AS IT IS UNWRITTEN, SO SHALL IT BE

 

               In a National Football League game a couple of weeks ago the Cincinnati Bengals badly trailed the Baltimore Ravens when, stuck in a fourth-down situation with time expiring, they kicked a field goal to make the final score 28-3. Ravens’ coaches and players made a fuss, asserting that a team avoiding the opprobrium of a shutout in such a manner wasn’t being, uh, polite.

               That rough-tough football types can turn into Emily Posts might have caused some to snicker, but really it was old stuff in the sporting realm. As just about every fan older than age eight knows, all sports have two rule books-- one written and official and the other unwritten but supported by custom and based on notions of sportsmanship. A competitor breaking the former is punished immediately by the refs, umps, etc. One breaking the latter is supposed to be judged in the courts of peer and public opinion.

               I’ve been around for a while but I found the Ravens’ beef with the Bengals surprising. What’s the big deal about a shutout, anyway? I guess it’s because taking offense is much in style these days. Everyone’s soooo sensitive.

               One funny thing about sports’ unwritten rules is that they often are written about— just check the Internet. Another is that agreement about some of them isn’t close to unanimous. Take the one about how BASEBALL FANS SHOULD THROW BACK OPPONENTS’ HOME RUN BALLS. That’s the custom in some ballparks—Chicago’s Wrigley Field for one—but not others. Further, it’s common knowledge that some Wrigley bleacherites bring balls with them to throw back should a foe’s home run land in their laps.

               There is agreement about how winners should behave in lopsided games, which is that THEY SHOULDN’T RUN UP THE SCORE. In baseball that means not stealing bases, bunting or hitting on 3-0 counts in the late going, in football abjuring the pass and in basketball slowing things down and dribbling out the final seconds. Trouble is, the definition of what constitutes “lopsided” varies; in baseball, is it 8-0 after inning seven, 10-0 or 12-0? It’s especially a problem in basketball where triple-digit scores and 30-plus-point margins are common. It’s my observation that except for that final-possession thing hoopsters will head hoopward.

               Also on the good-winner’s list are codes of individual behavior best summarized in the baseball dictum DON’T PIMP YOUR HOME RUNS, which means don’t celebrate individual triumphs excessively. That one has come to be honored mostly in the breach across the sports spectrum. It’s especially true in football, where the slightest achievement is marked by dancing, muscle flexing, chest pounding or other display. Baseball used to take the line seriously but no more, as witnessed by the late World Series. Bat flipping after home runs now is de rigueur, as are pitcher fist pumps after key strikeouts. Baseballers haven’t advanced to football’s level of choreographed touchdown celebrations, but I don’t doubt they soon will.

               Just as there are rules about winning, there also are rules about losing graciously or, at least, stoically. Baseball pitchers are expected NOT TO SHOW DISPLEASURE WHEN A TEAMMATE MAKES AN ERROR and all baseballers are obliged NOT TO RUB THE AFFECTED AREA WHEN HIT BY A PITCH. As little sense as that last one makes it’s almost universally observed.

 On a team level, losers are instructed NOT TO LEAVE THE FIELD OR FLOOR BEFORE A GAME OFFICIALLY ENDS.  A violation there sparked one of sport’s most-notorious feuds, between the basketballers Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls and Isiah Thomas of the Detroit Pistons. It began when some Pistons headed for the lockers before the final whistle after being swept in a 1991 NBA playoff series by the Bulls, a team it had bedeviled for several years previously.  Jordan blamed it on Thomas, the Pistons’ team leader, and is said to have used his considerable influence to keep Thomas off the 1992 U.S. Olympic “Dream Team.” The bad blood between the two greats continues to this day.

Athletes sometimes lose their tempers in the heat of play and turn to fisticuffs. That’s a topic of a couple of seemingly contradictory unwritten rules. One is that TEAMMATES MUST RUSH TO ONE ANOTHER’S AID WHEN A FIGHT BREAKS OUT. The other is that LATECOMERS TO THE FRAY MUST NOT THROW PUNCHES.  That last dictum makes special sense at the pro level because the last thing a highly paid jock needs is to risk injury in someone else’s silly fight. The funny thing about team fights is that they seem to be the least frequent in football, the sport where the most legal man-to-man combat is allowed. My guess is that’s because a footballer with a beef against a foe can take it out in one of the game’s every-play pileups.

Baseball pitchers are expected to RETALIATE WHEN A TEAMMATE IS INTENTIONALLY HIT BY A PITCH, but since pitchers rarely admit to hitting someone the “intentional” part often is in question, and as in real life the notion of revenge easily can get out of control. Further, giving a foe a free baserunner hardly adds up to settling a score.

Baseball leads all sports in unwritten rules and nothing in the game surpasses the prospect of a no-hitter to roll them out. Teammates are ordered NOT TO SAY A WORD TO THE PITCHER AFTER THE FIFTH INNING, and broadcasters are cautioned never to say that a no-no is in progress after that point. I don’t know what goes on in the dugouts but, in recent years at least, broadcasters seem to never have heard of the ban. That’s a good thing.

More controversial is the rule that BATTERS SHOULDN’T TRY TO BREAK UP A LATE-INNING NO-HITTER BY BUNTING. That one came up most prominently in a 2001 game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres when D-back pitcher Curt Schilling took a perfect game into the eighth inning only to have it ruined by a bunt single by Padres’ Ben Davis.

 The D-backs went ballistic during and after the contest. Davis wasn’t having it, pointing out that the score was 2-0 at the time and his hit brought the tying run to the plate. Interviewed years later the otherwise undistinguished catcher said the still-famous incident worked out well for him. “It’s better to be known for something than for nothing,” he said.

 

                                                                         

 

 

 

                   

 

              

 

              

BETTER BASEBALL

 

               Necessity, it’s said, is the mother of invention, and 2020 having been one motha of a baseball season it followed that it included a lot of inventions. Circumventing the virus took some doing, as did stuffing a regular-season race into a 60-game box. The game’s decades-long struggle to make itself faster and sleeker continued to hover, as did the trends toward more strikeouts and fewer base hits.  Attention had to be paid.

               Attend the MLB’s leaders did, and pretty well, too. The no-fans regime was the biggest change ever for the National Pastime, and while the vast stretches of empty seats were jarring they were ameliorated by the fan cutouts and piped-in crowd noises that, on TV at least, almost substituted for the real thing.  The game’s dugouts-and-sidelines covid protocols were widely ignored but the players surprised many (including me) by their admirable adherence to monastic rules outside the ballparks in no-bubble settings. This permitted the makeshift schedule to play out about as planned, with only two teams (the Miami Marlins and St Louis Cardinals) committing major breaches. Interestingly, both of them rallied to make the playoffs.

               There also were changes aplenty in the game on the field—more than in any season in memory for the change-averse sport.  MLB expanded the playoffs to 16 teams from  12; forced the designed-hitter rule on the National League; increased rosters to an initial 30 players (from 25 last season) and 28 for the playoffs; made double-header games seven-inning affairs; required relief pitchers to face at least three batters or stay until an inning’s end; and began extra innings with a “free” runner on second base.

None of those changes are sure to carry over to future seasons, but some might.  I heretofore have fancied myself a baseball “purist” but you know somethin’? I liked them all. Taking them one at a time, here are my takes:

EXPANDED PLAYOFFS— A good idea, and overdue, although it was spurred by the immediate need for more TV revenue to compensate for the lack of gate monies. This season’s 16 qualifiers in a 30-team mix was a bit much, so until MLB expands to 32 teams 14 would be a nice compromise, and I read it probably will happen. No more one-and-done wildcard rounds was good, too.

THE DH FOR THE NL—The designated hitter has been the rule in the American League since 1973, and while the AL-NL split on the matter has been an ever-present bone for baseball fans to chew, it has tasted like cardboard for a long time. The votes are in and they are nearly unanimous, the DH having been adopted in just about every level of organized baseball—the schools, colleges, amateurs, minor leagues and international play. The only two entities still holding out against it are the U.S. National League and Nippon Professional Baseball’s Central League, one of two such circuits in that land.

The DH promotes offense, something that’s needed especially now, and prolongs careers.  Few things in baseball are sadder than a pitcher with a bat in his hands; some act like they don’t know which end to hold. Most can’t even bunt, for heaven’s sake. The NL came within a whit of adding it in 1980 when, in a confused and confusing action, the 12 league owners voted four for and five against, with three abstentions, to uphold the status quo. I once enjoyed the tactical differences the AL-NL split created, but they’re just tiresome now. It’s about time the NL joined the party.

INCREASED ROSTER SIZES— Rosters were scheduled to be upped to 26 players from 25 this season but the disruptions caused by the virus threat supersized that—to 30 at the start of the 60-game schedule and 28 for the playoffs. The original plan of 26 is supposed to be reinstated for 2021, but I think it falls a man short. With 27 players—one more pitcher and one position player—teams could spread around playing time in a way that makes sense over the game’s long, long season. The players’ union, which can act on all such changes, would go along happily, and the probable cost—one more minimum-wage player—shouldn’t be too large for the owners to swallow.

SEVEN-INNING GAMES FOR DOUBLEHEADERS—This was pretty much of a one-off change because two-for-the-price-of-one doubleheaders in the majors are relics of bygone eras, for 40 or so years and counting. This season was an exception because of the narrow scheduling window and the log jams created by the multiple positive-test cancellations of the Marlins and Cardinals. The odd doubleheader these days comes about because of the need to make up weather-caused cancellations, and if players and managers could vote they’d adopt the seven-inning rule. That’s already the way things are done in the minor leagues and colleges, where doubleheaders are more frequent.

A THREE-BATTER RULE FOR RELIEVERS—I’m for just about anything that moves games along, and nothing slows them like mid-inning pitching changes. This is a good rule, but the rub is that with the end-of-inning exception it rarely applies. More helpful would be to mandate that relievers be driven to the mound quickly by cart and limited to two or three warmup pitches instead of the present six. What have they been doing in the bullpen, anyway?

A MAN-ON-SECOND-BASE START TO EXTRA INNINGS—This is the most unbaseballlike of the 2020 rule changes but I liked it a lot, just as I did when it was used in last year’s Fall League. Before when games went into extras I’d say “Oh, nuts” or something similar. This season I found myself saying “Oh, goodie!”

Giving teams a “free” runner is a wrench, and scoring it put some Figure Filberts’ noses out of joint, but so what?  The freebie is scored as an error even though none is charged to the team or any player; if the run scores it’s unearned to the pitcher. The situation sets up an interesting tactical question for the first-up team: bunt the guy over or swing away? In keeping with the ethos of the times, most teams this season chose option two, but with a strong pitcher of its own on the mound option one could be preferrable.  

A complaint about the rule is that it puts a sort of clock on the game-without-a-clock, but that ain’t necessarily so. If teams match each other run for run games could run indefinitely. They don’t figure to for long, though, which suits me fine. 

 

 

 

A VERY GOOD YEAR

 

               This baseball season has been unusual in many respects, but for me one is worth celebrating. That would be the fact that the two diamond representatives of Chicago, the land of my birth, were alive and playing when regular-season hostilities ended.

               Since the city has had two shots at post-season glory annually since the official beginning of the sport’s recorded time —1901— such a thing might be expected to go unnoted in the ordinary course of things. But as any baseball fan knows, the National League Cubs and the American League White Sox have been extraordinary for most of their histories—extraordinarily bad.

The Cubs’ 108-year failure to capture a World Series title (1908 to 2016), baseball’s biggest prize, has been the stuff of legend, whispered around campfires by the likes of the Alaskan Inuit and the New Zealand Maori. The White Sox’s 88-year gap in that respect—1917 to 2005– would have been a bigger deal if it weren’t for their crosstown counterparts’ greater record of ineptitude.

The lesser prizes that were multiplied by the game’s playoff expansion starting in 1969 have been almost as elusive; each team has been only an occasional visitor to such proceedings. They’ve made it together just once before—in 2008—and that year shared a first-round exit. An “El World Series” matching the two Windy City franchises happened but once, in 1906.

That Series stands out in the event’s annals because it matched two quite-different teams. The Cubs, starting a three-year World Series run, recorded a regular-season winning percentage of .763 (116-36) enroute to the showdown, setting a record that still stands. The White Sox qualified despite an AL-worst team batting average of .230 that was anemic even in those “dead ball” days and earned them the enduring label of “Hitless Wonders.” Naturally in matters Chicago, perversity prevailed and the Sox won it, four games to two.

  History’s circularity has expressed itself again this year because it’s the Cubs who wear the “Hitless Wonders” tag. They won the NL Central Division title despite a team batting average of .220, the 27^th best among the Majors’ 30 teams. They distinguished themselves further by striking out 559 times, the fifth-worst mark, “Dead Ball Era” be damned.

The Cubs’ standings’ stature was all the more baffling because the team’s worst hitters were the ones who led them to the World Series and five straight winning seasons starting in 2015. Kris Bryant, the NL’s MVP in ’16, hit a measly .206 this season, Javier Baez, the MVP runnerup in 2018, hit .203, the usually trusty Anthony Rizzo came in at .222 and Kyle Schwarber, the young Ruthian, managed but a .188 mark. The team escaped covid-19 but its astonishing weakness at the plate suggests another contagion. No kidding.

 The Cubs really had two seasons this year, a 13-3 won-lost start and a sub-.500 (21-23) finish. They did as well as they did mostly because of their pitching, an historical oddity. Yu Darvish, the slim Japanese with a full deck of offerings, finally came through with the sorts of performances the team envisioned when it paid him $126 million (for six years) in 2018, and the estimable Kyle Hendricks continued to confound hitters with his off-speed tricks. The team’s bullpen, a pre-season question mark, got better as the season progressed. Sans a hitting miracle, if the Cubs are to advance in the playoffs it will be pitching that carries them.

The White Sox’ recent history has been worse than that of the Cubs’, that 2008 playoff appearance being their last post-season exposure and their last seven seasons being losing ones. Their turnaround began in 2014 when their front office implemented a BOP (bad on purpose) strategy, dumping veterans (and games) to improve via trades for prospects and the draft. It’s the same tack the Cubs used when Theo Epstein took them over in 2012, and involved some of the same people. Sox manager Rick Renteria was Epstein’s choice to manage the Cubs in 2014 before Joe Maddon became available, and the Sox got young super-prospect Eloy Jimenez from the Cubs in a 2017 deal for veteran pitcher Jose Quintana.

The 2020 Sox resemble the 2015 Cubs, a young bunch having fun and flexing new-found  muscles but maybe a year away from serious contention. Young hitters Jimenez, Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, Luis Robert and Nick Madrigal, abetted by vets Jose Abreu and Yasmani Grandal, can score, and led the American League in home runs with 96. They have a couple of top-tier starting pitchers in Lucas Giolito and Dallas Kuechel, and an up and down bullpen. They were the talk of the Majors through the season’s first 50 games, vying for the AL’s best record, but lost seven of their last eight games to drop to a No. 7 playoff seed. Still, the line on their graph is rising, while that of the Cubs seems to be heading in the opposite direction.

Except for the favored L.A. Dodgers, the current playoffs look up for grabs, so chances of an-all Chicago World Series are small—5%, I read somewhere, although I have no idea how that figure was reached. But that’s not bad, considering.

 Yes, 2020 has been a terrible time for some things and a difficult one for many others. Yes, more teams (16) made the MLB playoffs than didn’t (14). And yes, both the Cubs and Sox might be sidelined after first-round play.  For Chicago baseball, however, it’s still been a very good year.

 

UNHAPPY ANNIVERSARY

 

               Stuck at home much of the time to hide out from the virus, wife Susie and I talk together more than we used to. A typical conversation goes like this:

               Me—"What day is this?”

               Susie—"Tuesday, I think.”

               Me— “Sure it’s not Wednesday?”

               Susie— “Pretty sure.”

               I’m very sure that exchange has been mirrored in the homes of many people reading this. When you’re retired as are Susie and I, and in virtual self-quarantine, the days run into one another, distinguishable only by the numbers on the calendar. Personal calendars, once crowded, now stand mostly empty. When we have two errands to run we don’t do both of them on the same day.

               The most-used cliché of the plague is that we’re all in the same boat, but it’s wrong. Were all in the same ocean but in different boats. The boat that Susie and I share is a good one— very good, in fact. We have a smallish but nice home on a large (1 ¼-acre) lot in an out-of-the-way part of Scottsdale, Arizona, on a cul-de-sac with no sidewalks or street lights and lots of space between houses. Without further labor we have enough income to support our needs.

               The bad news is that I’m 82 years old and Susie is 77, so we’re in the age group that has the most to worry about if the virus strikes. I have to laugh every time I hear that the most vulnerable groups consist of people over 65 or ones with a “preexisting condition.” There is no “or” about it-- just about everyone over 65 has one of those nasty things.  Susie and I are in relatively good health but we each have good-sized medical files.  Like many, I’m sure, every time I cough or sneeze I think, “Oh, oh, this may be it!”

               The reason I’m writing this now is that yesterday, September 14, marked the six-month anniversary of my personal history with virus fears. I’d heard about the affliction before that, of course, but with Arizona cases numbering in just the dozens didn’t take it too seriously. Indeed, things like the toilet-paper panic gave it a humorous cast. On March 14, though, Turf Paradise, the local horse-racing track where I’d spent just about every Saturday for years, announced it was shutting down. That meant a severe change in my routine, something old guys like me loath. It would be the first of many.

               Arizona experienced a general shutdown of about six weeks beginning around then, but it was spottily endorsed and enforced by governmental units, from the top down. Mixed messages prevailed and from the outset it became clear that we Americans were on our own when it came to protection. We still are, which is why virus statistics continue to fluctuate scarily, amounting to anything but control. Everything in the U.S. is politicized these days, and such obvious antiviral measures as mask-wearing is deemed to be controversial. In some circles foolishness is hailed as freedom.

               Susie and I take what we consider to be reasonable safety precautions. We wear masks in public, avoid large groups of people and utilize hand sanitizers. Susie shops, I swim four times a week in a large, outdoor public pool, bypassing the locker rooms coming and going. Once in a while we roll the dice and eat dinner in one of the restaurants we know provide for proper social distancing. We’d prefer to eat outdoors but our area has been too hot for that since June. Hey, you gotta get out occasionally.

               Other than that our options are few. Since we moved to Arizona in 1997 we’ve bailed out for cooler climes during July and August, lovely Santa Barbara, California, being our recent-years’ choice.  Not this year. No Arizona Diamondbacks’ games, either. Fall looms without theater, opera, my beloved Arizona Fall League baseball, or other public diversions.

               That has left us to such time-honored amusements as reading and crossword and jigsaw puzzles (the last for Susie, not me), and the tube. We’ve added Amazon Prime to our TV list, allowing us to watch such series’ as “Bosch,” a detective show set in Los Angeles, and the fast-paced “Intelligence,” about cops and drug dealers in Vancouver. I heartily recommend both.

               Sports, shelved in the plague’s early months (and the usual subject of this blog), have come back strong of late, albeit mostly before empty arenas. That has surprised many, including me. The NBA and NHL are successfully concluding their seasons in “bubbles,” and Major League Baseball lurches play-bound with limited travel after some initial stumbles. I didn’t think they could do it in part because I didn’t think their wealthy, entitled players could exercise the monastic discipline needed to stay “clean” amid a pandemic.  They pretty much have so far, but it remains to be seen if that will continue.

                At least equally important have been the truly massive testing regimes that professional sports have been able to institute, ones that dwarf those that exist in most other parts of our economy. Since their training camps opened last month the NFL has carried out daily virus testing for the more than 3,000 individuals who make up their playing rosters, coaching staffs and supporting personnel, enabling the quick identification and quarantine of infected individuals. It’s a telling societal commentary that our schools, hospitals and food processors don’t have it nearly so good.

It would be nice to report that help in the form of a vaccine was quickly on its way, but I’m troubled by efforts in that direction. The process is widely viewed as a race, with the first pharma company to declare victory able to claim a huge, global prize, but what if the third, sixth or tenth vaccine   to cross the line is the most effective?

               And what of complaints about spying involving the research drives? With thousands of lives at stake shouldn’t scientific cooperation be the rule, instead of competition?  I’m expecting to note another six-months anniversary come March. I’m praying that’ll be the last but I’m not betting on it.

                               

FOOTBALL ANYONE?

 

               The alignment of our planet with the sun dictates that autumn begins on September 22, but we know different, don’t we? It starts today, September 1. We know that because football is a fall sport that begins in earnest with the “S” month. Always has, always will.

               Except for this year. This year the pandemic reigns and September begins with not a pigskin being snapped in earnest at either the professional or major-college level. The colleges are in disarray, with two of the so-called “Power Five” conferences (the Big Ten and PAC 12) already having delayed the sport’s start until spring and the other three (the SEC, Big 12 and ACC) plunging forward, at least until further notice.

The National Football League is tiptoeing ahead, canceling pre-season games and scrimmages and holding practices of a sort as its September 10 starting date (a Thursday night game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans) approaches. But in Las Vegas, where the action speaks louder than words, it is only even money that date will be kept, and, no doubt, a longer-odds play that the season will be concluded successfully.

Back in June, when the pandemic was on the upswing, I addressed football’s prospects and found them wanting. Too many things could go wrong for a season to come off as hoped, I concluded. I still think so, especially with sports’ rolling racial boycotts now in play. I also was pessimistic about our three other major spectator sports even though they involve fewer athletes and, thus, fewer risks.

 As it has turned out, basketball and hockey have implemented “bubbles” to resume play, albeit in narrow confines and before empty arenas. Baseball limps along sans bubbles on broader stages, with each day’s schedule at risk to positive tests as the virus still percolates and regional spikes continue. Thirty one MLB games have been lost to virus-related cancellations, knocking schedules askew. A couple  more hard knocks would endanger the whole enterprise.

Hockey’s smartest move was to put its resumption in Canada (specifically in Toronto and Edmonton), where pandemic control has been far more successful than in the U.S.  That the NBA also is doing well is mostly a tribute to its players’ apparent willingness to live monk-like existences within the league’s Orlando, Florida, ring. Who knew they could do that? Can they keep it up?

The NFL leads the world in hubris but despite its bravado looks anything but confident as opening day approaches. Sixty six players and five game officials have opted out of playing this year and one could hear knees quaking around the league as 59 players tested positive before training camps opened two weeks ago. Most of those players returned after sitting out quarantines and there have been no reported positives since, but training camps offer the sort of mini-bubbles that won’t be replicated as travel for games begins.

The foundation of the NFL’s return plan is its ability to bull to the front of any and all lines and obtain a level of virus testing that, as far as I know, exists nowhere else in the U.S.  Daily testing of every participant began with the training camps and will continue until September 5, or until local positive rates dip below 5%. One report last week said that the league had used about 150,00 tests to that point.

Television reports from the NFL camps show a sort of football-like activity but not the sweaty, rigorous drills usually associated with the bruising sport. With its summer warm-up camps limited to about two weeks, baseball has had an unusual spate of injuries in its truncated season. Unless about 70 years of experience amounts to nothing, the casualty lists should be long when (if) football gets back into action.

Further, the NFL’s once-a-week play and 16-game schedule puts a premium on every game that doesn’t exist elsewhere. Baseball has been able to make up for lost games with seven-inning doubleheaders. No such option exists in football. What would a playoff picture look like if some teams play 16 games while others play 15 or 14?  Commish Goodell would earn his salary making those calls.

If the NFL season’s viability looks shaky, it is rock solid compared to that of the college game. Return-to-class reports from campuses around the land have revealed the sort of knuckleheaded behaviors and student contagion rates that have tilted national rates upward, including (indeed, especially) in states whose university teams play in conferences that remain determined to play football later this month. The U of North Carolina, an ACC school, reported 784 positive tests among enrollees last month, the U of Alabama (SEC) 1,000-plus, the U of Missouri (Big 12) 166. No breakdowns were reported but some of those kids have to be footballers, huh?

 Some schools in those conferences have canceled opening home games scheduled for early this month, including North Carolina State (ACC) and Iowa State (Big 12).  Two SEC members—Tennessee and Auburn—cancelled practices last week after positive virus tests.

Everything is political these days so it’s probably no accident that the collegiate will-play/won’t -play divide has mostly “blue” states on the cautious “won’t” side and “red” states among the gung ho “wills.” To say this is disturbing is an understatement; college sports are played by kids but run by adults who are supposed to look out for their welfare. Putting that second to make a buck or a point  buck is reprehensible, but no surprise.

 

 

 

  

 

FORGIVEN AND FORGOTTEN

 

               If you plan to run for just about any public office in the U.S., a platform including the words “law and order” is advisable. True, those terms haven’t been in great repute of late, but I think they still carry weight. At the least, they’re better than most alternatives.

               But while we the people are tough on crimes and criminals rhetorically, this doesn’t always describe how we behave. In sports in particular we seem quite willing to overlook or forgive, especially when the wrongdoer wears a uniform to which we pledge allegiance. Even outlanders often get the benefit of the doubt when their offenses have faded from memory sufficiently.

               I’m referring specifically to baseball and we fans’ reactions to players who have been caught doping. Seventy Major League players have been busted publicly since the game finally instituted regular testing for performance-enhancing drugs in 2005, and while most of them have been individuals of no great reputation a good-sized handful had earned “star” designations. Almost all of those guys have been greeted with applause from their home fans when they returned to action, and their misdeeds either have been forgotten by opposing audiences or never noted in the first place.

And a couple of the more-notorious dopers (albeit ones who were convicted in the court of public opinion) seem poised to be voted into the game’s Hall of Fame by sportswriters who heretofore have considered themselves to be baseball’s conscience. How’s that for a kick?

Now, it’s true that on a general level taking PEDs doesn’t rank high on any scale of heinous offenses. Some people consider the practice par for the course in big-time sports, a smart move that’s worth a shot (joke intended) and no big deal if it fails. Truth to tell, though, it’s cheating in its most base form, an eyes-wide-open decision to tilt the playing fields in the interest of padding statistics and paychecks.  The edge it confers is as real as the Houston Astros’ recently exposed sign-stealing tactics. It deserves at least equal condemnation.

 That PED use is quickly forgotten is exemplified by Starling Marte and Jorge Polanco.  Marte, an outfielder of some repute, was busted and suspended in 2017 while with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Polanco became the Minnesota Twins’ starting shortstop in 2017 at age 24 but was caught using drugs the next season. Each served 80-game suspensions, the max for the offenses. Their drugs of choice, respectively, were nandrolone and stanozolol, harry-chested steroids favored by weightlifters. No question about intent there.

But maybe because they play for small-market teams that don’t get a lot of ink, both men have blended back into the game seamlessly. Polanco was rewarded by his team with a 2019 salary that was about six times what he made the previous year and was elected by fan vote to be the American League’s starting All-Star Game shortstop. Marte also got a nice raise in Pittsburgh on his return and when he was traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks before this season his suspension was hardly noted. Interestingly, his home-run totals in his first two seasons post-steroids (22 and 23) were greater than in the years he was juicing, probably causing him to wonder why he tried the stuff.

If Marte and Polanco went quietly into suspension, Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez did not. Braun, a Milwaukee Brewers’ star when he tested positive for testosterone in 2012, contested the ruling on grounds his urine sample was mishandled, and won in arbitration. He screamed bloody murder, threatening to sue everyone in sight and accusing the guy who handled the sample of being anti-Semitic (Braun identifies as Jewish) and, worse, a Chicago Cubs’ fan. A year later, when he was snared again in the scandal involving the Miami performance lab Biogenesis, he shamefacedly fessed up and accepted a 65-game suspension.  Although welcomed back by Milwaukee fandom, Braun was booed elsewhere on his return in 2014, but that has faded. A 2015 All Star, he was featured in MLB ads promoting baseball’s return from this year’s pandemic, signaling that all’s been forgiven upstairs.

ARod, a towering baseball figure over a 22-year career (1994-2016), was linked to PED use from the year 2000 and admitted to taking them during a 2001-03 period, before they were banned in the game.  Finally busted in 2013, he loudly took the deny-and-sue route, going so far as to dispatch pickets to march outside the commissioner’s office on his behalf. He was banned for the entire 2014 season for taking “numerous forms” of PEDs over “multiple years.” His penalty was unprecedented.

He returned for the 2015 and ’16 seasons with diminished skills and retired from baseball, but rather than fad away he’s flourished like a green bay tree. He’s a “Shark Tank” entrepreneur and A-list party guy with world-class girlfriend Jennifer Lopez, and is part of ESPN’s broadcast crew on Sunday night baseball, it’s top slot for the sport. He’s the front man for a group trying to buy the New York Mets, something he wouldn’t be if the owners kept a grudge. Hey, given time he could be commissioner.

  Rehabilitation also might be near for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, the aforementioned Notorious Two.  Despite brilliant diamond careers both left the game in disgrace after their long-term drug use was widely and convincingly asserted. Although neither was convicted, each faced criminal charges for lying about it under oath, Bonds’ conviction being overturned on appeal.

Predictably, from the first both were hailed as heroes where they played; Bonds is in the San Francisco Giants’ Hall of Fame and Clemens is in the Boston Red Sox’s version of same. Election to the real Hall in Cooperstown has been more problematic. Since both became eligible in 2013 for election by the baseball writers they’ve run as a kind of ticket, each pulling about 35% of the vote in their first three years (75% is needed for election), then creeping upward annually to 61% this year.

 They’ll be on the ballot for two more years and players who’ve topped 60% with time to go usually make it over the top. Next year’s Hall crop of first-year-eligibles is weak, so that might come sooner rather than later. If it happens the question won’t be whether we forgive them but whether they forgive us.      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

              

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                 

GAMING NAMING

               The anti-racism protests that have roiled many American cities these last few months may or may not result in substantive changes in our society, but they have claimed at least one “W” of a symbolic nature.  That would be the decision of the Washington National Football League team to, finally, drop the “Redskins” appellation it has hauled around since 1937. Other teams with Native-American-inspired names still cavort on various playing fields but none of their monikers is as all-around-objectionable as the ’Skins’. It will be missed by few.

               The Washingtonians’ move no doubt will spur examination of more of the above-mentioned names, all of which have been under some sort of fire. The baseball Cleveland Indians have said they are mulling a change, and the Atlanta Braves have indicated they may move to nix the tomahawk-motion cheer that has become their trademark. My alma mater, the U of Illinois, some years ago dropped its Chief Illiniwek symbol, after prolonged strife. Dumping the school’s Fighting Illini nickname has been urged by some, but that might also require changing the name of the state, which is of native-inhabitant origin. So too, by the way, are 25 other U.S. state names, 26 if you include Hawaii.

               One Amerind name that probably will hang on is that of the Florida State U. Seminoles. Since 1978 the schools’ mascots have been Osceola, a noted Seminole chief, and his appaloosa horse Renegade. Before every FSU home football game an Osceola impersonator rides Renegade onto the field and casts a burning spear into the ground around the 50-yard line. The names, and the capering, have the okay of the Seminole tribe, but that approval might stem in part from its gratitude that the school had dropped previous Indian mascots, among them Sammy Seminole, Chief Fullabull and Chief Wampumstompum.

The desire not to offend turns many athletic entities towards the zoo when it comes to naming or renaming, with results that are drearily generic. How far schools will go to avoid that pitfall is best exemplified by Stanford University, which in 1972 changed its teams’ name from the Indians to the Cardinal. That’s Cardinal singular, as in the color, not the bird. (Gotta watch them touchy bird lovers.) The school’s mascot runs around dressed as a tree. Who could object to that?

But Stanford aside, college team names generally have it all over those of the pros, probably because here are so many of them that some have to get it right. There are occupational names tied to the school’s mission, such as the Purdue Boilermakers and the Leigh Engineers, and ones with a meteorological tilt, like the Miami Hurricanes and Iowa State Cyclones. There are whimsical names like the Hampshire College Blacksheep, and neo-whimsical ones, such as the Cal-Irvine Anteaters and the mighty Artichokes of Scottsdale Community College in my AZ backyard. There are plays on words, like the Pace College Setters.

Usually, college cheers echo the institutions’ names, but sometimes the reverse has been true. Georgetown U. calls its teams the Hoyas after its “Hoya Saxa!” yell, a Greek-Latin amalgam that the school says translates to “what rocks!”  Virginia Polytechnic Institute dubs its teams the Hokies after a turn-of-the-20^th century chant that began “Hokey, hokey, hokey high/ Tech, Tech, VPI.”

Catholic-run Manhattan College names its teams the Jaspers after Brother Jasper, its first baseball coach. The University of Idaho’s Vandals nickname comes not from the ancient Germanic tribe but from a sportswriter’s exclamation that a long-ago school basketball team “vandalized” an opponent.

The origins of the University of North Carolina’s flavorful Tarheels nickname are lost in time. One version has it that state residents dumped tar into a river to impede British troops during the Revolutionary War, another has Civil War soldiers from the state telling detractors they would fight better if their heels also had been dipped in the plentiful gunk.  Indiana U.’s “Hoosiers” name is similarly obscure; it might stem from what early homesteaders in the state were said to have hollered when people knocked on their doors.

My favorite is the Billikens of St. Louis U. It seems that a billiken is an elfish, round-bellied statuary figure of Asian origin that used to be a popular good-luck charm. In 1910 a sportswriter decided that John Bender, the school’s football coach, looked like one and started calling the team “Bender’s Billikens.” The name stuck.

I have no expectation that Washington’s ownership will come up with anything clever or even interesting to replace Redskins. They’ve moaned publicly that a name change for an organization as august as theirs is no easy matter, requiring considerable thought and research. Executive brains must be taxed, focus groups convened. For the coming season (if there is one) the name “Washington Football Team” must suffice. Speculation has “Warriors” in the rename lead. Then it’s off to the zoo for “Red Wolves” and “Red Hawks,” although I read that somebody has copyrights on those names and would have to be paid off before they could be used

If the zoo it must be, I favor “Hogs.” Yeah, it has negative connotations, but it’s genuinely local, that being the team’s well known offensive-line nickname during its 1980s glory days. How about the “DisCos,” for a D.C. play? Or the “Lobbyists” or “Swamp Creatures” for a capital connection? If those don’t scare opponents, nothing will.