Clemens Against Cooney: Uncivil Disobedience

We are reaching that point in society where people in jail may soon outnumber those outside.

Retail business will complain.

“The holiday season is make-or-break,” a merchant will groan. “Now Christmas is coming on and so many prospective shoppers are in jail that we may not be able to keep our doors open.”

Jail population is swelling from new areas, led by savings and loan chiefs and junk-bond dealers. Disrespect for law is becoming such that not even people who double-park want to answer for it.

You give them the horn and they give you the digital salute.

Even in pursuits as frivolous as baseball, disrespect for authority filters down. You see growing evidence of this today in a game in which players and managers are kicked out at startling rates.

With disbelief, you see the starting pitcher of Boston kicked out of a playoff game the other day in the most critical of circumstances.

His team is down, 3-0, in the series. It is the second inning. He doesn’t agree with the umpire’s judgment on balls and strikes. He cusses him out.

The umpire, who has no history of shooting from the hip, gives him the foot. If he doesn’t give him the foot, he is inviting verbal mayhem.

The defendant in the case, Roger Clemens, is no thug. He is an outstanding pitcher who, like too many of his colleagues, has lost his way, forgetting that others on this earth have dignity, too.

The umpire who boots him, Terry Cooney, is 57, or old enough to be the father of Clemens, who is 28. Umpiring most of his adult life, Cooney worked up from the minors, joining the American League in 1975.

Need he be cursed by one the age of Clemens?

For every act of disobedience on this earth today, there appears to be an apologist. In the case of Clemens, one apologist points to the pressure of the circumstances.

Another tries to explain that cursing someone from 60 feet away isn’t like cursing him eyeball-to-eyeball.

Employing that logic, one wants to dismiss any threats of Saddam Hussein, because he is 6,000 miles from the White House.

Whatever defense one wishes to construct for Clemens, let one be reminded that Sandy Koufax never got himself kicked out of a postseason game.

Whitey Ford never got kicked out. Nor did Warren Spahn, Jim Palmer, Catfish Hunter or Dave Stewart.

Don Drysdale had a hot head, but it wasn’t empty. He never got kicked out in postseason.

Umpire Cooney may as well go off the pier if he allows a kid in his 20s, however successful, to cuss him out.

His embarrassment in the playoffs will have a sobering impact on Clemens. Before mouthing off next time, he will remember what happened in Oakland.

You know, of course, that laser equipment is available today that would remove from the umpire the responsibility of calling balls and strikes, the most overriding cause of baseball arguments.

With the laser, the strike zone is clearly defined.

But baseball rejects modern technology, including instant replay, even though baseball is a tidier game than football, making judgments by the camera generally more accurate.

When the subject of instant replay in the major leagues last came up, Peter Ueberroth, then commissioner, told your venerable correspondent: “The umpire is part of baseball’s romance. He is a professional who, before coming to the majors, has spent years in the minors. He has paid his dues. To overrule him with a camera would be an affront to his dignity.”

“What about overruling an ump if he is wrong?” Ueberroth was asked.

He answered: “Aren’t we surrounded by enough technical progress without introducing it to our sports, too?”

So, among commissioners, the line of succession has a consistent following, and the game continues without technical assistance, all the more reason why those who play and those who manage have a commitment to civility.

Can you picture athletes, miffed by Clemens’ ejection, throwing drums of Gatorade out on the field? Defending their pitcher’s right to call an umpire names, they may progress from Gatorade drums to hand grenades.

But if the Red Sox are looking for an ear of compassion, they aren’t going to find it here. Nor will anyone else in sports trampling on the self-respect of those in his precinct.