Un-Leveling the Playing Field

Philip Damon taught writing and literature at the University of Hawaii for 34 years, and his fiction, non-fiction and social commentaries have been published widely. Among the mystic and holistic traditions, he has followed many practices. His “Sacred Democracy” columns appear monthly in readthedirt.org.

For those of us who follow both the world of sports and the world of “real life” events, opportunities often arise to take note of the moral disparity between one world and the other. Too much is at stake in competitive sports (“inside the lines”) to label what occurs there “unreal.” Nonetheless, the games can be seen to model values of fairness (the proverbial “level playing field”) that are often difficult to find in that other world outside the lines. Officials presiding over the games (increasingly more so than the judiciaries of the real world) are expected to be paragons of fairness and, if discovered to harbor the least bias toward one team or another, would be summarily banished from umpiring or refereeing ever again. Imagine if the winners of the World Series selected the umpires for the following season. Only in the real world would any such thing be allowed to happen.

Yet while the rules of sport are more ironclad — not to mention logical — than the Constitutional rules of the real world, umps and refs are only human. They often miss a call. Players know that it can be difficult for them to rule against the passions of howling hometown fans, and that incurring an official’s ire by complaining too vocally (and thus showing him up) can lead to a call made not in one’s favor the next time there’s a close play. But at least the umpires aren’t politically appointed by the owners of the wealthiest teams. If they were, then what happened to my team on July 29 would be worse than an ironic object-lesson in the contrasting moral atmospheres of the world of sport and the world of social justice.

Picture this: the Red Sox, clinging to first place by half a game over Tampa Bay, are trailing those Rays 2-1 in the bottom of the eighth, with runners on second and third and one man out. The batter lofts a fly ball to left, and the Sox’s runner on third, Daniel Nava — hardly a speedster — tags up. Rays’ left fielder Sam Fuld catches it and uncorks a throw that sends him somersaulting to the turf, as both the ball and Nava head homeward. Blocking home plate is the Rays’ intimidating catcher Jose Molina (all 6’2” and 250 lbs. of him) and, as the ball takes a single hop, he braces to catch it and apply the tag.

But wait! Just a hint of the plate is showing! And yes, Nava’s sliding toe crosses it the instant before Molina stops him dead in his tracks. Safe! Tie game! Runner on third!

But wait! Umpire Jerry Meals is raising his right hand! “Yer out!” he calls, and the inning is over. It’s still 2-1. The normally-placid Nava goes berserk. The Red Sox go berserk. Ejections ensue. But from where Meals was crouched, directly behind the bulky Molina, there was clearly no way Nava could have scored. The Rays take over first place.

If it were fiction it would make for allegory — yet if you google Jerry Meals you’ll see for yourself. Had he moved just a step to the left, gaining the same perspective as the millions of suffering fans watching on TV, he wouldn’t have suffered himself through abject apologies in the days to follow, serving up shameful reminders of how unapologetic he’d have been. If he was one of five conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court; if Nava was a black voter in one of nine states recently covered by the Voting Rights Act; if home plate was the ballot booth, where that voter had a constitutional right to be counted; and if the mountainous Molina was, well, the uber-powerful one percent, whose wealth is spent rigging every game and obscuring all judgments between who is safe and who is out.

Just thinking….