The Rules of the Game
Play hard and stop whining.

by PHILIP K. HOWARD
Friday, July 20, 2001 12:01 A.M. EDT

Where's the strike zone? A brouhaha has erupted between officials of Major League Baseball and its umpires, who have over the years unofficially shrunk the strike zone. Baseball officials have decided that games are too long because more pitches are required and earlier this week ordered umpires to enforce a strike zone that is somewhat larger--that is, the one set out in the rulebook.

The umpires' reaction--this being modern America--was to call their lawyer and file a grievance. Who is Major League Baseball to question an umpire's judgment? For the moment, baseball officials have backed off, and the umps have withdrawn their grievance. Call it a time-out. The face-off will probably resume, in one form or another, before too long.

What is going on here? Umpires certainly relish their authority. Chin to chin with the manager, they never back down. But umpires don't make the rules; they enforce them. So why don't they accept the authority of those who make the rules?

Because no one does. In sports these days, rules are increasingly seen as merely one arbitrary component in a conspiracy of conditions that make games unfair for whoever is complaining--the object of litigation and even violence. Something has gone awry.

Rule are, of course, arbitrary. In NBA basketball, the three-point shot is a recent innovation, and next season, reversing a long tradition, the league will allow the use of zone defense. Shaquille O'Neal is unhappy about that--he claims it will make basketball boring--but the rest of us need not cry foul. From time to time, rules change. We all remember how different college basketball was--with those endless stall-strategies--before a shot clock sped up the game.

Any real game, in fact, is a closed system. As long as you are in one, you are obliged to accept its rules, its outcomes and, yes, its risks. Some ultimate fairness--an ideal of perfect treatment--has nothing to do with it.

At least that used to be the case. But no more. A player in a women's softball league not long ago was on second base when a teammate hit a single up the middle. It would be a close play, but she decided to try to score. The relay came, the catcher blocked the plate. The inevitable collision occurred, and the catcher dropped the ball. Safe! Not quite. The catcher fell the wrong way, and broke her leg. She sued.

In a Little League game in New Jersey, the center fielder lost a fly ball in the sun, which ended up hitting him in the eye. His parents sued the coaches. The theory was that the boy should have been instructed better about catching fly balls in the sun or given flip-down sunglasses. The coaches settled the case for $25,000.

Remove the authority of the game--its rules and its risks--and fun starts to disappear as well. A few years ago, a Little League team showed up for a game in upstate New York. Because of a scheduling glitch, however, the umpire did not show up. Several parents volunteered to umpire. But the longer the discussion went on, the more nervous everyone got. "And what will happen if someone got hurt?" There might be legal liability, someone suggested. The game was canceled.

A notion of individualized fairness has corroded the joy of sports. Judged from afar, games aren't fair at all. People who are physically gifted have a natural advantage. Men who weigh 250 pounds do not seem to succeed, I have noticed, at platform diving. But they're great as football linemen.

But even the reality of physical difference is no longer acceptable. Recently the Supreme Court ordered the Professional Golfers Association to modify its rules so that Casey Martin, who has a degenerative leg disease, could use a golf cart. Making plausible arguments of unfairness on Mr. Martin's behalf could hardly have been easier.

You begin to see the problem. Every disabled person--indeed, every uncoordinated person--can make a similar argument about fairness. The danger here is not that courts will go haywire, changing rules willy-nilly. The danger is that rules themselves will lose their power of command.

This sense of entitlement used to be the domain of stars who could get away with it. In the 1970s, John McEnroe made temper tantrums the order of the day, contesting, it seemed, every call that didn't go his way. André Agassi's recent outbursts at Wimbledon, which involved angrily firing a ball at a line judge, were similarly beyond the pale.

But now the sense of entitlement has infected the common culture. In the past decade, sports officials have noted a rise in "sports rage." In Pennsylvania earlier this year, a father bit a coach and shot a referee after his seven-year-old boy lost a wrestling match. In 1997, a T-ball coach in Oklahoma choked a 15-year-old umpire to his knees as a team of five- and six-year-olds watched. "Anger control" courses for parents are now mandatory in some schools and sports leagues. Perhaps the worst story occurred last year at a hockey game in Boston, when a father, angry at rough play, beat to death the father who was supervising. He is now facing trial for manslaughter.

Games, it is often said, are a metaphor for life. Like many clichés, this one turns out to be true. Sure, the people in authority sometimes get it wrong. Maybe Major League Baseball is making a mistake by trying to enforce a larger strike zone. Umpires certainly make mistakes. "The bum!" But when the next batter comes up, our attention is back on the game, not on phoning our lawyer or plotting revenge. That's why respect for authority is so important. Umpires, of all people, ought to understand that.

Mr. Howard, a lawyer, is the author of "The Lost Art of Drawing the Line."