Tom Brady, Shoeless Joe, and the Snowplow Game

You shall not have in your bag two kinds of weights, large and small. You shall not have in your house two kinds of measures, large and small. You shall have only a full and honest weight; you shall have only a full and honest measure, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. For all who do such things, all who act dishonestly, are abhorrent to the Lord your God.
Deuteronomy 25:13-16

Legend has it that when “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, one of the greatest baseball players of all time, left the court building after testifying to a grand jury about his part in a conspiracy to throw the 1919 World Series, a young boy reached out from the crowd and pulled on his coat sleeve. As his eyes filled with tears, the boy pleaded with his hero, “Say it ain’t so, Joe. Say it ain’t so.”Joe Jackson answered sadly, “Sorry, kid, I’m afraid it is.”

Accounts differ on the wording, and the more likely consensus of baseball historians is that the exchange never took place.

Although Jackson pleaded guilty, many have had a hard time believing that he did anything to contribute to the White Sox losing. He batted .375, played errorless ball in the outfield and even threw a runner out at the plate.

Unless you have been far off the grid for the past week, you have heard (repeatedly) about the long national nightmare known variously as “Ballghazi,” “Deflategate,” or “the latest Patriots scandal.” Even though I know that if you haven’t already heard about it that’s probably because you don’t want to hear about it, I’ll repeat just the briefest outline. The Patriots are accused of intentionally taking some of the air out of the footballs they used to defeat the Indianapolis Colts (45-7) last Sunday.

I know. When you see the score, it makes you wonder whose footballs were deflated. But it’s not about the final score. To paraphrase the passage from Deuteronomy, “You shall only have the full and honest pressure in the football.”

Yesterday morning, Patriots Coach Bill Belichick’s press conference was covered live by WGBH. That would be National Public Radio’s WGBH. At quarterback Tom Brady’s press conference yesterday afternoon he was questioned more closely than a supreme court nominee.

And Brady did what Shoeless Joe did not do; he said that it wasn’t so.

As I listened, I believed him. He was careful with his words. He was obviously nervous and upset. He was gracious. Turns out I am apparently in a very small minority on this one.

The sports commentators, including those from local media outlets, all thought he was lying. On one of the national shows, Spencer Tillman dismissed Brady’s denial with a reference to the culture of cheating in New England that goes back to the “snowplow game.”

Seriously?

The snowplow game has always been a personal favorite of mine. I think the Patriots were playing the Dolphins in Foxboro. It was snowing hard. The Patriots had hired a guy on work-release from Walpole State Prison (a detail that makes the story even better) to plow snow off of the line markers during time-outs. Late in the game the Patriots were getting ready for a field goal and when the snow plow guy cleared the yard markers he took a little detour to clear the spot from which John Smith would be kicking. Taking advantage of the bare ground, Smith split the uprights for a Patriots win.

Good times. Thanks for the memories, Spencer Tillman, but Tom Brady was in kindergarten when the snowplow guy cleared a spot for John Smith.

Mark Brunelle’s condemnation was less sweeping, but more direct. “I did not believe what Tom had to say” Brunelle began. “Those balls were deflated. Somebody had to do it. I don't believe there's an equipment manager in the NFL that would, on his own initiative, deflate a ball without the starting QB's approval ... That football is our livelihood. If you don't feel good about throwing that ball? Your success on the football field can suffer from that."

If you see the world as black and white, then the Patriots must have cheated. When the referees checked the balls at half-time, they were underinflated. But sports is not just black and white. There is a lot of gray. The gray area is not cheating; it is gamesmanship.

The rules on gamesmanship are a little different. Aaron Rodgers, by his own admission, prefers his footballs to be overinflated. Sometimes when the referees check before the game, they take air out to bring the inflation pressure within the rules. Sometimes, one assumes, they leave his footballs a little harder than the rules allow. No one thinks Aaron Rodgers is cheating.

So where do we draw the line?

I think that’s pretty clear. If the footballs were deflated after the referees checked them, then that is cheating. If the referees passed them and they were underinflated, then that is gamesmanship.

According to the NFL, a referee checked the Patriots’ footballs before the game and they were okay. But we don’t know what that means. Did the ref put a gauge on every football? Or did he give them a squeeze and think they were okay? That’s a big difference.

Of course, I want to believe that the ref passed on the footballs and they weren’t checked with a gauge until half-time. When I think about the alternative, I feel like that little kid questioning Shoeless Joe.

A Lament for Lance

Your glory, O Israel, lies slain upon your high places!
How the mighty have fallen!

I Samuel 1:19

My best bicycle is a 1999 carbon fiber Trek, painted in the colors of the U.S. Postal team. The frame is basically identical to the one Lance Armstrong rode to victory in the 1999 Tour de France.

But now it turns out he didn’t really win that race, or any of the next six Tours. He didn’t give Jan Ullrich “the look” and then just ride away on Alpe de Huez. And I assume he also didn’t get third place in a thoroughly amazing comeback a couple of years ago.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency has witnesses who will testify that he took drugs, and Armstrong has decided not to fight those charges, so USADA has declared him guilty. And his incredible records will be erased.

I read an article by a non-cycling sportswriter about how fans might be willing to forgive Armstrong, but those who competed against him might not be as generous. Which sounds plausible, except that when you review the record of second and third place finishers in those seven Tours, you find that all but one has already been involved in some sort of doping allegation. Several of them have already served suspensions.

Word is that Tyler Hamilton and George Hincapie were both willing to testify that they saw Lance use banned substances. So the most tested athlete in the history of sports, who never failed a drug test, was doping. He is guilty. I don’t think there can be any real doubt about that now. But it’s also true that USADA’s pursuit of Armstrong has been a witch hunt from the beginning. Why were they still investigating him seven years after his last Tour victory?

When they begin reassigning the Tour victories from 1999 to 2005, will they investigate those “winners” as relentlessly as they have investigated Armstrong?

Zen question of the day: Who was the last Tour de France Champion to win without doping?

Contrary to the popular perception, I don’t believe that cycling is very different from other sports. The importance of endurance does lend itself to performance enhancing drugs, but one of the big reasons that more cyclists are caught is that the testing is more stringent. And for some reason folks seem to get more upset about PED’s in cycling and track, than in other sports. When he was playing for the Patriots, Rodney Harrison tested positive for human growth hormone, and no one cared. Nobody said, as writers have said of Armstrong, that his legacy was built on a lie.

I was amazed when Armstrong decided to come out of retirement and ride in the Tour again in 2009. Knowing how zealously the anti-doping agencies had pursued him, I thought they would surely find a way to catch him at something. And when they came up empty, I believed that he had to be clean.

Sports need to be monitored for drug use. It’s the only way to protect the athletes from themselves. And it’s important to try and keep a level playing field. But at some point it should be over. The athletes are tested. They pass or they fail, and the trophies are awarded. It’s over. Disqualifying someone thirteen years after the race is just crazy.

Boogaard's Brain

Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.I Corinthians 9:24-27Derek Boogaard was known to hockey fans as one of the fiercest fighters ever to play in the NHL.

He died last May at the age of 28. He killed himself. We don’t know whether he did it on purpose or by mistake, but he died of a drug and alcohol overdose.

His brain was examined by researchers from Boston University. The results came in a conference call to the family in October. Derek Boogaard had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, commonly known as C.T.E., a disease related to Alzheimer’s. Positive diagnosis can only be made posthumously, but researchers say the symptoms include memory loss, impulsiveness, mood swings, and addiction.

More than 20 former professional football players have been posthumously diagnosed with C.T.E., as well as many boxers. What makes the Boogaard case different, and very troubling, is that he was still in his 20’s, in what should have been the prime of his career. The researchers told Derek’s family that they were shocked to see such advanced disease in someone so young.

The results set off a flurry of investigations, hand-wringing, and well-intentioned pronouncements from people in the hockey world. Almost everyone agrees that something must be done. What is surprising to me is the almost unanimous agreement that whatever is done must not change “the character of the game.” What they mean by that is that fighting is and will remain integral to NHL hockey.

Fighting is not permitted in youth or high school or college. It is not permitted in European hockey or in the Olympics. And everyone loves Olympic hockey. But it belongs in the NHL.

Which causes me to wonder if Derek Boogaard isn’t the only guy who took too many shots to the head.

Fighting is not the only cause of head injuries in hockey. It may not even be the major cause. Players are bigger and faster, and the collisions are more damaging.

And all of this is part of a larger pattern in sports.

More than ever, players talk about intimidation. It’s not about checking, it’s about “hitting.” And in football, no one tackles anymore; they “hit” the guy with the ball. If one player hits another with enough force, it is referred to as “blowing him up.” Even basketball coaches and analysts talk about one team intimidating another.

Football helmets, which were introduced to prevent injuries, and began life as leather padded caps, are now used as weapons. The highlights shown over and over are not of tackles, they are of flying bodies and huge collisions. It’s exciting and it sells.

Do you remember Ted Johnson? He played linebacker for the Patriots and he was once a Super Bowl champion. But repeated concussions turned him into a shell of his former self. He lost his career, his wife, and his whole life collapsed.

The NHL and the NFL are both concerned about concussions. And they should be. They are looking at rule changes, and they should look at rule changes.

But in a broader perspective, this is about our vision and our values as a culture. Why do we find the violence so appealing? How many Derek Boogaards or Ted Johnsons will it take before we decide that we have had enough?