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Wednesday, March 09, 2011
“Reckless disregard”
Pierre Lebrun uses the old baseball defense of not being able to prove intent to injure:
I don’t think you can prove Chara had malicious intent on the play. Obviously, the stanchion being there is what made the play so dangerous.
That’s the same myopic thinking that prevents an umpire from throwing Clemens out of the game when he hits Piazza in the head. Intent is not the minimum requirement. Reckless disregard is the minimum requirement. (Or should be.) The NHL already does that with stick infractions, that regardless of intent to injure, that if you do injure a player with your stick, it’s a major penalty.
If you give someone a concussion and a fractured vertebra, you have practices reckless disregard. It doesn’t matter if you meant to hurt the guy or not (well, if you did mean to do it, then you would be suspended for one season at least). But if you didn’t mean it, you still face a severe penalty.
This is why I would call all pitches to the head as reckless disregard, because a baseball should be nowhere close to a hitter’s head. I’d give an 8-game suspension for that.
“Intent to injure” is a red herring. I’m disappointed that the two guys “debating” this at ESPN ignored the issue.
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