Let’s Talk participation trophies and mercy rules.
Shakespeare wrote that “sweet mercy is nobility’s true badge.” I get that, and in kids’ sports, we don’t want to be bullies, so when one team is really pouring it on another youth team, we have “mercy rules” in place to end the game and end the suffering. The procedure has sparked a compassion vs. competition debate and while some argue that mercy endings don’t scar the child on the losing team, others counter with the supposition that mercy rules and participation trophies don’t prepare kids for the “real world,” in which not everyone wins and not everyone receives a trophy in life.
Others argue that finishing a game early with running clocks or outright mercy game-ending keeps bench kids from getting more playing time and penalizes the more talented kids from seeing what they can do and what records they can break. Some maintain that it dilutes the purity of the game, and that starters still need playing time to prepare for their playoffs. There are records to be broken, and in this day of stat accentuation, college recruitment may depend on padded statistics.
Others suggest that no one likes bullies, and it is up to the coaches to see that a game that is out of hand doesn’t go off the rails completely.
Several years ago, the Colorado High School Activities Association surveyed coaches and ADs, and 86 percent wanted the option of mercy rules.
Studies have concluded that mercy rules, running clocks and not pouring it on can have beneficial effects for the kids on the short end of the score, but does that ring true for adult professionals?
Last week, the Toronto Blue Jays hung an historic hurt on the Boston Red Sox, beating them 28-5. The score was 10-0 after three innings, and after an 11-run fifth, the Jays were up 25-3, at which point MLB Network anchor Greg Amsinger called for the mercy rule to be invoked. Mind you, these are skilled, physically and mentally prepared, highly paid adult professional baseball players we are talking about, not Little Leaguers, whom we want to protect from scorn, ridicule and the hurt feelings of a blowout loss.
Amsinger argued that the game that “isn’t over ‘til it’s over,” should end when a team takes a big lead. He never played in “The Show.” Ex-Major Leaguer Dan Plesac opted for “going for the record.” The game threatened the modern 30-run MLB record scored by the Texas Rangers against the Baltimore Orioles on August 22, 2007 (30-3 final). The all-time record is 36 runs by the Chicago Colts (now Cubs), June 29, 1897, vs. the Louisville Colonels, who scored 7.
You want to talk about blowouts? The most lopsided football score of all time is widely considered to be Georgia Tech’s 222-0 win over Cumberland in 1916. Cumberland's baseball team had demolished Georgia Tech earlier that year, 22–0, under allegations that Cumberland used professionals as ringers, and Tech coach John Heisman figured payback was earned. His halftime pep talk addressed that they were ahead 126-0, but, “…you just can’t tell what those Cumberland players have up their sleeves. They may spring a surprise, so be alert, men.” By the way, they shortened the second half by six minutes.
In high school football, in 1927, Haven High School (Kansas) beat Sylvia High (Kansas) 256-0. In college baseball, Nebraska beat Chicago State 50-3 in 1999 and invoked the mercy rule after 6½ innings, and in high school baseball, in 1928, Atlantic (Iowa) defeated nearby Griswold (Iowa) in baseball 109-0. In girls high school basketball, Froid Medicine Lake (Montana) beat Brocktown High School 102-0 in 2017. In NCAA hoops, Loyola Chicago trounced Tennessee Tech 111-42 in the 1963 NCAA tournament, and Troy State beat DeVry Institute 258-141 in a 1992 regular-season game.
Pro sports is a haven of “no mercy” slaughters. The 1990 49ers demolished the Denver Broncos 55-10 … no mercy. Montana over Elway. And NFL’s biggest massacre was in the 1940 NFL championship game in which the Chicago Bears dismantled the Washington Redskins 73-0. In the NBA, the Memphis Grizzlies crushed the OKC Thunder 152-79 on Dec. 2, 2021 – a 73-point margin. In the NHL, you have to go back to January 23, 1944, when the Detroit Redwings blanked the New York Rangers 15-0.
Australia once beat Namibia 142-0 in the 2003 Rugby World Cup. And in 2002, in an international soccer match, Adema nipped Stade Olympique de l’Emyrne 149-0 – yes, 149 goals in a soccer match. The kicker is, this was a protest by the LOSING team over a 2-2 result they had the game before in which the referee awarded a late penalty. So, Olympique never let Adema touch the ball and scored all 149 goals against themselves … mercy.
Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths in 1973, and he didn’t stop running and help the other horses feel better.
Lighten up for the kids, but in the pros, if they can’t take a bad beat, perhaps they are in the wrong profession. What do you think? Mercy for kids and not the pros? Take it easy on the pros, too? Or School of Hard Knocks for all athletes? Let me know how you stand; contact me at mike.blake@mountvernonnews.com.
