Baseball and Justice: Gentleman’s Games
Minute Maid Park, the site of the Astros’ alleged cheating.
Baseball is widely considered to be a “gentleman’s game.” The strike zone is still eyeballed, the umpire’s word is still law, and players are expected to show the utmost respect to one another at all times, even when celebrating their own victories. There are some particular actions within the sport, however, like running up the score on your opponent, flipping the bat after a dinger, or the various forms and variations on the practice of sign-stealing that are, while not necessarily punishable by the league, are often punished by beanballs in a game. Much of this so-called “gentleman’s game” operates on a system of respect, where transgressions that wouldn’t be fair or admissible to happen to a particular team shouldn’t subsequently be done by that team to another. However, how can the concept of respect, an unwritten rule dictating how the game ought to be played, be properly policed and maintained when there exists no written rule for the league to enforce?
While the phrase “shot heard round the world” often refers to a landmark or game-winning home run, the San Diego Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr. scored a grand slam on the Texas Rangers that not only meant nothing to the course of the game, but outraged many Rangers players and several pundits across the league. At the top of the eighth, San Diego was leading a 10-3 blowout and approaching the plate. On the mound stood Texas’ Juan Nicasio, who, in the process of salvaging and enduring this shellacking, eventually garnered an ERA of 40.5 (read: horrible game of baseball; nearly a statistical anomaly). After sacrificing his personal statistics to walk the first few batters, eventually leading to a bases-loaded scenario, Nicasio was in position to walk Tatis (who had already hit a home run earlier in the game), give up a free run, and subsequently strike out the next batter to end the inning with just a run scored. After three balls, and expected to just take the walk, Tatis Jr. bit the hand that fed and swung for four runs.
The Rangers’ next move, after substituting Ian Gibaut for Nicasio, was to fire the next pitch behind Manny Machado, the Padres’ star shortstop. The pitch was wide and Machado ducked out of the way, but the warning shot had been fired. The Padres might’ve won the game, but the Rangers sent a clear message to teams breaking baseball’s unwritten rules: “Stop.”
This particular incident draws remarkable similarities to the league-wide backlash surrounding the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. Sign-stealing isn’t illegal by the league’s rules per se; in fact, it is defended as a learned skill, so long as the opposing team’s signs are deciphered organically and, most importantly, without the use of cameras, electronic devices or third party assistants. However, at their own home games, the Astros had cameras focused on home plate, and specifically the catcher’s free hand, to more easily read the type of pitch being called. Using this illegally obtained information, the Astros’ dugout would then relay the pitch type to the batter using a pattern of banging on a trash can located in their tunnel. This practice was seen as incredibly unfair, not only for the ridiculous home-field advantage the cameras would grant to the Astros, but also because this practice was in prominent use during their 2017 World Series Championship.
Having broken the unanimous unwritten rule that cheaters never prosper, the Astros got off with a minor slap on the wrist in the form of forfeited draft picks and team fines, along with a handful of the club’s executives being forced into resignation. Feeling that justice still hadn’t properly been done, the players took action into their own hands. Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Joe Kelly, on their first game against the Astros, hit as many Houston batters as possible with pitches, along with some rather ungentlemanly banter uncharacteristic of the gentleman’s game. Kelly faced suspension for his actions, but the popular opinion of the league supported him with every beanball, lauding him as a hero.
At their cores, these incidents reflect the natural desire for justice in people. Under normal circumstances, people rely upon their justice systems, in this case being the league discipline office, to bring about the justice they desire. However, in instances where either the system fails or doesn’t bring about the type of justice that the public wants, outrage tends to boil over and lead to action taken by the public in the form of frontier justice. Whether baseball players face injury for cheating and adding insult to injury in a blowout game, or major retailers face the wrath of angry mobs after police manage to kill unarmed black men without facing charges, the shortcomings of an official system instigate people to follow their own “unspoken rules” in the pursuit of what is right.
