Two Strikes on Alomar

In the Roberto Alomar case, major league baseball officials have once again demonstrated their chronic and spineless tendency to mete out wrist-slapping punishment at an offender’s earliest convenience. Only one possibility remains for swift and genuine justice in the case of the disgraced Baltimore Orioles star: Alomar himself should do the right thing by voluntarily serving his five-game suspension immediately.

Although Alomar has taken two big steps in the right direction by issuing a formal apology for spitting in the face of umpire John Hirschbeck and, as a gesture of goodwill, by offering to donate $50,000 to the study of the rare brain disease that three years ago took the life of Hirschbeck’s 8-year-old son, Alomar’s apology and donation will be ethically empty unless he accepts his punishment at once, rather than delaying it until the start of next season.

The dispute stems from an incident Sept. 27 when Alomar was called out on a third strike by Hirschbeck in a game with the Toronto Blue Jays. The Orioles on Monday began a best-of-five series with the Cleveland Indians, with Alomar--an American League all-star--playing second base.

Ethically speaking, there is clearly no compelling reason for Alomar to wait until next season to serve his suspension. That no player has ever served a suspension during playoffs is an excuse, not a reason--an excuse that notably exposes the league’s ethically lax practice of cautiously coddling rather than swiftly disciplining its wayward players.

The rationalization voiced by Alomar and the players’ union--that to suspend Alomar during the playoffs would be unfair to his teammates and fans--is at once lame and laughable. Where was this sense of team and fan loyalty when he chose to express himself by spitting in the face of an umpire, an individual who more than symbolically represents the game’s standards of sportsmanship and fair play?

How ironic: When a professional athlete is even minimally displeased with contract negotiations, the best interests of his team, much less of his fans, are put on the back burner. But when an athlete like Alomar commits an egregiously unsportsmanlike act and deserves to be punished immediately, we hear hollow moral platitudes about “fairness” to team and fans.

Alomar has told reporters that he doesn’t want to talk about the incident any more. But he needs to talk about it at least one more time. He needs to hold a press conference and defuse the rising tensions between the umpire’s union (which announced Thursday that umpires will go on strike as of today) and baseball executives by simply declaring that he will, as a matter of personal responsibility and ethical principle, serve his five-game suspension without delay--no matter what the Orioles’ prospects are for World Series play. In so doing, he would not only restore his integrity but would send a powerful message to countless and impressionable young fans.