Have a
yen for mayhem? There are places you can satisfy it without fear that the law
will intervene.
I’m talking about our fields of
play, all of them. What happens in Vegas may or may not stay in Vegas, but what
happens in sports—no matter how appalling-- stays in sports. You can get away
with just about anything short of murder without the cops taking much notice.
Recent examples abound. Last month
in a Stanley Cup playoff game the Phoenix Coyotes’ Raffi Torres blindsided the
Chicago Blackhawks’ Marian Hossa with a leaping blow to the head that left
Hossa concussed and ended his season. Torres was ejected and suspended but not
otherwise charged.
A few
days later the curiously self-named Metta World Peace of the L.A. Lakers, a
thug formerly known as Ron Artest, celebrated a dunk by viciously elbowing the
Oklahoma Thunder’s James Harden in the ear, leaving Harden writhing on the
court. Peace, too, has escaped any
punishment except the one imposed by his sport.
You may recall that the pre-Peace Artest also
was a central figure in basketball’s biggest recent-year explosion of
lawlessness, the 2004 “Malice in the Palace” brawl that spilled over into the
stands of the Detroit Pistons-Indiana Pacers NBA game in Detroit. Yet he
happily dribbles on, wreaking havoc and paying his fines from his ample purse
(his contract will pay him about $7 million this season).
Then there’s the granddaddy of them
all, the “bounty” scandal involving the football New Orleans Saints. This one spans several years and involves coaches and team
executives as well as players. If
evidence of criminal intent sometimes has been lacking in other instances of
playing-field violence, it certainly is present here, with coaches caught on
tape exhorting their charges to go beyond the rules of the game to injure key
opponents in return for direct cash rewards.
Properly, the National Football League has
cracked down hard on some of the perpetrators, issuing an open-ended suspension
on Saints’ ex-defensive coordinator Greg Williams and sitting head coach Sean
Payton and linebacker Jonathan Vilma for a season. But while the organized
nature of the scheme raises the possibility of conspiracy charges as well as
those against individuals, the criminal authorities have been silent on the
matter to date.
The reasons that you can get away
on the field with acts that would bring prison time if committed on the street
or in a bar are several. One is our tradition, however goofy, that holds that
sports are a realm apart and gives their overseers wide latitude in dealing
with infractions of all sorts. Another is the political nature of criminal
prosecutions in this land; athletes generally are popular and elected
law-enforcement officials are loath to pursue them. It’s noteworthy in this
regard that in the rare instances where prosecutions have followed on-field
criminal acts it’s usually been visiting-team players who were targeted. Five Pacers were hauled into court after the
’04 Palace fight, and while their sentences were laughably light (probation and
a few hours of community service) that was more than the Piston combatants got,
which was nothing.
Mostly, though, boys are allowed to
be boys in sports because of the long-established legal doctrine of assumed
consent, which states that people who engage in risky activities knowingly
accept the dangers inherent therein.
These include the physical pummeling participants inevitably get in the
normal course of sports like boxing, football, hockey and basketball.
Thanks to recent revelations about the
long-term consequences of concussions, it now turns out that those risks are
greater than once was supposed. In any
case, though, they generally haven’t been interpreted to cover injuries that
result from blatant rules violations. For example, when Evander Holyfield
entered a Las Vegas boxing ring against Mike Tyson in November of 1998 he might
have expected to get smacked around some, but he probably didn’t anticipate having
a chunk of an ear bitten off. Tyson
could have been prosecuted criminally for doing that but, typically, he wasn’t.
His sole penalties were a one-year suspension from his sport and a $3 million
fine, payable to the Nevada Athletics Commission. That amount looks large until
it’s noted that his purse from the fray was $30 million.
Indeed, what screams out at anyone who looks
into such matters are the consistent discrepancies between the treatment of the
perps and their victims. Nothing makes
this point better than the February, 2004, episode in which Todd Bertuzzi, of
the hockey Vancouver Canucks, punched the
Colorado Avalanche’s Steve Moore from behind during a game and drove him
head-first into the ice, breaking three of Moore’s neck vertebrae and giving
him a severe concussion. Don’t view the tape of this unless you have a strong
stomach.
Bertuzzi was criminally charged in
Canada and got off with the usual slap on the wrist—probation and public
service. He was fined and suspended for 17 months by the National Hockey League
but missed only 20 games because of the players’ strike during that period. Reinstated in 2005, he was named to the
Canadian Olympic team the next year, putting his country’s stamp of approval on
his character. He’s still in the NHL.
Moore never played hockey again,
and still suffers from his injuries. He sued Bertuzzi for damages in 2005. Seven years later, his suit has yet
to come to trial.
NOTE: To see my prescription for
saving the Chicago Cubs, check out my latest piece on chicagosidesports.com.
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