he didn't catch the ball but the umpire thought he did. the ump called it an out and the game went on. the yankees went on to win that game. the umpire fucked up, and one replay was all it took to convince anybody. wise knew it, the fans knew it, everyone except the ump (who wouldn't take much convincing that he was wrong) knew it.
sports media smelled blood in the water and for the next 24 hours, the umpire was torn to shreds. within this shark feeding was some convo about wise and sportsmanship. should wise have confessed that the ump fucked up? should wise, a professional athlete in the spotlight do the "right" thing, even though it would be detrimental to his team?
i get it. good sportsmanship and blah blah blah. but wise couldn't come clean. even if he wanted to, he'd have hell to pay from teammates, fans, and an unrelenting, uncaring, ny sports media. wise did the right thing as he knew it to be. he's paid to help his team win as many games as possible. boom. that's it, simple as that. letting the umpire fuck up the call is helping his team and being a good teammate.
but even if he did come clean and let the ump know, i'd say fuck that. how many times in all of sports do referees and umpires get the call wrong? i've seen bad calls that have changed games and beat teams. imagine being an athlete who competes all the time, from childhood to adulthood. i can't imagine there isn't a professional athlete who doesn't have at least a handful of stories about referees who fucked up games for them.
there must be an almost countless amount of occurrences where refs fucked up and there were no apologies given and no win-loss records reconsidered. permanent damage has been done and it will continue to get done. and this is not me trying to bash refs in general. what they do is tough work. it's also an imperfect craft that will leave behind a trail of mistakes and fuck ups. those mistakes affect other people.
what athlete wouldn't want revenge against the people who have fucked them over in the past? dewayne wise helped the yankees win. but he also helped even the scorecard in a contest that's never ending. it's their us vs. them... players vs. the refs. wise scored one for the good guys that night. he saw his opportunity to steal one from the refs and took it.
i tip my hat to you dewayne wise.
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5 comments:
Have you lost your mind?
If the player had said "hey ref, sorry dude I missed that catch," two things happen. First there is slight lessening of the war between players and refs and a ref gets to see an example of a player doing the right thing. This may give the ref pause for thought next time there is a close call. Also some kid out there, a future player or ref says to himself, "holy shit he did the right thing even though it hurts," I guess that's what pro athletes do. Maybe this kid grows up and does the right thing at a time when it really counts.
Nothing in this country will change as long as we continue to see this type of behavior as "Good." Any kid who saw that thinks it's OK if he cheats on a test, hell the teachers are always hassling me, and mark me lower than I deserve. And the final outcome is that little kid grows up to be president and fucks the people because he can. He says he's going to provide health care for everyone and winds up boosting insurance company profits. This all could have been avoided if the outfielder had told the truth.
BTW, what makes it even more insidious is that the lie could so easily be found out, yet he was not deterred. It's like these guys that rape a girl and film it and put it on you tube. I'm sad tonight as we head into the Fourth of July.
i respect your opinion, however, i can't relate cheating in a baseball game to rape videos on youtube. it's two totally different forms of wrong.
i'd equate it more with a parent speeding while having a kid in the car. and the kid says, 'daddy, you just passed a cop and they didn't pull you over.' i, and almost anyone else in that situation, am not gonna pull over, approach the cop, and ask for a ticket.
I heard one time Dewayne Wise got a bank error in his favor and he didn't even tell anyone about it. What a scumbag!
Remember that time Dewayne Wise found some guy's wallet on the floor in a public bathroom and took all the cash out before mailing it back to the guy's address? What a jerk!
First, excellent rebuttal, I wasn't able to just jot off a reply without thinking about it for a bit. So kudos. I also liked a few of the other blog entries, there is actually a brain beginning to unfold in that space up there.
If you can't relate the idea of how stupid it is to do something while it is being video taped with a potential audience of the entire world to a reason to not do said act, there is little I can say there. It's just that it's either stupid and/or arrogant, is all. Kind of a fuck you to the world. But that was an aside to my uneasiness with your blog entry.
However I can agree that my analogy may be flawed as all analogies must be if we take them far enough. I can make an argument that the parent speeding is also flawed.
But here is my bottom line. In our most empathetic state our moral compass tells us both acts "not telling you missed the ball" and to some extent not reporting yourself for speeding are not "right."
However, not all speeders are given tickets, so if the police don't think you needed to be stopped it is probably "right" to not turn yourself in, you have not been accused and the cop has discretionary subjectivity there.
Should you be pulled over, ticketed, appear in court, are asked if you were speeding, it is wrong to lie about it, the 5th amendment not withstanding. I'm not talking about the rules here, I'm talking about what we as humans aspire too.
In a sport the refs also have discretionary subjectivity and not all infractions are called. But when something like that is missed by a ref and has serious consequences the player is "right" if he corrects the call. Former acts by this ref or any ref do not alleviate him of his duty to do the right thing.
And now we come to the crux of why this blog entry disturbs me so much. When all this human stuff breaks down and the player takes advantage and does not do the right thing - to "celebrate" this action is to diminish ones own ability to do right and make the world a silly millimeter better and from what I know and what you write here you share this outlook. So I was shocked to see you defend a blatantly wrong action.
So now we both have said too much on the matter but keep up the good, thought provoking writing.
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