posed on the Ethics Scoreboard:
Last month's tournament leading up to the Little League World Series included one game with an unusual series of events that set the stage for a fascinating ethical debate.The Scoreboard notes the answers given by two sports ethicists, and then gives and defends its own. I've thought very little about sports ethics, but I agree with the Scoreboard that the Vermont coach didn't behave unethically (though obviously he did behave negligently by not playing Bentley earlier). I also tend to agree with the Scoreboard that the New Hampshire coach did behave unethically, but I'm considerably less confident about that judgment.The Situation: On August 11 in Bristol, Conn., a Little League team from Colchester, Vt., only had to retire its Portsmouth, N.H. opposition in the top of the sixth inning (Little League games are six innings rather than nine) to win the game 9-8 and move on to the New England regional championship game.
But there was a problem. The Vermont team had made its third out in its half of the fifth inning before player Adam Bentley got to the plate. The Little League has a strict rule that requires every player to bat at least once a game, and the penalty for violating it is forfeit. Vermont's coach Denis Place realized, to his horror, that even though his team had the lead entering the last inning the only way it could avoid losing by forfeit was for Bentley to get an at bat. For that to happen, the New Hampshire team would have to tie the score or take the lead, requiring the teams to play the last half of the sixth inning.
Place held a meeting of his players at the pitcher's mound and instructed them to let New Hampshire score a run. The plan: walk the first batter, and ensure that he made it home with the assistance of wild pitches and intentional errors so the game would be deadlocked at 9-9. Then, hopefully, win the game in the bottom of the sixth inning, with Adam Bentley getting his mandated turn at the plate.
Not so fast. The New Hampshire team's coach, Mark McCauley figured out what was happening and ordered his players not to score. So after a walk and two wild pitches allowed a New Hampshire runner to reach third base, the player refused to advance to the plate despite another wild pitch and a fielding error. McCauley also told his players to strike out intentionally, preserving Vermont's lead but guaranteeing a successful New Hampshire protest that, under the rules, would require that New Hampshire win by forfeit.
This obviously led to a ridiculous spectacle: one team trying to give up a run while the other team was trying to make outs and avoid scoring. The perplexed umpires understandably chose to end the debacle by ejecting Place and his pitcher from the game. Vermont won 9-8 ... and then New Hampshire was awarded the victory by forfeit, because Adam Bentley never got his turn at bat. The New Hampshire team advanced to the next round.
The Question: Whose conduct was unethical?
Possible Answers:
1. Place, the Vermont coach
2. McCauley, the New Hampshire coach
3. Both coaches
4. Neither coach.
The Vt coach should have been a bit more savvy about it, giving up the run without looking like they were trying to do so. But I guess this is difficult in any case, let alone with little kids.
Once NH's coach figured out his opponent's game, he should have walked up to him and the umpires to suggest that the game be stopped in order to avoid an embarasing spectacle. This is a matter of good manners, not ethics.
It is no more unethical to exploit the coach's mistake than it is to turn a single into a double when the first baseman misses what should have been an easy catch and put-out. Exploiting an opponent's errors--strategic, tactical, or technical--is part of nearly every sporting competition.
Consider a situation in which a major league team notices that an opposing player is using bat that is out of spec in some way (presumably unintentional, not a situation with a deliberately altered bat). Rather than call it to the attention of the umpire immediately, they wait until that player makes a strong hit or home run, *then* challenge the equipment. Perfectly within their right, and there is nothing unethical about it--just maximizing their exploitation of an opponent's mistake.
That is a legitimate strategy to counter Place's strategy of not putting his weaker player in until what he anticipated would be his last possible moment.
Then Place, realizing he had been outmaneuvered, adopts a strategy of giving up a run. I don't agree that it is unethical for McCauley to refuse to play along.
Here's another Little League ethics story.
But NH was not trying to win the game by scoring runs. They were trying to force a default thru a technicality in the rules, one that was not intended for the purposes to which they were putting it.
Vt had made an error (sounds like an honest one) in not batting their player sooner, but was willing to make amends by giving up the run, then getting on with the real game as it's known &loved and settling it on the field of play. But NH was looking to win w/out winning.
The part that really gets me though is: why don't they just change the rule to say that the game ends when 6 innings are up or every kid has been up to bat? If they extend the games for ties, why not for this? It would seem to be a perfectly straightforeward solution, unless I'm missing something special about Little League play.
Positive Dennis
Neither coach acted unethically. Both were trying their hardest to win the game within the rules.
I mean, many items in the Lawyer's Code of Professional Ethics don't make a lot of sense, or rather, make sense but no more than another, inconsistent set of ethical rules would be. How lawyers can advertise, what must be disclosed, what must not be disclosed . . . It is not infrequently that a lawyer must choose between acting immorally or acting unethically.
Assumedly, the Code of Little League Ethics could say, "Coaches must make every effort to score runs when on offense, or prevent runs when on defense." Another, equally sensible, but different, Code of Little League ethics, could say, "Coaches must make every effort to win the game within the bounds of the rules."
Depending on how you drafted your Code of Ethics, the answer could very easily be (3) or (4). I can't offhand, think of the a priori Ethical Guideline that could lead to (1) or (2), but I'm not saying its impossible.
As it is, the question is like asking, "John borrowed Mary's book without asking, with the intent to return it when he finished, although he often didn't finish the books he started. Has John committed a crime?" Well, it depends on the Criminal Statutes, which haven't been supplied. Here, it depends on the pre-existing Ethical Code. And if there isn't one, how can anyone be accused of acting unethically?
Reference:
http://www.littleleague.org/tournaments/delaypolicy.htm
The umpire was supposed to stop the game and submit the matter to the Tournament Director. Unfortunately, I don't see any guidance for how the Tournament Director is supposed to rule in a situation like this.
The problem is that one rule conflicts with another rule. Which takes precedence? The failure was that Little League governors did not set up rules to preclude actions antithetical to the spirit of the game. They needed to have rules to accommodate a legally shortened game. They didn't. Their fault.
For instance, they could allow that if a batter who had not batted played a position that would bring him to bat as one of the first three batters in the bottom of the sixth inning, had it been played - and therefore be guaranteed to play in full game -- that would meet league requirements.
Even so, it does not deal with the circumstance of a Mercy Rule shortened game after the 3rd inning, if that is the rule.
Ethics is not mechanically deterministic and should be invoked only where necessary.
To be a bit of a devil's advocate, I'd suggest this:
The rules don't forbid having a player not playing; rather, the rules penalize it. A rule saying "if every player doesn't play, you lose the competition" is no different from a rule saying "if you get three outs, you lose the game".
Trying to ensure that the other side can't play every player is similar to trying to ensure that the other side gets three outs. Deciding that it's okay to make your opponent lose by one rule but not by the other rule is purely arbitrary.
There was a similar question a week before this game: With first base empty and one out left, is it wrong to intentionally walk the strongest hitter so that you can pitch to the next, much weaker batter, who happens to be a cancer survivor?
Of all the rules involved the stupidest is that the bottom of the last inning is skipped. It makes a good deal of sense if the home team is already ahead and assured of the win (still discounting that individual players compete for records) but it makes no sense when, as here, the team that is nominally ahead needs to do something to assure its win.
Baseball in particular is a team sport. The sacrifice fly is the most obvious example: the coach is asking the batter to do something that will not get him on base, in order to let another player score a run for the team.
The stupidest rule, in my opinion, is in effect in some forms of co-ed volleyball, requiring that if a side hits the ball three times on a single play, one of those contacts must be by a woman. Players ought to be treated the same regardless of sex.
I am guessing that a vast majority of people who have played sports at serious level would be with me on this one.
MVP:
Freddy Hill (straight communication)
Harry (subject expertise)
Allen (definitive link)
I agree with both of these sentences, but they are not saying the same thing, and do not necessarily apply to the Little League situation.
If the Vermont coach had NOT tried to give up a run, would he have acted unethically by intentionally throwing the game? Maybe.
Absent a law or a rule, it is of course still acceptable to consider the ethics. But having done that, once a reasonable ethical argument has been made on each side (and here, I think there is for both teams), the next step is not to argue over which reasonable ethical argument is better or stronger. That misses the point, and relies on unprovable hunches and intuitions.
The correct analysis, rather, is to recognize on both sides that:
(a) there was no explicit law or rule addressing the issue;
(b) there was a reasonable "moral" case to be made on either side, irrespective of which side we personally believe is stronger;
(c) Given (a) and (b), an individual choosing either one of the two options cannot be found to be acting "unethically". The strongest defensible statement can only be, "I would have made a different choice, which also would have been ethical."
That said, the Vermont coach's negligence was enormous. A 9-8 game is not exactly a pitcher's duel -- most likely, the lineup went around at least three times. So there were plenty of opportunities to get the kid his at-bat without flirting with disaster. I don't think I'd have him back as the all-star coach next year.
And finally, the rule is unfair, as it affects one team differently from the other. The visiting team is guaranteed six innings of batting in which to get everyone in, while the home team is only guaranteed five innings. One would think that the minimum requirement for a valid rule is that it be evenhanded.
Ethics Scoreboard is failing to distinguish between ethics and sportsmanship. All of the New Hampshire coach's actions were within the rules and directed towards a proper objective (i.e., to win the game for his team). Therefore they were ethical.
However, athletics imposes certain uncodified standards of conduct in addition to its written rules. We refer to these standards as "sportsmanship" not "ethics".
The New Hampshire coach violated the standards of sportsmanship when he instructed his team to exert less than its best efforts on the field in order to obtain a win by forfeit rather than merit.
I hope this clears up Ethic's Scoreboard's imprecise thinking (a common occuptional hazard among non-lawyers).
If you swing at a pitched ball thrown outside the strike zone, it's a strike, three of which make an out.
This strikes me (pun intended) not as an ethical violation but a misinterpretation of the rules by the home team's coach.
Re: Ming's snide
I hope this clears up Ethic's Scoreboard's imprecise thinking (a common occuptional hazard among non-lawyers)....SURPRISE! I'm not only a lawyer (DC and Mass.), I'm a legal ethicist, and your supposed distinction between "ethics" and " sportsmanship" is not merely imprecise, it's wrong. Ethics are determined by reference to values like fairness, honesty and civility, as well as ethical standrads such as The Golden Rule, which is the foundation of sportsmanship. In sports, sportsmanship is absolutely included as a sub-set of ethics. And the reason I know that lawyers get compliance and ethics confused is that I teach them ethics in about 20 bar associations.
If this was sailing, I'd be advocating a Rule 2 violation. His behavior is simply appalling.
It occurs to me that a critical fact is being overlooked here (not just by you, GMS, but pretty much across the board).
So far, this incident has been discussed as though it were an isolated incident in an ordinary game. It was not an ordinary game, however. It was part of a Little League World Series regional tournament, where winning on a technicality still means advancing in the tournament, and losing on a technicality still means your season is over.
As the coach or manager of a sports team, no matter what level of which sport we're talking about, part of your job description is to advance your team as far as you can toward the championship of your league by any means necessary, within the rules of the sport of course. You fight for your team just as much as you expect your players to, especially when your whole season is on the line. Anything less would be a dereliction of your duty as coach, and therefore unethical conduct in itself.
Place (the VT coach) may be to blame for starting this incident with his managing blunder, but once he discovered his mistake he was not only well within his right to compensate for it however he could within the rules, I would argue that he was ethically obligated to do so. Likewise for McCauley (the NH coach) when he spotted Place's blunder and did everything in his power to exploit it.
If the end result is an incident that makes a mockery of the sport, the problem is not with these coaches - again, they're just doing their job to keep their team's season alive however they can - but rather with the rules that made the incident possible. This may be one of those rules that's perfectly appropriate in the regular season but not when someone's whole season, or the championship, is at stake. Sort of like deciding the World Cup final on penalty kicks.
Bobby is up to bat and Hank tells him not to the let pitcher walk him because that's "playing lawyer ball."
Ergo, Vermont is correct. Play it out; don't win on a technicality.
I'll use legal ethics as an example, because everyone here seems to be familiar with those. The reason that we have legal ethics is to ensure a just outcome in most cases. The rules themselves aren't a moral code; they're practical tools to achieve a moral result. As we all know, attorneys must maintain the confidences of their clients. If a client admits to his attorney that he murdered twenty people, the attorney is bound by the ethical rules not to reveal that to anyone. It might be morally correct for the attorney to reveal the admission. If revealing the admission was the only way that the client could be convicted, it would certainly serve the interests of justice to reveal the admission. Nevertheless, the ethical rules say otherwise, and lawyers are bound by them.
Conflicts between ethics and morality abound. Your client in a slip-and-fall case may obviously be in the right, and may absolutely deserve to win from a moral standpoint. You still have to follow the ethical rules governing your conduct. You can't violate the rules of professional conduct to win, even if your position is the morally correct one.
Happily, most of the time ethics and morality line up pretty well. That's because ethics were created to serve morality. On those occasions in which following the ethical rules would lead to immoral or unjust outcomes, we still must follow the ethical rules. Those are the rules we agreed to at the beginning of the game, and they're very important. But that doesn't make them moral principles. They're just rules. Ethics allow us to remove situations from the larger moral universe and apply a set of rules that apply only to that situation. It's a strong barrier: no outside morality comes in. All that matters are the rules.
In the Little League context, both coaches acted immorally (or with a lack of sportsmanship), and the coach who started the whole thing is probably more morally blameworthy. But as long as they violated no rule, they acted ethically within the context of a Little League Baseball game. That's all that matters here. It doesn't matter that one team was morally wrong and will probably rot in hell for this. The question was about ethics, and unless you can point to an ethical rule that says something like "both teams must play in a manner calculated to allow the opposing team to score the fewest possible runs," there has been no ethical violation.
Both coaches showed bad sportsmanship but I wouldn't throw around the unethical label. It is too harsh. Let's hope both teams can share a good laugh at this point.
The Tournament Director would probably have to call it into the Area Director, who would in turn call Williamsport for a ruling. I've been a TD, and there is no interpretation allowed.
Also, the managers aren't allowed side agreements prior to the game. The year prior the year I was TD, it happened in our town. The losing coach afterwards protested, and it went up to Williamsport. No private changing of the rules is allowed, even with the concurrance of coachs and umps.
Admittedly, it doesn't speak well for my profession that there is lingering disagreement on such basic terms. But a CODE of ethics by this definition is a moral code.
Sure, hindsight (like Volokh these days) is close to 20-20, but the VT coach should have calmly disclosed this straightaway to the NH coach and asked him how he wanted his run. VT just has to say that the player is a good kid who has played all season to get here, and I screwed up, but it's not too late to fix it, and we both have a responsibility to do that. VT should remind NH that the whole country is watching them, and expects them to be good sports. They are out there representing their communities and their states. VT should offer up the one run with nobody out, then play the inning even up. Let the best team win. NH either goes along with it, or doesn't. Odds are that NH does. Maybe NH demands a runner on first to boot. Maybe VT says, OK, but I'm only giving it to you if you haven't gotten one on before the second out, etc. If NH refuses to cooperate at all, the VT coach should calmly hand the ball to Adam Bentley and tell him "sorry about the batting fiasco, which is all my fault and which may well cost us the game, but look at the bright side, kid: you're pitching! Go out there and have fun, do your best, try to throw strikes and smile for the ESPN cameras. You've got nothing to lose."
And you see how it plays out. Maybe he gives up a run.
It is difficult to call the coach's negligence enormous without a box score. Playing devils advocate, what if the score was 4-8 going into the bottom of the 5th? What if the runs scored in the fifth weren't put on the board until there were already two outs in the inning?
It makes sense from a coaching perspective to keep the worst player out as long as possible in a game you are trailing in, particularly if you are trailing by more than a run. You will most likely get at-bats in the bottom of the 6th, and you do not squander fielding opportunities or at-bats unnecessarily.
I liked the comment that said that the umpire should have stopped the game when he realized what was going on, and should have then referred the matter to the commissioner. Both teams should have been disqualified for their coaches' actions. The Vermont coach was the first one to abandon sporting behavior, but his counterpart from Bristol was almost as unsporting.
Adults, other than the refs/umps and a league representative, should be kept at least a mile away from any kids' game unless they can remember that it's (1) a game, not real life, and (2) it's for the kids' enjoyment, not for world fame. Of course, Little League World Series play is a total distortion of the normal ethics of sport, more akin to professional entertainment sports or collegiate bragging sports.
Little League with its coaches and parents being more concerned about winning and getting on ESPN just needs to go the way of the Dodo.
I don't care much about semantics, so define your terms however you want. But if you're going to ask people "who acted unethically?", you'll have to define your terms precisely. Are you asking whether the coaches were in compliance with the letter or spirit of the rules? Or are you asking whether their actions were right or wrong on a universal scale?
Let me put this another way. Let's say there's no mercy rule. It would then be in compliance with the rules (which I would call "ethical") to run up the score, even if you were already winning by 20 in the second inning. But it certainly would be wrong (which I would call "immoral") to run up the score and hurt the kids' feelings in the process.
I don't see a rule violation in what either coach did, even with an elastic construction. But what they did violated our sense of fair play, which transcends the rule of any game.
4.10
(a) A regulation game consists of six innings, unless extended because of a tie score, or shortened (1) because the home team needs none of its half of the ninth inning or only a fraction of it, or (2) because the umpire calls the game.
(b) If the score is tied after six completed innings play shall continue until (1) the visiting team has scored more total runs than the home team at the end of a completed inning, or (2) the home team scores the winning run in an uncompleted inning.
It appears that the umpire misruled in this case and that the NH coach was unaware of the rules. The rule says that the game is 6 innings, but may be shortened to less than a full 6 innings if the home team needs less than its full final three outs to win the game. NH should have played normally and tried to keep V from scoring, so that they could go into the bottom half of the sixth inning leading 9-8. The game would not yet be over because NH, despite leading, needed to play at least one of its outs in the bottom of the sixth to win the game because they needed one more player to bat. At that point, they win the game. The rule does not say that the home team cannot play the last half inning if they lead in the score, it says that the game will be shortened if the home team does not need to play the last half to win. Clearly, NH needed to play at least one more out to meet the "everyone bats" rule, and once the player batted, they would then win the game.
As I see it, the whole problem arose from a misreading and miapplication of the rules by both coaches and the umpires.
The NH coach should have told his kids to play as hard as they could and try to win the game. He had the chance to set an example and demonstrate an important lesson. Teaching them not to score in order to lose intentionally and ultimately win cheaply by forfeit is a horrible lesson for the boys.
The story illustrates an observation that I heard one of the experienced coaches in our league utter - Little League baseball is an opportunity for adults to spoil a perfectly good kids' game.
Just because it is the convention we are all used to in regular baseball that the home team does not bat in the last inning if they are leading, that is only because regular baseball does not have this "everyone bats" rule. As the end of game rule is written, a team that needs to bat in the bottom half of the last inning in order to get every player an at bat under the rules in order to win is not proscribed from doing so simply because they lead in the score going into the last half of the last inning.
Of course you are right.
The thought that ES is off somewhere teaching lawyers that ethics are "determined by reference to values like fairness, honesty and civility, as well as ethical standrads such as The Golden Rule" -- which effectively means that what is ethical depends upon who is looking at it -- is scary. The fact is that legal ethics may well require that a lawyer, on occasion be unfair, uncivil, unforthcoming and/or ignore The Golden Rule. Indeed, there are occassions when following The Golden Rule would get one disbarred.
But then, "ethicist" ranks right up there with feng shui master and aroma therapist on my list of make believe bull-shit occuptions.
I am also flummoxed by the shadowy, ill-defined concepts of "sportsmanship" and the distinction between "the rules" and "the game". Since when are the rules and the game different things? How is it that people are forming some alternate set of rules in their head that they not only disagree on, but which somehow supercede the actual rules?
Disclaimer: I hate sports. With a passion. My memory of childhood athletics is a long nightmare of contemptuous phys-ed instructors, cruel peers and arbitrary judgments. The very notion of "sports ethics" strikes me as an oxymoron.
This is no different from a football or basketball team who is ahead running down the clock to prevent a comeback by the other side.
(The distinction here is that the eventual win comes not from the effort of winning subsequent games but a technicality)
Bob Doyle-
I don't know if you have read the rule correctly. I am using your quote:
4.10
(a) A regulation game consists of six innings, unless extended because of a tie score, or shortened (1) because the home team needs none of its half of the ninth inning or only a fraction of it, or (2) because the umpire calls the game.
As I read the rule they would need only a fraction of the inning for the last player to have his at-bat, therefore the game is shortened.
The rule is phrased poorly, but I think it is there to address the situation of walk-off runs, not to perclude situations where only a fraction of the inning is needed. Reading the rule with your interpretation would force all games to be shortened. All home teams only need a fraction of the last inning to win the game -- assuming they need any of the last inning -- because once they score more runs than the visiting team they win and they must have outs remaining (meaning fractions of an inning remaining) if they were able to score the winning run.
A more sensible phrasing of the rule would be "because the home team needs none of its half of hte ninth inning nor any fraction thereof..."
Let my try one more time:
"[...]because the home team needs none of its half of the sixth inning or any remaining fraction of it[...]"
rule 4.11a says The games ends when the visiting team completes the half of the sixth inning if the home team is ahead.
Secondly, in LL there is a section of the rules specifically for tournament play. I didn't coach this year, so I don't have this year's rule book. The handiest I could find is from 2003. On page T-12, rule 9 for tournament says:
Every Player on a team roster shall participate in each game for a mimimum of three (3) consecutive defensive outs OR [change to AND in 2005] bat at least one (1) time.
a. Managers are responsible for fulfilling the mandatory play requirements
b. There is no exception if the game is shortened for nay reason, after becoming a regulation game. [3 1/2 innings in this case]
From this year's tournament rules on the web
link
says:
"MANDATORY PLAY: 9-10 Year Old Division, 10-11 Year
Old Division, Little League and
Junior League
• Every player on a team roster shall participate in each game
for a minimum of three (3) consecutive defensive outs and
bat at least one (1) time.
a. Managers are responsible for fulfilling the mandatory
play requirements.
b. There is no exception to this rule unless the game is
shortened for any reason. NOTE: A game is not
considered shortened if the home team does not
complete the offensive half of the sixth or seventh inning
(or any extra inning) due to winning the game.
c. Failure to meet the mandatory play requirements in this
rule is a basis for protest. If one or more players on a
roster do not meet this requirement, it shall result in
forfeiture of the game (by action of the Tournament
Committee), if protested before the umpire (s) leave the
playing field."
The NOTE specifically covers this situation.
Mandatory play in non-tournament games is even more severe requiring 6 defensive outs and can get a manager suspended.
However, I agree with David that the exception to the shortened game rule is logically inconsistent or poorly worded, leading to the circularity. Besides, I also agree with one of the earlier posters that it is inherently unfair to make the home team subject to compliance with the "everyone bats" rule for a shorter period (potentially three less outs) than the visiting team. They either should permit the home team to bat in the final inning even if they are ahead if they still have one, two, or three players that have not yet batted OR they should change the rule to insist that both teams must make sure that all players have at least one at bat BEFORE the beginning of the sixth inning so that both the visiting and the home team have to meet the same, rather than different requirements.
On the other point, this is a basically a law blog. When did fairness ever enter the equation? Of course the visitors have the advantage. And since home/visitor is decided by a coin flip, given the choice I alway chose visitor. (And since loser of the coin flip chooses dugout, I chose the one I figured would annoy their coach the most)
The entire point of the rule is that kids who are not the most talented still get a chance to play in every game. But the kids in these regional tournaments are All-stars, the best dozen or so players from the leauge that year. They've been the ones playing the whole game all year. Not a one of them will be upset, or discourgaed, if they don't get to play in the regional championship game.
In fact, there's an insidious effect to keeping the rule for All-star tournaments: the individual leagues tend to minimize the number of kids on the all-star team, because they want the best players to be out there as much as possible. It might be true that 14 or 15 kids could help an all-star team, but no one in their right mind has more than 12 or so, because it would be impossible to get everyone into the game with more than that.
Little leauge should admit that the LLWS is an all-star tournament based more on winning than on "everyone plays," and they should dump the regular season rule from the LLWS.
To those that say that would be inconsistent, one only need check the pitcher-rest rules: during the regular season, pitchers can only pitch a certain amount per week. During the post-season, that all goes out the window, and is substituted by a completely different set of rest rules, to accomadate the many games played in any given week.
What about a football team, leading late in the game but pinned deep in its own end, taking a safety to avoid the risk of punting and giving the opponent a short field? They just "gave" the other team points to, hopefully, avoid a loss.
I think that too many people bring up the idea that "it is the coaches job to win" as if they are a professional coach being paid to produce wins and championships. I understand that this is not a sandlot game between friends where winning or losing is not that important, but the LL philosophy is clearly that the competition is intended to instill certain values in the participants including honor and fair play. What the NH coach did was contrary to both those ideals.
The NH coach had an opportunity to teach his players the value of fair play and earning your victory. Instead he taught them that winning is more important than anything else. Thus the next generation of showboating, ball hogging, trash talking poor sportsman college and professional athletes begins its education.
The VT coach surely made a huge error for which he should be penalized by losing his position for the next season, but at least he tried to ensure that his victory was earned on the field within the rules instead of via a technicality.
Deez: The opposing team still could have countered this strategy (not going home, intentionally not stepping on home plate, etc.)... Basically, there's no way a fielding team can force a team that doens't want to score to score.
Harry: The NH coach must notice and protest. It's like the runner missing a base.
Who's right? And when the batters are swinging for strikes on the intentional walk, can you force a runner to take first and move him around by dropping the third strike and refusing to pick it up and tag the batter?
Still, there are nagging questiosn about the ability to force teams to score runs: For instance, what if the catcher interfered with the batters bat each time he attempted to swing? Catcher's interference is an automatic award of first base to the batter.
I simply don't buy the line that you can't force a team to score.
Rather than telling his batters to intentionally strike out, he should've told them to take the walks (and/or fielding errors) while holding his lead runner at 3rd base until such time as he had the bases loaded with nobody out. At that point it becomes virtually impossible for the VT team to intentionally restrict them to a single run.
In other words, take advantage of the VT coach's error in not getting all his players at-bats, but do it within the context of trying to win the game by actually scoring more runs.