A Double Standard for Fighting, But Why?
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by user Tyduffy
MLB recently punished Derrek Lee and Chris Young of the Padres for their role in a skirmish last saturday with suspension of 5 games each. Chris Young hit Lee with a pitch, and, after words were exchanged, both players attempted to throw punches and a bench clearing brawl ensued.
The story here is not the incident itself, but fighting in baseball in general, and the apparent double standard between an incident that occurs in Major League Baseball and the NBA. NBA fights, at least those in the last few years, are often covered as tragedies and a great a stain upon the league and the perceived thuggishness of its players. In contrast, fights in baseball are often viewed as a routine and often amusing spectacle, much in the same vein as manager theatrics when arguing a call. It is quite clear that there is a palpable double standard between the two, the question is why.
One of the explanations provided most often, by Michael Wilbon and others, is race. The NBA is perceived as a black league. When white players fight it is attributed to "boys being boys" and occurrences on the field of play, while when black players fight, it is often attributed to their nature and personalities and problems off the field. In Hockey, perceived as a white sport, fighting is a 5 min penalty and part of the attraction. In the NBA, it is horrifying and villified by the same fans. This certainly has validity when comparing those two sports, but does it work with baseball?
Baseball, for all its problems, has done one thing better than every other major American sport. Race is largely a non-factor. There are White-American players, Black-American players, Hispanic players, Black-Hispanic players, and Asian players. The diversity is so prevalent that becomes a non-issue. Players are identified by the jersey they wear rather than the color of the skin. If race were the only factor, than people would have been going apeshit over the Lee-Young fight as Lee is a black player and Young is a white. However, that was never brought into discussion, at least to our Odds and Sods research team.
Part of the explanation, has to do with the intricacies of the sport themselves. Baseball is a sport with an enormous, and arguably necessary, tradition of self-policing to maintain safety when potentially deadly projectiles are hurled in the direction of a batter. In that environment there is much more of an opportunity, for an incident to develop.
Also, in baseball an incident necessarily escalates. If there is an altercation on the basketball court, it is 5 vs. 5 and there should theoretically be enough people. If a pitcher gets into a fight with a batter, there is one batter against nine players for the other team. The batter's team will rush in to protect him, prompting the other team's dugout to run onto the field as well creating a melee. Despite the massive numbers of players on the field, these incidents generally do not devolve into anything dangerous.
There is also a different environment on the baseball field than on the basketball court. The baseball field, for the most part, is isolated from the crowd. It is possible for a fan to get involved in an on the field incident, but they have to hurdle a wall and run a long way. Basketball has a much more immediate fan presence. Fans literally are sitting on the court. There is a far greater chance of a fight to go into the stands and endanger the safety of fans in an NBA game, and, therefore, it is taken more seriously.
The NBA also lives in the shadow of the Malace at the Palace, where an on the court incident that wasn't even a fight devolved into frightening and dangerous chaos. Classic fights involving the old Pistons and Celtics teams in the 80s are shown in highlight reels, while after the Palace incident, there is a lot more scrutiny. The image of Kermit Washington's punch on Rudy T also hangs its ugly head over the NBA. In baseball's worst fights a pitcher's arm gets broken, in basketball's worst fights there are threats to peoples' lives.
Another possibility is that, in the most cited example of the Nuggets-Knicks fight, David Stern unintentionally provoked more controversy by handing down stiff punishments. It was a bad incident, but would it really have been replayed on a continuous loop for weeks afterward had Stern not tried to send a message and brought down the hammer on Carmelo with a 15 game suspension? His harsh punishment kept the story in the media for longer, and, consequently, may have blown up the incident out of proportion to what actually happened.
The fact is that we still live in a fundamentally racist society. Not that the entire white populace is consciously KKK sympathizers, but among all races there is a tendency toward forming pre-set judgements of someone because of the color of their skin. It is easy to point out race as a factor, because it is in virtually everything. It is certainly one of the primary influences on the NBA's perception in mainstream American culture.
However, merely employing race to explain the discrepancy between punishment and treatment by society is simplistic and not sufficient. It neglects inherent differences in both the history of the sport, and the way the sport is played, which should be given an equal voice in a more wholistic explanation.
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