April 10, 2012
High and Inside: Morality and Revenge in Baseball
Our beliefs about the morality of beaning a player with a pitch differ from our believe about other areas of life. Photo by Caleb Williams
On a sunny April afternoon at Wrigley Field, in the bottom of the third inning, a pitcher from the Cardinals intentionally beans the Cubs batter, right in the shoulder. The next inning, the Chicago pitcher retaliates, hitting the St. Louis batter, an outfielder, with a beanball on the elbow. The outfielder, of course, was uninvolved in the first transgression. So is it morally acceptable to hit him?
A new study, published last week in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, indicates that many of us believe that beaning an innocent player on an offending team is perfectly fine—despite the fact that, in most other areas of life, American culture does not condone this type of “vicarious punishment.” Not surprisingly, an individual fan’s team allegiance plays a large role in determining whether they find this sort of revenge palatable. It’s telling, though, that for fans of all stripes, baseball seems to represent a unique ethical holdover from our earlier days of family feuds and a culture of honor.
The researchers conducted surveys outside of a number of ballparks during the season, asking fans about a range of scenarios involving beanballs and revenge. The study’s most striking finding is that, of the 145 fans polled outside both Chicago’s Wrigley Field and St. Louis’ Busch Stadium, a full 44 percent felt it was okay for a team’s pitcher to intentionally hit a batter on the other team, if they were avenging a previous beanball by a different player.
The percentages climbed even higher when the researchers asked specifically about the team that the fan supported. Of participants polled outside Boston’s Fenway Park, 43 percent approved of the scenario when the revenge was exacted against the hometown Red Sox, but a full 67 percent were fine with it when a Sox pitcher was carrying out revenge.
Vicarious punishment, the researchers say, has emerged countless times in human history. In certain circumstances, cultural norms allow individuals to take out revenge on any members of a group, even if they did not commit the original transgression. Early U.S. history includes many family feuds, such as the notorious Hatfield-McCoy feud of the late 1800s. Anthropologists have identified “cultures of honor”—in which members carry out excessive punishment against relatives or allies of their enemy—among groups as varied as Scottish herdsmen, cowboys in the 19th century American West and Bedouin nomads in the Middle East.
Nowadays, though, in Western culture, this type of vicarious vigilante justice is generally seen as unacceptable, both legally and morally. If you attacked a family member of someone who had assaulted your brother or sister, you’d go to jail. So why does baseball present such an unexpected exception?
One of the follow-up questions the researchers asked points to the explanation. Although a healthy percentage of fans approved of the original revenge scenario, a much smaller fraction (19 percent) were okay with a pitcher beaning a player on an entirely different team a day later to exact revenge. If an innocent batter can justly be hit by a pitch to avenge the unrelated actions of his pitcher, why not a batter wearing an entirely different uniform?
The answer might be related to something any sports fan has long recognized: In the heat of the game, we take on a powerfully clannish mentality about our team and our side. For fleeting moments, the team becomes a cohesive ethical unit, and our emotional world seems to encompass anyone wearing the uniform. In the world of sports, at times, it’s Us versus Them. So if our guy gets revenge by hitting a different player from their side, we say just one thing: “Play ball!”
Read more great baseball stories, including the physics of cheating in baseball, on Smithsonian.com
Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.
12 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
This is great, thanks Joseph. Wanted to let you know about a piece we published about the history of violence in baseball, written by baseball historian Peter Morris. Great read and a nice companion to your post. http://goo.gl/hSgGq
The primary reason for hitting a different player on the opposing team is that the pitcher who threw the bean ball will probably not come up to bat again in that game or series. In the American League, he would most likely never come to bat due to the DH rule.
Unfortunately, the “us versus them” scenario has permeated mutliple aspects of societal activity. One of its worst manifestations is in our politics. It contributes to mass fragmentation of our society, holds back progress, and makes us less of a nation.
Interesting article, but I believe the use of “beanball” is incorrect. A beanball is a pitch thrown at the batter’s head, which is always unacceptable no matter what one thinks of retaliating by hitting another part of an unoffending batter’s body.
Please remember where the word fan come from – fanatic. Maybe outside the stadium they are fanatics and back at the office they are fans.
I agree with the conclusion, but the Us vs. Them mentality is not only during the “heat of the game.” If two teams came upon each other after the game, say at a bar, then vicarious punishment would still be in effect. In other words, Us vs. Them would last all season long, 24/7 — not just at the ballpark.
When Little Leaguers see the pros doing retaliatory brushbacks and “chin music” it doesn’t send much of a moral and ethical example. Ted Williams made it a point to hit a line drive up the middle as a message to any pitcher that threw up and in near his head on his next at bat.
Hall of Fame manager “Marse Joe” McCarthy like to tell his team that brush backs are a compliment to a hitter from an opposing pitcher that has struggled against them. He would not ask his pitchers to retaliate and let the umpires take away his options over the course of an entire season. He reasoned that over the entire regular season schedule, things had a way of balancing things out.
Risking getting one of his starting pitchers tossed from a game for an intentional retaliatory inside pitch was NOT a sound move in McCarthy’s approach to the game.
We are the 99%.
Take action!
Stand up to predatory lenders and profiteers that get rich from detention centers and private correctional institutions.
Participate in direct, non violent tactics and confront the powers that be.
Don’t bean the authorities with bottles, bricks and rocks.
Object to the call if you don’t like it!
If the umpire is unfair then the manager should come out of the dug out to object on the field.
Thanks, for the article Joseph.
I’m a big Saint Louis Cardinal fan.
Maybe morality in baseball will rise when Americans admit that its iconic game is a variant of the English game rounders, and that baseball more-or-less as it is played now was first played in southern Ontario (then British North America) and not in New York State. I look forward to visiting Cooperstown New York and seeing this history portrayed in the “Baseball Hall of Fame”. But having had my early education in US primary and secondary schools, I know very well how patriotically bowlderized American history is. It was only after I moved to Canada that I realized that (a) the American Revolution was mostly about escaping debts owed to British landlords, and that (b) the US did not win the War of 1812.
The clan analysis doesn’t add up to me. If my clan takes out someone in the neighboring clan in redress, the biggest risk is further retaliation. That doesn’t compute in baseball, where the goal isn’t preservation or honor, but to win the game. I’ve never understood the value of hitting the other team’s batter intentionally. It help’s the other team by putting a man on base. The biggest risk is that you lose the game. An interesting followup would be a survey of pitchers who choose to hurt their team’s chances of winning by effectively helping the other team. What is the reward? Perhaps it’s like peacock feathers or other displays of risky behavior.
You’re missing the obvious. It’s not just about revenge. The threat of retaliation protects players from being hit deliberately. If players on one team know they will become targets when their pitchers throw at opposing players, they will discourage their pitchers from throwing at opposing players. Pitchers that routinely cause their teammates to take 95 mph fastballs in the ribs are very unpopular in the clubhouse. See Carlos Zambrano.
I wondered if there were any difference in the stats between the American and National Leagues. One would think there might be, since it is possible in the National league to bean the offending pitcher. I would think National League fans might prefer that scenario to the beaning of an innocent party.