Does cheating in Major League Baseball matter to fans?

No

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by Neal Acito

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Sadly, we tolerate it. The fans don't care. Today in baseball, cheating has become an acceptable part of the game.

Forget the Majors, there's more cheating in Little League than you'll ever see in professional baseball. We've seen kids with fake birth certificates. We've got illegal bats, sign stealing, and yes, even steroid use among junior athletes. Right now, somewhere in America, a coach is teaching a kid to throw a spitter. All of this is happening with the tacit approval of parents and coaches. Sad to say, cheating and baseball go together like hot dogs and mustard.

There are good coaches out there who are disdainful of this behavior. However, even the most well intentioned coach is teaching your child how to be deceptive. Don't believe me? Here's a test-

You're coaching a catcher. The pitcher throws one just outside the strike zone. Do you tell the kid to:

A)Leave his mitt out there where he caught the ball.

B)Pull the mitt into the strike zone.

Most would choose B. You don't want to leave the mitt outside the strike zone for too long. Doing so increases the chances of the umpire calling it a "ball". If you pull the mitt in close to the chest, however, the umpire might just be fooled into calling it a strike.

So, what's wrong with that? It's part of the game, right? There's nothing illegal about it, after all. What's wrong with a little competitive edge?

Well, to begin with, we're actually teaching our kids to be deceptive. A called strike rewards them.

Baseball is the only discipline that rewards this sort of behavior. You won't see this in science class, for example. If your experiment fails, it's painfully obvious from the explosion you caused. You can't cheat at answering the phone, washing the car, or turning the clocks back on daylight savings time. In fact, most things we do on a daily basis are straight up honest.

Except for baseball. When it comes to America's favorite pastime, we collectively leave our ethics in the parking lot.

I was watching a Little League baseball game once. The little fellow at the plate hit a fly ball down the first base line. It landed in right field, just over the line and into foul territory. The bench jumped up immediately and called it "fair". The team in the field called it "foul". It looked foul to me, a decision shared by the umpire.

"Foul ball," he bellowed.

After a few groans from the bench, the little fellow trotted back to home plate to try again. As I looked at the disappointed faces of the home team, it suddenly occurred to me

Half of the people in the ballpark were dirty, rotten, filthy, lying, cheaters.

There was a time in our history when anybody who cheated was disgraced and forever banned from the sandlot. Nobody wants to play with somebody who is calling things crookedly. Without adult supervision, everybody was on their honor to call it honestly. (On the rare occasion when there was disagreement, we reverted to the time tested "do-over".)

Behavior on the field was an extension of our behavior off the field. I remember a story about a small town softball league where the local hardware store owner continually displayed bad sportsmanship. Within a year, so the legend goes, he found himself out of business. The locals had become fed up with his antics and took their patronage elsewhere. They equated his on field cheating with his off field business practices.

Such was the case in the "good old days". Back in the day, during more innocent times, we would have all crossed our fingers and wished the ball to "stay fair". Today, the landscape seems different. Kids jump off the bench to call the ball fair even though they know it isn't. Parents and coaches are no better. They willingly partake in this deception in order to influence the umpire. Sadly, it works. When it does, the kids learn a valuable lesson: If you cheat, you get rewarded.

Fans, parents, and kids alike probably won't care very much about any cheating in Major League Baseball. They're probably too busy scuffing the baseball, putting a sticker on an illegal bat, and taking performance enhancers to worry about it.

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