Weekly Hit Ground Ball: ‘Cheats’ and schedules

It seems like ages since we’ve had a week without apocalyptic stories of ‘cheating’ filling the sports pages of British newspapers.  From ‘bloodgate’ (rugby union), to ‘divegate’ (football) and now ‘crashgate’ (Formula One), all it takes is one or two incidents for a whole sport to be dragged through the mud. 

When someone gets caught, their first instinct is normally to deny any wrongdoing, then claim that what they did wasn’t all that bad because everyone else does it anyway, before dealing with the often ridiculous moral outrage by engaging in rounds of the old playground argument: ‘your sport’s worse than my sport when it comes to cheating’, ‘no, your sport’s much worse than mine’ etc. 

In baseball, we’ve seen all this played out with regard to the so-called ‘steroid era’. 

Some players strenuously denied using steroids or other drugs and then, when they were caught, tried to lessen their culpability by claiming that everyone else was taking something as well.  When the sport was being marched in front of Congress, many argued the case that baseball was far from the only sport with such problems and that it was being held to higher standards than the rest.

The final point is the one that interests me the most because while the argument does have a childish element to it, it’s also an example of a perfectly fair reaction to one sport being singled out.  The simple truth is that you’ll do well to find a single sport that doesn’t include people who will break the rules to gain an advantage, just as you’ll find similarly-minded people in every walk of life. 

The difference is, when someone breaks the rules in sport, the emotive word ‘cheat’ is invariably used to imply that the act was not just technically/legally wrong but also morally wrong.  And of course when you start bringing morals into the equation, you end up going round and round in circles until you end up in a quagmire of hypocrisy.

There was an interesting article in the Times this week by England rugby union star Jonny Wilkinson in which he explained that, by their very nature, sportsmen will always try to bend the rules as far as they can without being caught.  If you can get away with slowing down your opponent’s ability to play the ball right at the end of the game in rugby, most people would do it.  The same goes for a pitcher who might sneakily scuff a ball in an important moment to help him get a vital strikeout.  When the protagonists decide to do it, they know what risks are involved if they get caught.  They are trying to deceive the officials and it’s up to the officials to catch them.

We should leave well-intentioned ideas of ‘fair play’ to one side and refrain from demonising people who fall foul of the officials.  Let’s just accept that there are rules in all sports and where there are rules there will be people trying to break them.  Be glad if a player gets found out and criticise them for their transgression, but don’t forget that there will be numerous others who have committed the same offence, or worse, and got away with it.

Whether you like it or not, the only rule that matters is: ‘don’t get caught’.  If you break that rule, you deserve the punishment that comes your way.  If you don’t break that rule, maybe the officials will catch you next time.

2010 MLB schedule released

We’ve not yet reached the end of the 2009 regular season and the master schedule for 2010 has already been released.  It seems ridiculously early, but the logistics of planning a Major League season are incredibly complex and there’s nothing to stop the schedule being put together and announced at this point because we know which thirty teams will be part of the competition.

The mid-June announcement of the football fixture lists always raises excitement among fans.  The season is just two months away by then and promotion and relegation ensures that there will be new teams to face compared to the previous season.  No such uncertainty exists in MLB, although that is not necessarily a bad thing.  Take that from someone whose team did suffer the indignity of relegation in 08/09.

Thankfully I’ve got another sport to occupy my attention and, like most baseball fans, I immediately clicked through to my team’s schedule to see who we would be starting against and what sort of run-in we will have for a potential pennant-winning end to the season (yep, it’s never too early for blind confidence).  The A’s begin with a home stand against the Mariners and will go on to play them seven times in their first ten games.  That should make for plenty of early season banter between Joe and me.  We’ll also finish the season against Seattle, part of a seven-game road trip that begins in Anaheim. 

While most teams will start the season on Monday 5 April, the MLB season opener is set for the day before and that’s the one fixture that we will have to wait for.  The World Series champs are given the honour of playing the season opener and I wouldn’t like to hazard a guess at who that will involve.  The Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals and Phillies would be the most likely candidates, but someone could still spring a surprise.

It’s possible that it could be the Minnesota Twins, although if it is them then the game will take place in Anaheim.  The Twins begin the 2010 season on the road and they probably expressed that as their preference because it will give them a bit more time to put the finishing touches to their new ballpark (teams can ask for certain preferences to be taken into consideration before the schedule is compiled).  Target Field will open on Monday 12 April with a game against the Red Sox that is currently scheduled to start at 21.10 BST (3.10pm local time).  It will be the first official outdoor Twins game in Minnesota since 1981 after twenty-seven years in the Metrodome and it’s virtually guaranteed to be postponed due to bad weather.

Still, the main concern for British baseball fans is whether the season opener will be on free-to-air TV or not. We can only hope for the best.