Game Changes For the Worse

News item: Baltimore second baseman Robbie Alomar was suspended for five days after spitting in the face of an umpire but will be allowed to serve the suspension next April, so as not to miss meaningful playoff games. Alomar has pointed out he has apologized. He has not said he won’t do it again but allowed, “Good people sometimes do bad things.”

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We take you now to Milwaukee. As we look in, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is enjoying a cigarette and a fudge bar just after being convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Dahmer looks apologetically at the presiding judge.

“Your Honor,” he says respectfully, “if it’s all the same with you, I’d like to postpone serving until, say, 2031. You see, I have some important things to do, places I have to go, people I have to meet. I’m really sorry I killed all those people. I don’t know what’s come over me but I think I can get a few loose ends cleared up in a decade or so and pay my debt to society. Who knows? It may have grown by then.”

We visit next Martin Bormann, the Nazi butcher thought to have been killed on the Unter Den Linden in 1945 but mysteriously manifested in Argentina where he has been captured, brought to justice and sentenced to hanging. He addresses the three-man tribunal apologetically:

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to point out to the court how damnably inconvenient it is for me to be put to death at this time. With the court’s permission, I’d like to put it off till sometime in the next century, when it would work less of a hardship on me and in particular the people dependent on me. My team, if you will.

“I’m sure it’s not the court’s wish to affect innocent people--and we may have one or two of them in our compound in Argentina, people who were only following orders, so to speak. They rely on me, don’t you see? So I would like to petition this court to put off my punishment to that more convenient time.

“I want you to know I’d really appreciate it. So would my fellow expatriates. How does April, 2019, grab you? I’ll stay in touch. Don’t call me, I’ll call you. From my mobile phone. Have a nice day.”

Our trip now takes us into the realm of baseball the year after the infamous Black Sox scandal of 1919. The grand old game has been rocked by the disclosure that a central corps of players on the Chicago White Sox sold out the World Series to gamblers masterminded by Arnold Rothstein, Abe Attell and Sport Sullivan.

The trial is just over in Chicago, where the jury, presumably White Sox fans, acquitted the accused players as the courtroom onlookers cheered, waved White Sox banners and broke into dances in the aisles.

Then the defendants and the jury repaired to a nearby Italian restaurant where they partied the whole night through. But the commissioner of all baseball, a judge himself and familiar enough with juries so as not to be impressed by this one disregarded them.

Said Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis, “Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player who throws a game, no player who undertakes or promises to throw a ballgame, no player that sits in conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing a game are discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever again play professional baseball. Period.”

Now, history does not tell us whether the accused players and their manager and owner sat with the judge with an urgent if unusual proposal: “Your honor, can we make a suggestion? How about if we stipulate to your decision but we put off the penalty phase till--oh, say, 1931, or so? Sound reasonable?

“We don’t want to dispute your findings, even though we have a valid court acquittal, you understand? We just think it’s in the best interest of the team. I mean, we have several years left of championship ball in this team. We might win a World Series or two--if it’s honest, of course. I mean, we’ve got all these great players--when they’re trying, that is.

“So, how about if we let this thing slide to where it won’t hurt the team chances all that much? I mean, boys will be boys, eh, judge?”

Wouldn’t you love to have heard the judge’s reply?

But, times change, as the Alomar case shows. Can it be that baseball has changed? Nah. It’s commissioners who have changed.