
Indeed, high-level sport seems almost at odds with itself in the conflation of professional responsibility and moral judgement. And while good character is most certainly something that would seem a prerequisite of our role models (sport or otherwise) it is success in their professional field that first thrusts athletes into the spotlight wherein they are subject to the piercing gaze of our public assessment. We need only look to Colin Kaepernick as an example of the tension between moral fiber and the business of sport.
Perhaps the heartbeat of the matter is the latent difficulty in identifying the obscenity of sport. Laid bare, sport asks its athletes to excel in a system, to operate within a regiment and outperform others. Whether it be the earnestness of scoring 4 more points in the dying innings of a baseball game, or the pretentious decimation of the Danes, both serve as examples of excess which ‘betray the artifice’. Moreover, almost in a moral panic, we are forced to confront and comment on the articulation of sport. Consider Barthes’ comments on the theatrics of wrestling in his 1957 text Mythologies:
“In this forearm smash, the catastrophe is brought to its maximum obviousness, to such a degree that ultimately the gesture no longer appears to be anything but a symbol; this is going too far, violating the moral rules of wrestling, in which every sign must be excessively clear but must not reveal its intention of clarity; the public then shouts, “Fake!” — not because the public regrets the absence of genuine suffering, but because it condemns artifice: as in the theater, one ceases to act properly as much by excess of sincerity as by excess of affectation.” 4
Aptly, these controversial moments display sport as enthymeme, asking that we respond to competition (either as spectators or as participants). Is competition about meticulous precision? About crushing your combatant as relentlessly and efficiently as possible? Is it about embracing the spirit of the game itself? Cultivating its history with an effort to establish new records and collect community accolades? There is no one answer, and that’s the beauty of competition and the beauty of sport. Whether it’s the antics of someone like Dennis Rodman or the activism of someone like Colin Kaepernick, sport is the canvas on which these moments and memories are painted — it’s about applauding authenticity and decrying artifice. As Barthes puts it:
“There is no more a problem of truth in wrestling than in the theater. In either world what is expected is the intelligible figuration of moral situations ordinarily secret.” 4
- Pennington, C. (2017). Moral development and sportsmanship in interscholastic sports and physical education. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 88(1): 36–42.
- Case, R. D. (2011). A sportsmanship manual for youth and high school football coaches. California State University, Sacramento.
- Daniel T. Durbin (2018) Unwritten Rules and the Press of Social Conventions. Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 12:4, 416-434.
- Barthes, R. (1957). Mythologies.