Honesty Comes in Slow Motion

This evening while watching baseball, I took notice of the catcher’s demeanor after a close play. Though a call at the plate had just gone in his team’s favor, his body language seemed anything but celebratory. We could attribute his subdued nature to the six-run deficit his team still faced, but we might also give credit to the game’s new replay rules.

Indeed, the opposing manager challenged the call, and Major League Baseball overturned it after viewing the video replay. That replay, which we also saw on television, clearly showed the backstop’s sweep tag not making contact with the baserunner at all.

The catcher had to have known he never touched the runner, even as his body somewhat screened the home plate umpire from seeing it properly. The player could have saved everyone some time and effort, then, had he simply told the ump what the replay would show.

Players watch replays, too.

Some sports would consider such an admission the norm. Tennis players overrule a linesperson who incorrectly judges an opponent’s ball to have landed out. Even more stringently, the game of golf expects its participants to sign for the fact that they have played the game honestly and punishes those who have not.

Most sports have not developed such a culture of self-reporting. A fielder generally tries to convince an umpire he caught a ball he trapped. Association football and basketball have struggled to eliminate diving. Hockey players tend to hate the other team’s pest’s extralegal stickwork, but embrace their teammate who does the same as a “hard-nosed competitor” who “does what it takes to win.”

For those of us who would prefer to see honesty become the norm in the games we watch or play, replay could create some positive vibes.

We’ll start with the play that began this post. What if the initial call at the plate had gone the runner’s way and the catcher’s manager had emerged from the dugout to discuss it and possibly call for a review? The catcher now has every incentive to inform both the official and the manager about what really happened. The player still makes a self-serving decision, in this case to allow his manager to save a challenge for a later inning, but at least he must make the honest one.

The most encouraging scenario, however, comes when the deception requires some risk. If an outfielder traps a ball with two outs and a runner on base, for instance, he has a choice. He can attempt to convince the umpire that he most certainly caught the ball and begin jogging off the field. However, if he feels pretty sure that a replay will overturn the erroneous call, he has a greater incentive to attempt to throw out the baserunner and not waste his time on fooling the base umpire. The replay rule has thus occasioned a more honest game.

The same could certainly hold true in other sports. For instance, if replay could reveal that a defender never touched a forward, it incents the latter to not go down so easily in the box and risk a yellow card for diving. One must use care in delaying games for replay, of course, but if such use encourages participants to play on, instead of jockeying for false calls, it may eliminate other situations that cause a contest to lag.

Of course, meaningful progress toward honesty in gameplay will require changes of culture. Replay can’t implement those by itself. Ingrained behaviors take a long time to rework. If a trend toward honorable on-field conduct does emerge, it will almost certainly do so in slow motion.

Rush Olson has spent two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.

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