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Pitcher-Turned-Law Student On Cheating In Baseball
An anonymous reader writes "As a 27-year old minor league pitcher who had never made it to "The Show" (ballplayers' slang for the big leagues), Garrett Broshius was advised by a coach to develop an 'out pitch' by cheating (doctoring or scuffing the baseball while standing on the mound). It was an ethical crossroads faced by many players past and present, and Broshius ultimately decided to give up the game. While a student at the St. Louis University School of Law, he wrote a paper that attempted to apply the tenets of legal theorists to the rampant cheating in baseball and other sports (click the 'download' button, no registration required). While Broshius' paper isn't brilliant or novel, it tours the techniques and issues surrounding cheating in baseball better than most. Broshius concludes with recommendations for how baseball should handle two classes of cheating: 'traditional' cheating of the type he was advised to do by the coach, which has achieved acceptance in some quarters as part of the game; and 'new era' cheating involving performance-enhancing drugs such as steroids, which has become prominent in the last 25 years. Oh, and Brosius remarks that in almost every baseball game he watches these days, he notices something suspicious — usually from the pitcher."
I don't care what sport it is - when contracts worth millions of dollars are on the line, there will always be talented people willing to do whatever they have to in order to stay competitive and even excel.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
baseball needs more replay
Just as long it is about sports, we don't care about right and wrong or morals. But if a Scholastic student who wasn't good at sports did it. They will be locked up in jail for the rest of their life.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Lying on television isn't brilliant or novel at all. Since the is a common medium for viewing the game. Ultimately isn't it the goal to make it as entertaining as possible so people keep throwing millions of dollars at it. Wrestling is faked already, why should other sports be any different?
I can't count on one hand how many people I offended back in the day when I kept exclaiming that McGuire was on steroids. It would make a McGuire fan go completely rabid. I was in high school, and one guy almost punched me over it.
Of course, I was right. Common sense and all that.
Cheating in sports? Who'd of thought it!
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There's no crying in Baseball!!!
after he gave up drinking for a time to please Marge:
I never realized how boring this game is.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Isn't that kinda the point of baseball? It's only cheating if they catch you? Is a scuffed ball any different from stealing a base?
Take that and chew on it for a while!
"Would counsel please approach the bench?" "Oh yeahhh!"
Nah but its only popular because it's the place public drunkeness is allowed in American culture. After all it's not like you go to watch a non-stop exciting game.
Slow play and umps that can't find the strike zone with a telescope
Coaches should get red flag just like football so replay could be used. Replays should be done at MLB HQ like the NHL does it.
MLB should institute an automated strike zone and a pitch clock when no one is on base.
There's only one solution to a completely corrupt system. Walk away from it. Broshius made the correct decision by leaving the game behind him.
You cannot change a corrupted institution from within. I'll repeat that. You cannot change a corrupted institution from within. There are too many people inside who have spent their lives justifying and profiting from their misdeeds, who are not about to turn over a new leaf or air their dirty laundry because you've made an appeal to their conscience. They killed theirs long ago.
The best thing to do is leave the rotten ship to sink all by itself. Every honest person who stands by a rotten game, or bankrupted bank, or broken political party is just propping up an at best amoral system, and usually an immoral and even illegal one. There is no obligation to stay loyal or remain in solidarity with a disloyal and dishonest organisation.
Broshius has done more for baseball as a law student that he ever could have as a player or a fan.
May the Maths Be with you!
I've been trying to download this "baseball" game all morning and all every website I visit just shows me a bunch of sweaty dudes in pajamas.
They're using wooden controllers (!) and even worse, they're outside. Is this a beta? wtf
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
batters kick dirt onto the batters box to make it harder to call a strike
catchers call the pitch and jump in or outward just before its thrown. or move their glove after its caught to increase the amount of strikes
pitchers are always rubbing their sweaty heads right before throwing the ball
in the end it doesn't really help. a good pitcher is good for 100 some pitches. but these tough guys are always telling the manager they are OK in the 6th inning right before they give up a bunch of runs. or a few pitchers will get injured and the rest of the staff has to take up the slack with less rest. a starting pitcher needs close to a week of rest after a game. a few injured players will tire out your pitching staff and result in more runs given up
fatigue and acting tough has a much greater effect on the game than foreign substances
So the guy has an ethical dilemma with an out pitch but not with becoming an attorney? I have yet to meet an attorney that didn't employ at least a few ethically questionable tactics.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
having the ball fly crazy won't make the batter try to hit it. a good pitcher like Justin verlander has control of the ball. he can aim a pitch onto the outside of the strike zone to trick the batter. a good pitcher will know the batter's habits and style of swing and adjust his pitches for that.
a good batter will avoid swinging at a bad pitch
sounds like this guy did a study on a few pitchers who had no chance to make it to the majors and tried to cheat their way in which would not have worked anyway since the worst major league hitters are as good as the best Triple-A hitters
Is this Baseball game something that is on Windows 8 or something new on 8.1?
So a minor leaguer who didn't cut the mustard decides that everyone in the Majors is cheating? Color me surprised.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
If you ain't cheaten, you ain't winnin.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If you took a line drive to the nads, I bet you'd cry.
Everyone gets tested after a game, any single person come sup positive, then game is considered a loss. Happens twice, they give up 25% of merchandising for a year.
Make it an incentive for the owners to fix it, and the owners will fix it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you can throw the ball 100 mph in the strike zone, you throw the ball 100 mph in the strike zone.
If you can't you whine about it and write sour grapes crap that ends up on Slashdot.
... and would chalk up players who are "caught" cheating as all part of how the games are rigged, done solely to keep fans interested in the game by trying to reinforce the notion to the fans that it's not fixed.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"If you're not cheating, you're not trying."
Aren't there bears outside?
I think he left out a third category of cheating: cheating that transcends the sport and becomes an object of admiration among fans. The textbook example would be Gaylord Perry. One of the more interesting sports interviews I've heard involved Perry describing his elaborate routines to keep the opposition guessing where he had hidden a gob of vaseline. Apparently there were people on the opposing team whose job it was to watch him during the game and try to catch him cheating. The vaseline, of course, moved from his pant leg, to his cap, to the back of his neck, which he rubbed to loosen up... etc. I agree with a previous post that the economic rewards are too large to stop it, but I admire the author of this article of refusing to take part. It is possible, I think, however, for people to become so accustomed to cheating that they accept some forms of it as part of the game. Gaylord perry demonstrating a spitter: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXLc8hKoaBw
"The Show" = Big Leagues = Major League Baseball, the highest professional baseball league.
Note that there is no question at all that MLB is the best professional baseball league. This is not like soccer/football where fans night argue that the EPL or Bundesliga or La Liga or some other league is the best. MLB to every other baseball league is like the EPL to MLS or worse.
The fact that Broshuis (his name is misspelled on the original post) was asked to cheat is a good indicator that on talent alone he wasn't good enough for MLB. I found his minor league record and at the highest level of minor league baseball, AAA, (consider this to be something like playing soccer/football in Football League Championship in England) he barely played and was bad. He played quite a bit in AA, which is the league below AAA, and had mixed results. I've seen worse for sure, but nothing in his stats was so great, even at his best, that it looked like he was going to be a future pitcher in MLB. He barely got a chance in AAA (3 games) which to me strongly suggests that his organization gave up on him being a serious candidate for MLB and gave him a very quick test to see if he might be better than they thought, and he wasn't.
The fact that Broshuis (his name is misspelled on the original post) was asked to cheat is a good indicator that on talent alone he wasn't good enough for MLB.
Hmmm, well that assumes that everyone else is playing honestly.
If his assertion of rampant cheating is accurate then no, it doesn't indicate anything.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Lance is a loser. I hear Sheryl Crow broke up with him because he didn't have enough stamina in bed!
Who knew?
That's remarkably stupid isn't it. You get a chance to do study engineering because of your proficiency in baseball.
Is there anything more stupid?
Since baseball is pretty much 1% playtime, 99% dicking around, they should eat into the 99% by inspecting every single thrown ball, lol.
It's the most corrupt system of government in the world...except for all the other systems.
The problem with baseball is that it's designed such that a lot of the rules become so straw splitting as to be unenforceable.
You're not allowed to spit on the ball, but what if it's raining or your fingers are sweaty? It's not like it's harmful to anyone or giving an unfair advantage, since all the pitchers can do it (unless someone has some kind of condition that prevents them from generating saliva or something)
Basically this creates an environment in which players can't really see the reason for the rule and the thing is so vague and arbitrary that they don't see the big deal in breaking it. Break a bunch of small ones and suddenly "cheating" in bigger ways seems par for the course.
If they want to fix it, they need to start allowing more things so that they can really start cracking down on the stuff that's actually giving an unfair advantage.
While I think the performance-enhancing drugs take things way too far, I don't know how much of an ethical dilemma I see with such tactics as figuring out a way to scuff up the baseball before throwing it, to try to achieve some unpredictability?
I'd tend to side more with the "it's just part of the game" camp on that, because when it comes right down to it? It's all about making it as difficult as you can for the batter to hit what you throw at him. A regulation baseball has certain parameters to it that can't be changed without substituting it for a modified ball, and to me THAT'S where you'd want to draw the line on what's allowed. I mean, if the weight of the ball is drastically altered or you use a smaller or larger ball, that's just as much a change as, say, scooting the bases closer together on the field.
As far as I'm concerned, I'd rather see the rest of it just be out in the open. Say "No, we simply don't CARE if you think you have some secret tactic to gouge up the ball a little bit or scuff up its surface before pitching it. Go for it if you think it helps you!" You're always going to have small changes that potentially give small advantages to those who take advantage of them. I'm pretty sure there are certain types of shoes with certain cleat patterns which wind up giving some slight advantage over others too. Are we going to get so anal, we require only shoes with soles matching a precise pattern and dimensions, or else it's "cheating"?
(And honestly, even on the whole drugs issue? The biggest reason I have any problem with that is because it wasn't widely in use or even available in previous generations -- yet part of the game involves tracking records and seeing who is talented enough to break them over time. It's not a fair "A to B" comparison anymore between the "old time greats" and today's players, if the modern players are all juiced up. If the sport actually came out and said, "We consider performance enhancing drugs to be fair play." and ALSO said a line would be drawn where old statistics were "frozen in time" and everything effectively started over? Then I'd be hard pressed to find a reason to call it "cheating" anymore. (I might not like the fact it encourages people to treat their own bodies as disposable for the purpose of getting a little more of an edge in the game ... but that's each individual's own decision to make.)
But lots of whining.
Everyone gets tested after a game, any single person come sup [sic] positive, then game is considered a loss. Happens twice, they give up 25% of merchandising for a year.
Fine, except that the tests are not perfect, and false positives exist. Think about it -- suppose the test was 99% accurate, but produced 1% false positives. There are 25 people on an MLB team, and the team plays an average of 6.3 games per week. That's an average of 25 * 6.3 = 157.5 tests per team per week, which will produce an average of 1.575 false positives per team per week, or 1.575 * 26 = almost 41 false positives in a 26-week season. Per team.
There are 30 teams in MLB, so under your proposal one is looking at (157.5 tests per team per week) * (30 teams) * (26 weeks per season) = 122,850 drug tests every season. The false positive rate would have to get down into the parts per million range to do anything other than punish random team owners for the finite quality of drug tests. The effect could, in fact, be counterproductive; with so many false positives, the actual drug users could be emboldened to hide among them.
There's no crying in Baseball!!!
They should rename it to Mutantball. Apparently, baseball, like many other sports, is no longer playable competitively by normal human beings.
Nah but its only popular because it's the place public drunkeness is allowed in American culture. After all it's not like you go to watch a non-stop exciting game.
That's what football is for. The Florida-Georgia game's nickname is "the World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party".
And yet the original wasn't called humanball, and whatever drugs are involved, the game still definitely involves bases.
The cheater is always self-penalized, on a subconscious level, no matter whether it is baseball, an online game, politics, finance, industry, arts, etc. When one cheats, they are imprinting a subconscious self-suggestion which says "I'm useless" and this unobserved fact, cripples their potential for life: http://www.scribd.com/doc/144527545
5 to ten years aga i watched the kentucky derby live on tv.
after the win someone with a shoulder cam i presume from the network records some one(heavey set man in a grey suite)
walking up to the horse and rider and shaking hands.
but it was'nt a hand shake,it was a hand off.
the rider placed something in his hand.
on the last stretch the rider and horse went from being back going very fast to ludicriss speed.
i believe the rider handed off a zapper.(stun gun for horses,wont knock em out but will get a last minute surge from them.)
now i seen this live on tv.
many others had to have seen it.
but nothing.
i thought the powers that be would have nailed it.
nope.
cheating in sports is the norm.
regards
mike
I am not familiar with this game, and I fail to understand what cheat TFA is about. To cheat, you must break a rule. What is the broken rule?
when he is a law school student?
Wow, the betting shills at the side of the Roman Colloseum will be shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!! that this could happen. They thought that it had been stamped-out by the invasion of the accountants.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Cheating and lying is rampant in all facets of human existence. As a society that is totally outward focused, that is we only care about what other say about us, the only harm in lying or cheating is getting caught. We have a number of convenient outs for our actions... usually involving similar acts by others.
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