Politics is downstream from culture, so they say. And few parts of culture influence our perception of politics and government more than sports. From 19th century Thomas Nast cartoons depicting politicians as boxers, to the never-ending stream of sports metaphors that pundits spout, the link is obvious. Politics may be show business for ugly people, but it’s also a major league sport for people who can’t run, kick, or throw,
Not only do sports influence how we think about government, they even affect legislation, such as the rise of “three strike” sentencing laws in the 1990s. And it’s this apparent link between sports and government that makes me wonder: could refereeing in sports affect how we think about much more important disputes?
Consider this old episode of The Andy Griffith Show, that while from the show’s overlooked later years has always stuck with me. In season 7’s “The Ball Game”, Sheriff Andy Taylor (Griffith) is enlisted to serve as home plate umpire for a baseball playoff game between the Mayberry and Mount Pilot youth teams. He objects because his son Opie is a member of the Mayberry team. Gas station attendant turned baseball manager Goober Pyle assures Andy that everyone from the league officials to the Mount Pilot team manager knows he will be a fair and impartial judge. Andy reluctantly acquiesces.
As with probably every baseball game ever shown in a scripted TV series, the game comes down to the bottom of the ninth with 2 outs. Mayberry is down a run and Opie comes up to the plate as Mayberry’s last chance to keep the game and their championship hopes alive. He hits a shot deep into the outfield and takes off at top speed trying for a game-tying inside the park homer. His lap around the bases ends with a bang-bang play at the plate when Opie and the throw from Mount Pilot’s center fielder both arrive at the same time. To the chagrin of the Mayberry team and townsfolk, Andy calls Opie out, giving Mount Pilot the win and a chance to play at the state capital, while Goober goes full Billy Martin on his friend Andy, insisting that Opie had beat the tag.
The rest of the episode follows Andy’s encounters with his upset friends who feel Andy blew the call, until affable part-time journalist Howard publishes an op-ed in the Sunday paper arguing that as Andy had accepted the job out of duty and was selected because of his reputation for honesty and fairness, his ruling should be respected. Goober, Floyd the barber, Opie, and Andy’s Aunt Bea all shamefacedly apologize to Andy.
The episode has a final twist though. Andy’s girlfriend Helen was at the game with her camera, and as she privately shows Aunt Bea when the photos are developed, she captured the exact instant Opie slid home. And the film reveals that the catcher didn’t get his glove down to tag Opie in time.
“He was safe…” says Aunt Bea, as Helen tears the evidence into shreds. The game was over, Mount Pilot was going to the championship, and Bea and Helen judged that Andy’s peace of mind and the regained respect of his peers was more important than the truth that he had blown the call after all. With this episode airing three years after JFK was assassinated, you can see a shadow of the Zapruder film in Helen’s tell-tale photo.
That was the Sixties, just a few years before Nixon and Watergate shattered Americans’ teetering faith in authority. I feel that had this scenario taken place in a sitcom just a few years later, Helen’s photo would have been the beginning of the episode setting up the conflict, not the epilogue. Meanwhile, America’s national pastime of baseball would shortly be eclipsed by football as the biggest draw in professional sports.
And I have to wonder, does the difference in how baseball and football are adjudicated have something to do with their popularity? As shown in Andy Taylor’s predicament, under the rules of baseball, the umpire is judge, jury, and executioner of baseball hopes and dreams. The MLB resisted instant replay in baseball for decades after the NFL brought multiple camera angles and the replay booth to football. Getting in the umpire’s face and questioning his calls always has and probably always will result in a early departure as umps can and do throw players and coaches out of games.
By comparison, in the NFL, not only can a coach yell in the referee’s face, the coach has the right to throw a red flag and demand review of a call. Assuming the call isn’t already one that is subject to automatic review. In recent years, calls have even been referred to league headquarters as a crew of officials play and replay an ever growing number of camera angles frame by frame.
(Full disclosure: my views on NFL replay may be colored by the infamous call from week 15 of the 2017 season where what looked like an unquestionable go-ahead touchdown pass from Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to tight end Jesse James with 28 seconds left on the game clock against the New England Patriots was overturned. The late, great color analyst Tunch Ilkin commented at that moment: “What’s a catch anymore? We don’t know.”)
Baseball culture accepts that there will be some blown calls, but that is secondary to the need for order and respect for norms. Meanwhile football seems to have an obsession with getting everything exactly “right”, no matter how many times the game has to be halted and reviewed. And what has that attitude accomplished? Ask any fan of any NFL team, and they will all tell you that the refs are biased against their team. The more the officiating crew inserts themselves into the game, the greater the perception of bias, as flags are thrown on myriad ticky-tacky calls.
Back to the real world. No one likes to lose, whether in sports, political races, or much weightier matters like criminal trials. And I think it’s instructive that as America’s number 1 spectator sport relies more and more on second and even third-guessing rulings, the same attitude plays out in broader cultural ways. Nothing is ever accepted as final. Any adverse decision by an authority figure can and will be appealed to a higher authority, and when there is no higher authority left, someone will try and invent an end run around the rules.
Sometimes, as in the case of new evidence overturning criminal convictions, that willingness to reopen a closed book prevents or mitigates an injustice. But you cannot help but notice how many times a decision is challenged without anything new being presented. Instead, the existing evidence is shopped around until a more favorable decision is reached.
This has gone on for years in the courts. If a jury awards a large settlement in a civil liability matter, the ink can barely dry on the ruling before the losing side will file a challenge in the next highest court. Advocacy groups involved in debates over gun control, abortion, free speech, and the like have this technique down to a science as they hustle “test cases” up through the appeals process aiming for a Supreme Court ruling.
And where has this change from what might be called an ‘umpire mentality’ to a ‘instant replay mentality’ taken us? To some very dark places indeed.
Consider the ‘Stop the Steal’ protests that led to supporters of President Trump storming the US Capitol early this year. Was the 2020 presidential election close? Yes. Would swings of a small number of votes in a few states have changed the outcome? Yes. Was there any proof that the states of Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania were colluding to steal the election? No.
But instead of accepting the umpires’ rulings, members of Trump’s inner circle attempted to invent a justification for Vice President Pence to throw out electoral votes, an idea that apparently never occurred to any legal mind in the past 230 years until then.
And just last week, no sooner had a jury found Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty of murder based on the evidence, than Representative Jerry Nadler began calling for the federal government to pursue civil rights act charges against Rittenhouse. Is Kyle Rittenhouse a foolish kid who should have stayed home and joined the National Guard at 18 if he wanted to protect homes and businesses from rioters? Again, yes. But as a lawfully appointed jury found that he wasn’t guilty of murder and reckless endangerment, bending federal law like a soda straw to file more charges against him isn’t going to solve anything.
At some point, no matter how much we detest it, someone has to make the final call. And more often than not, the world is probably better off if we accept the decision.
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