THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

So several guys jumping on the pile is ok, but pointing in the air isn’t?  How can someone possibly draw that line?

The obsession with maintaining everyone’s overly high levels of self-esteem despite those people’s failures is out of control. Sometime’s those knocks on your self-esteem provides you the fuel and drive to better yourself.

It would be curious if the opposing team felt the celebration was too much. I can’t see how.

Or, if this were a baseball game and actually enjoyable, would pointing skyward after a home run bring a brushback? Again, I can’t see it.

"Sometime’s those knocks on your self-esteem provides you the fuel and drive to better yourself. “

I was just thinking along those lines. If there’s one sport where raw energy and “being fired up” is most useful/valuable, it’s football. And there isn’t much better fuel to get fired up than watching some dick go through an elaborate end zone celebration.

Hand the ball to the ref, go to the sidelines and celebrate there.  The kids know the rules, at least they should if the coach explained them to them.  I won’t argue about whether or not the rule is dumb and if a good one, how subjective its enforcement probably is.  But just hand the ball to the ref.

Also - why go for the 2 point conversion there?  Maybe they don’t play OT and didn’t want the other team tying them?  That decision and the kick return coverage didn’t help either.

Charles/2,

David Ortiz points at the sky every time he touches home after a HR, and I’ve never seen him get thrown at, so good point. Just don’t clap emphatically when touching home, or John Lackey will drill you next time up.

Worse than disqualification for signing an incorrect scorecard?

Anyway, if this high school is like every other in my area, these children endure “2-a-day” practices in searing August heat, beating on each other to the point of exhaustion in order to avoid getting berated by the coach...but we must protect them from being offended by a celebration during a game?

I don’t know why players point to god in the first place. If the successful player points an index finger upward, should the player on the other end of the home run/touchdown/strikeout point a middle finger upward?

Do you all really think it’s to protect the feelings/self-esteem of the kids?  That’s surprising to me.  I always thought of it as enforcing sportsmanship, not for the mental makeup of those scored upon, but rather for the scorers.

This is just duckin’ fumb. So, pointing to the sky is more offensive than demonstrating athletic superiority?

[1] Athletes most often aren’t pointing to God, they’re pointing to a deceased loved one that is (to them) in heaven. There’s a difference. But, I suppose it doesn’t matter.

[2] We really are in the age where we’re not to celebrate on-field success because it makes the other team feel bad. Isn’t that, in part, part of the point?

Isn’t competition pretty much defined as “I’m better than you and I can prove it!” (I love that slogan, BTW). The competition isn’t supposed to feel good about failure and losing, and you’re supposed to feel good about winning and success.

There’s a big difference between celebrating and gloating/taunting, and we need not act like all celebratory situations skirt the line.

There’s a big difference between Guillen pimping his HR excessively just to stick it to Weaver and a Pujols pointing to the sky while crossing the plate, just as there’s a big difference in a pitcher pumping his glove after getting the 3rd out via strikout, stranding the bases loaded and well, Carlos Perez doing the same thing after E-V-E-R-Y strikeout.

I don’t know why players point to god in the first place. If the successful player points an index finger upward, should the player on the other end of the home run/touchdown/strikeout point a middle finger upward

SC, you’re not that dense.

Is there no middle ground anymore?

I share the doubts of Mike in #8. Didn’t the rule start in the NFL, and move down through the rules committees of amateur levels? In the NFL I doubt the motivation was to protect feelings. It came about after the Joe Horn cell phone and Chad Ochocinco Sharpie touchdown celebrations; Marty Schottenheimer was quoted as liking the NFL rule because the game was about teams, not individuals.

Now in trickling down through NCAA and HS rules committees, the reasons for accepting the rule might be different, but both the players and rules committees “copy” the pros, and at least in the NFL, it seems to have had more to do with “the brand”; I don’t know of any evidence that the rule had to do with opponents’ feelings.

I found this quote in a two year old article here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/03/AR2009110303708.html:

The National Federation of State High School Associations sent a “point of emphasis” memo to athletic directors across the country before the 2009 season reminding them of the need for good sportsmanship in games. It called specific attention to federation rule 9-5-1, which reads, in part: “No player shall act in an unsportsmanlike manner once the officials assume authority for the contest.” Examples of inappropriate behavior, it said, included but were not limited to, “Baiting or taunting acts or words or insignia worn which engenders ill will,” “Using profanity, insulting or vulgar language or gestures,” or “Any delayed, excessive or prolonged act by which a player attempts to focus attention upon himself.”
In this, a player focusing attention on himself is separated from taunting in the examples of unsportsmanlike conduct…

I always thought of it as enforcing sportsmanship, not for the mental makeup of those scored upon, but rather for the scorers.

Let’s call it like it is.

The rules are in place to deter or prevent retalliation over perceived insults via over the top celebrations. Either way, in sports, there will be “justice” ... and the real world pretty much operates under the same idea.

Somewhere along the lines, spiking the football turned into choreographed celebrations and genuine excitement over a longball turned into a stare and strut walk down to 1B following an exuberant bat flip.

The best analogy I’ve heard of in regards to excessive conduct is that you don’t remove all the children’s vocal chords because one kid keeps shouting out.

I do agree that celebrating (frequency) has gotten out of hand. We see pimping 4th inning homers, sack dances in the 1st quarter, and over the top first down gestures in the 3rd quarter when down by 24 points. But, much of this is due to theindividual over team aspect that is becoming more and more prevalent in sports.

I don’t see it like that.

Who was going to retaliate against Ocho for the sharpie?

Baseball and hockey are the only sports where retaliation is essentially condoned, and they’re the only sports without such retaliation penalties.

The Sharpie in the sock was Terrell Owens.

Incidentally, I think that retaliation is not really a problem, it’s escalation we need to worry about:

re·tal·i·a·tion   /rɪˌtæliˈeɪʃən/
noun
the act of retaliating; return of like for like; reprisal.

If you just return like for like, then when a guy celebrates a homer too much, you celebrate whiffing him next time.  He asked for it by initiating the sequence, after all, and forfeits all right to complain.

However, instead of retaliation in kind, usually there’s this:

es·ca·late   /ˈɛskəˌleɪt/
verb (used with object), verb (used without object), -lat·ed, -lat·ing. 
1. to increase in intensity, magnitude, etc.: to escalate a war; a time when prices escalate.

If you clap your hands in glee after succeeding against me, then I hit you in the ribs with a 90 mph fastball, something that would land me in jail if I did it off the field, and which could place your career or life in jeopardy. 

Oddly, after I clearly indicate by my actions my approval of the doctrine of escalation vice retaliation, I then depend on your not escalating further by coming out to the mound with the bat still in your hand.  If you do endeavor to do me harm with the weapon the game put in your hands (as I did towards you), I depend on my 8 fellow players, one of whom is right next you and armored, to protect me, and then protest the unreasonable escalation that you perpetrated against me…

The NFL rules, IIRC, came about in the late 1980s after stuff like the Ickey Shuffle. The point of all this then wasn’t that it made folks feel bad or anything, but that it was taking away from the game on the field, and the players were behaving like the halftime show.

This stuff doesn’t even begin to qualify.

In the NFL I doubt the motivation was to protect feelings. It came about after the Joe Horn cell phone and Chad Ochocinco Sharpie touchdown celebrations

The NFL’s original ban on “prolonged, excessive, or premeditated celebration” came in 1984, largely in response to a Jets/Rams brawl precipitated by a Mark Gastineau sack dance.  (There were also complaints about the Redskins’ ("Smurfs" / “Fun Bunch") end zone celebrations.)

So I agree with Greg/14 that the origins had to do with concerns about escalation and brawls.

I watched the video and saw a lot of guys in a pile chest bumping and all, but did see the pointing.

I’ll trust that Joe has provided accurate quotes of the rule:
“Baiting or taunting acts or words or insignia worn which engenders ill will,”

NO

“Using profanity, insulting or vulgar language or gestures,”

NO

“Any delayed, excessive or prolonged act by which a player attempts to focus attention upon himself.”

This is a two part statement. It does not say there is a penalty for focusing attention upon oneself - it must be done by a delayed, prolonged or excessive act. Pointing a finger towards the sky, that only the ref a few feet away got a clear view of, is not to me delayed, prolonged or excessive.

Speaking as a high school football official, I can certainly see how the official in question, who may or may not know the backstory, can see the single finger raised in the air as a “we’re #1” taunt. Of course, we also don’t know (or at least I don’t) if the official heard anything, though it appears any defensive players that something would have been said to had already cleared the area.

I doubt I would flag this myself. What concerns me isn’t the point or the jumping, it’s that all 11 offensive players showed up in the end zone to celebrate.

As noted earlier, the main reason for penalizing excessive celebration isn’t to protect anybody’s feelings. It’s to prevent retaliation or escalation. Engendering a sportsmanlike atmosphere is nice, too.

There are a lot of kids on football teams. The last thing we want is a brawl because a player on B gets extra pissed off because a player on A is pointing at the sky. Or is he proclaiming that his team his #1? Hard to say, he’s already ticked off he gave up a score.

My high school football coach told us that he’d breaking our ****ing fingers if he ever caught us signalling that we’re #1.

Also - why go for the 2 point conversion there?  Maybe they don’t play OT and didn’t want the other team tying them?  That decision and the kick return coverage didn’t help either.

Louisville missed two extra points earlier in the game and probably figured they had a better chance at the 2 than the 1. This is often the case for a high school teams.

No one’s mentioned soccer yet?  A guy scores a goal in the 80th minute to make it 1-0, do you know what happens?

And soccer is a sport that has its share of hooligans in the stands, has had games where players have gone after officials.

But players celebrating with a pile on, running to the sidelines, sliding in triumph like The Hulk?  Never a problem.  Quite the opposite, it’s the exact release required.

You don’t punish a person because he does something that MIGHT inspire the other team to “step over the line”, unless the act was intended to goad. You punish the other team when they step over that line.  Why is that so hard to understand. By instituting this rule, you are essentially giving the other team a justification to retaliate over a minor offense.

unless the act was intended to goad.

I’m not a mindreader.

Look, I’m cool with people crediting their personal source of comfort (omnipotent or otherwise) when they succeed, and I’m willing to overlook when that same source of comfort is ignored when they fail.

But what really bites my ass is when Ryan Succop, place kicker for the Chiefs, does the double up-pointing to the sky after he kicks a 30 yard field goal or has a decent punt that pins the team behind the 10.

Request: Don’t thank your god for when you did your job. Thank god, if you must do so publically, when you go above and beyond your job.

Thanks.

Personally, I don’t care for all the religion and flag-waving in sports, but I’m divorcing that from my judgment of the act in question. (Why should some Invisible All-Mighty Creator and Protector of Mankind care about a sporting event rather than, say, an earthquake, anyways? If I believed in that nonsense, I’d pray that he ignores the game and pays attention to the San Andreas Fault instead.) Indeed, I don’t find the idea of the player giving a quick “We’re Number 1!” point a problem either. The other team still has a chance to prove him wrong.

These things are entertainment. The idea of penalizing someone for excessive celebration is that his celebration has started to take away from the entertainment of the audience and possibly the other players. This isn’t even remotely the case here, and the calling attention to all this and giving a penalty for it is the problem, not the act itself.

No one’s mentioned soccer yet?  A guy scores a goal in the 80th minute to make it 1-0, do you know what happens?
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I’m confused, are we talking High School or Pro?  Pro sports have a large quantity of entertainment value in their celebrations (commercialism).  That’s not the way H.S. soccer rolls.

Greg ... you’re right. I think I nit-picked you on something trivial a little while back, so this is awesome that you call me on this one. Classic.

I said retaliation when escalation would have been the correct term.

The “response” in sports is rarely “an eye for eye”, the 2nd action is almost always more severe than the first. Just y’know, to show em who the punx really are.