Hey, everybody, this is Jeri, John's wife, bringing you today's conversation starter, while John is soaking in the luxury that is Omaha, NE.
Today's topic comes from AOL 'news'.
There is an article today by Jim Armstrong, called:
"Mercy! Let's Expand Little League Rule to All Sports"
Here, from the article, is the main point I want to bring up.
"It's pretty simple, really. If one team is knocking the freckles off the other, they call the game and save everybody a lot of time and aggravation. If a team is leading by 10 or more runs after four innings, they pack up the bats, exchange high fives and head for Dairy Queen."
Clearly, this is a rule that would never be adopted, for many reasons even I can think up. For starters, shortening games just for the heck of it would mess up just about every stat I can think of. I can't imagine the fan fury if a record possibly didn't get set, or a 3000th hit didn't get made because there were a few blowout games that got called on account of 'the-other-team-had-a-really-sucky-day'.
There's also the fact that these are grownups, and they get paid a LOT of money. The risk of public humiliation should be included in the job description.
Having said that, I will say that there have been plenty of games where I've spent the last few innings slumped down in my seat hoping to obscure the emblem on my shirt. There have been plenty of games where I've left afterwards feeling like I had just watched a few hours of the mighty tiger devouring the graceful gazelle on some live, in person version of 'Wild Kingdom'.
Some people really like that type of thing. Sometimes, I really like that type of thing. Professional sports will never, nor should they ever, adopt some type of mercy rule.
What about college? High School? I could see setting maximum point spreads for high school games. Let's face it--when you are seeing your high school losing a football game 77 - 6, and the other team has not only put in their entire JV squad, but also the towel boy and the drum line of their pep band, don't you think to yourself, "o.k., now they're just showing off"?
They might be 'young men', but they really are just kids. Big kids. Do you think the mercy rule should extend to high school sports, or are high school kids old enough to just suck it up?
Loading comments...