NWR: Jim Joyce

originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
He was a safe baserunner at the moment he was called safe because the rules of baseball are that what an umpire calls is what has happened.

Selig has the power to overrule an umpire call and change the ruling, but he doesn't have the power to make it not have occurred. He can make the runner now be out. He can't make him have been out at the moment.
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But that's actually not true. The commissioner does indeed have the authority to rule retroactively and declare that the baserunner was out as of the moment the ball was caught.

As for why I care what Selig does, I simply believe that record books should reflect what everyone understands reality to be to the greatest extent possible. Suppose it were determined that the holder of, say, the world record for women's weightlifting was actually a man. Wouldn't you want that removed from the record books? The whole point of keeping the record book is to keep track of which women lifted the most weights, and to facilitate comparative discussions of female weightlifters over time. Neither interest is served by retaining a phony "record" which never belonged in the first place. Or would you argue that the man was actually a woman as of the moment he recorded the record because that's what the weightlifting referee (or judge or whatever one calls them) presumed at the time?
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at the risk of further thread drift, based on what you are saying here, you think some home run records should be erased from the record books?
 
Yeah, I'd certainly look into striking or at least asterisking those records. I'm sensitive to the argument that it's not necessarily clear-cut since pitchers were juicing, too, some drugs were permitted while others banned, etc., so there are a lot of things that would have to be looked into before opening this can of worms.

But my own kid will be taught that Hank Aaron and Roger Maris are the home-run kings.
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Yeah, I'd certainly look into striking or at least asterisking those records. I'm sensitive to the argument that it's not necessarily clear-cut since pitchers were juicing, too, some drugs were permitted while others banned, etc., so there are a lot of things that would have to be looked into before opening this can of worms.

But my own kid will be taught that Hank Aaron and Roger Maris are the home-run kings.
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What about BB's in a season? And most IBB's in a season? Barry Bonds has those records and they are indirectly linked to steroids. Same with OBP in a season. What will you tell your kid about those records?
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
Kids don't give a darn about walks.
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I will see to it that my kids know the value of OPS!

My 6 year old would rather watch the gamecast on the computer than a game on television. Why? The stats!
 
originally posted by Keith Levenberg:
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
He was a safe baserunner at the moment he was called safe because the rules of baseball are that what an umpire calls is what has happened.

Selig has the power to overrule an umpire call and change the ruling, but he doesn't have the power to make it not have occurred. He can make the runner now be out. He can't make him have been out at the moment.
Click to expand...
But that's actually not true. The commissioner does indeed have the authority to rule retroactively and declare that the baserunner was out as of the moment the ball was caught.

As for why I care what Selig does, I simply believe that record books should reflect what everyone understands reality to be to the greatest extent possible. Suppose it were determined that the holder of, say, the world record for women's weightlifting was actually a man. Wouldn't you want that removed from the record books? The whole point of keeping the record book is to keep track of which women lifted the most weights, and to facilitate comparative discussions of female weightlifters over time. Neither interest is served by retaining a phony "record" which never belonged in the first place. Or would you argue that the man was actually a woman as of the moment he recorded the record because that's what the weightlifting referee (or judge or whatever one calls them) presumed at the time?
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I'm not sure what you are saying is not true and that will be the core of the issue. I, of course, don't disagree that Selig's ruling would be retroactive. If it's not, it's meaningless. The question is what he will retroactively be changing.

So: here is my one and central claim. When the umpire called him safe, he WAS safe. The umpire was incorrect about the where the ball and the baserunner was. But he made the baserunner safe. This is why your final analogy is bad. A judge declaring a man to be a woman doesn't make the man a woman. An umpire declaring a baserunner safe, ipso facto, makes him safe.

If you agree with that claim, then it follows that Selig can say that from now on in, we should consider that runner to have been out. But he can't make him have been out. He can't make the next batter go away. He can't change what happened. And for that reason, he can declare the game to be perfect. He can even declare it to have been perfect, just as he can declare the sky to be pink. But he can't make it have been so.

Your need for the declaration shows why it would never fully achieve what you want it to. What happened, will always have been what happened and in this case, central to what did happen was the umpire's ruling, which was the reality. Selig can overrule the ruling, but he can't make its reality go away, and unlike the weightlifter situation, I am saying precisely, that when the umpire called him safe, that's what he was.

If you disagree with the claim that umpire calls make things what they are in baseball, take it up with the rulebooks, not with me.
 
Perhaps if we try really, really hard, we can get this to be as long as Finnegan's Wake, and hopefully as circular.
 
originally posted by Yule Kim:
Perhaps if we try really, really hard, we can get this to be as long as Finnegan's Wake, and hopefully as circular.
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...to wound the autumnal city.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Jonathan Loesberg:
originally posted by MLipton:
originally posted by Yule Kim:
Perhaps if we try really, really hard, we can get this to be as long as Finnegan's Wake, and hopefully as circular.
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...to wound the autumnal city.

Mark Lipton
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Samuel Delany never was no Jimmy Juice.
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Indeed not.

Mark Lipton
 
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