Almost more than any other sport, baseball has long attracted the interest of writers and intellectuals. Relatively few of them have been philosophers however. Alva Noe, a celebrated philosopher, here proposes to collect and rework his short articles and blog posts (many of which first appeared on npr.org) on baseball into a cohesive and accessible book that tries to tease out its deeper meanings - and to advance a view of what baseball ultimately is all about. A (...) basic theme will run through the book, which is that fundamentally baseball is concerned with questions of responsibility and liability - i.e. who gets credit or blame for a play. It is starting from this fundamental insight that Noe then ranges over diverse topics like the slowness of baseball and the virtues of boredom, why fans write down box scores, the meaning of the no-hitter, television replays, the aesthetics of ballparks, how we learn to 'see' baseball like we learn to look at art, the ethics of performance enhancing drugs, the nature of fandom, and reflections on rules and umpires. Noe's writing voice is informal and personal, and always puts the details of the sport before the ideas. Ultimately, his essays are part of a larger view of baseball as fundamentally a game about values - and not simply, as some would have it, a numbers game. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the ethics of performance-enhancing drugs in professional baseball from the perspective of ethical theories: Kantianism, libertarianism, and utilitarianism. It argues that none of these theories can explain why performance-enhancing drugs should be prohibited. The paper argues that virtue ethics is the best moral framework for understanding the ethical problem of performance-enhancing drugs and why their use should be prohibited.

In this essay, the author reflects on a decade’s old essay on baseball and bioethics inspired by a conversation with the late David Thomasma. In a reprise of his earlier paper, Fins worries that modernity has come to baseball with the advent of the pitch clock and that this innovation brings age discrimination to a timeless pastime.

Zusammenfassung Baseball ist in den USA Nationalsport. Das Spiel genießt seit über einhundert Jahren eine institutionelle Sonderstellung. Viele Amerikaner, vom gewöhnlichen Fan bis hin zu Wissenschaftlern und Intellektuellen, pflegen einen innigen emotionalen Zugang zum Baseball. Die folgende Studie zeichnet nach, wie Baseball zu nationaler und kultureller Besonderheit gelangte. In einem langen Prozess verwandelte die amerikanische Gesellschaft Baseball in ein patriotisches Ritual, das die Größe der amerikanischen Nation zum Ausdruck bringt und so der Herstellung und dem Erhalt (...) nationaler Integration dient. Um die emotional geladene Bedeutung des Spiels innerhalb der amerikanischen Kultur zu erfassen, wendet die Studie die Klassifikationstheorie von Emile Dürkheim an, nach der Individuen und Gesellschaften Phänomene besonderer Bedeutung wie etwas Heiliges behandeln. Der Blickwinkel der Studie ist der des außenstehenden Beobachters, der beschreibt, wie sich die amerikanische Gesellschaft durch das Medium Baseball selbst beschreibt. (shrink)

This paper applies two argumentation schemes, argument from fairness and argument from lack of knowledge (along with other schemes of lesser prominence) to model the reasoning given by Judge McCarthy supporting his decision to divide the proceeds of a homerun baseball in the case of Popov v. Hayashi. Several versions of both schemes are explained and discussed, and then applied to the argumentation given by Judge McCarthy as the basis of the reasoning used to arrive at his decision. The (...) scheme for argument from fairness is shown to be based on a special principle in Perelman’s theory of justice. (shrink)

Ted Williams breathes life into Camus' Sisyphus; Billy Martin's competitiveness recalls Niccolo Machiavelli's take on politics; Satchel Paige echoes wisdom Marcus Aurelius; and DiMaggio's personality cry out for resolution that Nietzsche's doctrine of perspectivism might have given. The book offers a very practical application of Western philosophy by examining these icons of American sport and culture"--Provided by publisher.

Among the niftiest arguments for scientific anti-realism is the ‘pessimistic induction’ (also sometimes called ‘the disastrous historical meta-induction’). Although various versions of this argument differ in their details (see, for example, Poincare 1952: 160, Putnam 1978: 25, and Laudan 1981), the argument generally begins by recalling the many scientific theories that posit unobservable entities and that at one time or another were widely accepted. The anti-realist then argues that when these old theories were accepted, the evidence for them was quite (...) persuasive – roughly as compelling as our current evidence is for our best scientific theories positing various unobservable entities. Nevertheless, the anti-realist argues, most of these old theories turned out to be incorrect in the unobservables they posited. Therefore, the anti-realist concludes that with regard to the theories we currently accept, we should believe that probably, most of them are likewise incorrect in the unobservable entities they posit. (This argument appeals to what our best current theories say about unobservables in order to show that the entities posited by some earlier theory are not real. So the argument takes the form of a reductio of the view that the apparent success of some scientific theory justifies our believing in its accuracy regarding unobservables.) Of course, this argument has been criticized on many grounds. Some have argued, for instance, that the scientific theories we currently accept are much better supported than were earlier scientific theories at the time they were accepted. In addition, some have argued that many scientific theories accepted justly in the past were in fact accurate.. (shrink)

What is happening to America's favorite national pastime? There seems to be something new afoot with baseball stadiums and the audiences who frequent them. A sense of nostalgia characterizes the creation of many new stadiums in the United States, and it accompanies a change in class among the audiences who fill those stadiums. Together, these two aspects are altering a sport that, in the words of cultural historian David Nasaw, traditionally represented a form of social democracy.1 In contrast, (...) class='Hi'>baseball today is transforming itself into a middle- and upper-class pastime for audiences, especially families, willing to spend enormous sums to…. (shrink)

Baseball rules prohibit pitchers from intentionally throwing at batters. When a pitcher does so, however, it is common practice for a pitcher on the opposing team to retaliate by throwing at the first player of the offending team to bat the next inning, and for umpires to ignore the rule forbidding that. I argue that player retaliation in the form of one for one is a better response to the initial violation than any other that is available, one for (...) one can be justified as payback and for anticipated good consequences, and everyone who becomes a professional baseball player has consented to the practice. From these claims, I conclude that one for one is in the best interest of baseball, it is best if umpires follow common practice and wink at the rule forbidding it, and players cannot complain if they are told to throw at batters in certain circumstances, or are thrown at in just those circumstances. (shrink)

David and I were at a conference on Amelia Island in Florida back in 1995. The meeting, sponsored by the University of Florida, was entitled, “Physician-Assisted Death: Implications for Patients, Care Providers, and Society,” a title that seems quaint given the controversy over the right to die engendered by the Schiavo case. But that's a different talk for a different time.

If the morphology of baseball is similar to that of the fairy tale, it is obviously not because baseball is a form of narrative art. As my title suggests, insofar as baseball resembles literature at all in the way it manifests itself, it is clearly much closer to drama. Baseball takes place within a fixed, carefully delimited space that may be improvised but is reserved specifically for the purpose wherever the game is institutionalized. It is an (...) ensemble performance carried out by specially trained "players" in front of an audience for whom the occasion is a festive event that occurs as a suspension of ordinary life. It possesses a plot that develops in a limited period of time from initial situation through complication to denouement and has a relatively large number of dramatis personae who are sent into the playing area at a given moment in order to perform specific roles. Dennis Porter, associate professor of French and comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has published widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century French and English novels. He is currently an NEH fellow and is working on two books: one on plot and ideology in the novel, the other, The Alibi of Crime, on detective fiction. (shrink)

In response to the article by Scofield, I consider the that, how, and why of ethics consultation, moral expertise, and the rules of the game. The question still to be engaged is, how does all of this work out for patients and families?

I begin this review with a brief overview of the book itself, followed by a discussion of its pedagogical usefulness as a text in Philosophy of Sport and Philosophy of Religion courses. I then move on to discuss a few points in the book that I take to be especially interesting and/or problematic from a philosophical point of view.

Baseball is an exceptionally superstitious sport. But what are we to say about the rationality of such superstitious behavior? On the one hand, we can trace much of the superstitious behavior we see in baseball to a type of irrational belief. But how deep does this supposed irrationality run? It appears that superstitions may occupy various places on the spectrum of irrationality — from motivated ignorance to self-deception to psychological compulsion —depending on the type of superstitious belief at (...) work and on the means of formation and/or maintenance of that belief. In this paper, I first examine the various types of superstitions we find in baseball culture, in an attempt to see what these different kinds of superstitions might have in common. I then lay out a working definition of superstition within a baseball context by examining the general psychology underlying such behavior, in an attempt to ascertain the possible causal and/or motivational reasons for the acquisition of superstitious beliefs and practices in sports like baseball. Finally, I argue that, in addition to superstitions acquired merely via the workings of a type of biasing mechanism, there also appear to be genuine cases of superstition acquisition and maintenance, in which the agent may be said to be actively engaged. I claim that in at least some cases of superstitious belief, it is possible that agents are employing an awareness of their own rational epistemic standards to allow themselves to believe and act irrationally, and that the result of such “pseudo-rational” behavior is perhaps a form of self-deceptive superstitious belief. (shrink)

In 2010, pitcher Armando Galarraga was denied a perfect game when umpire Jim Joyce called Jason Donald safe at first with two outs in the bottom of the 9th. In the numerous media discussions that followed, Joyce’s ‘blown’ call was commonly referred to as ‘mistaken’, ‘wrong’, or otherwise erroneous. However, this use of language makes some not uncontroversial ontological assumptions. It claims that the fact that a runner is safe or out has nothing to do with the ruling of the (...) umpire himself, but rather with some state of the universe that does not depend on the umpire for its existence. In this paper, I recast the problem as a version of Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma and argue that the view implied by the above assertions is actually misguided. Instead, I hope to show that an alternative view – what I call ‘restricted umpire voluntarism’ – is actually more in line with the spirit of the game of baseball and is not as counterintuitive as it may appear.. (shrink)

The central question of the Euthyphro is “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or pious because it is loved?” A baseball analogy explains this to students: “Does the umpire say ‘Out’ because the runner is out, or is the runner out because the umpire says ‘Out’?” The former makes the relevant knowledge public, making Socrates the appropriate secular moral authority, while the latter makes it religious, invoking Euthyphro’s expertise. Foucault’s aphorism that power is knowledge (...) illuminates how the aristocracy stands behind Euthyphro, while Socrates empowers the democracy. An abstract epistemological question has important political consequences. (shrink)

Few sports-related events have generated as much controversy as the steroid crisis in baseball. Both ardent fans and casual observers wonder why professional baseball players would choose to use such substances when their use was viewed as outside the bounds of fair play. This article attempts to answer that question by applying concepts from the area of organizational culture. Understanding the culture of baseball and the ways leaders embedded and strengthened that culture adds insight into the decisions (...) by athletes to engage in steroid use. In general, such use was consistent with the already-existing culture. In addition, key decisions and events likely created the conditions in which steroid use was more likely. (shrink)

The issue of income justice in professional sports, while a topic of high ethical and social interest, is nevertheless not at the forefront of research. The differences between team and individual sports are significant, and this article will focus on team sports, where income is generally set by fixed contracts rather than bonuses or money prizes. First, I will illustrate the overall problem by presenting some figures on the relation of athletes' salaries from Major League Baseball (MLB) to the (...) median income of the overall population in the USA. I will then outline a model of income justice based on David Miller's definition of social justice, and will discuss two separate claims against which player salaries ought to be justified: those of fellow US citizens and those of fellow MLB players. Incomes are just if they fulfill both demands. Finally, I conclude that the disproportionately high salaries of professional athletes such as those in MLB are socially unjust, and therefore should be limited either by the governing bodies of the respective leagues or by the state. (shrink)

This is the first book to offer a detailed analysis of the “greatest of all time” (GOAT) concept as it is employed both in and out of sports. For specificity, I focus on baseball primarily, with additional materials on how the GOAT concept applies to philosophy and music. The general principles I uncover apply to many areas. The book’s purpose is to reveal the hidden non-mathematical concepts and principles that lie behind our GOAT judgments—and then to understand the subjectivity, (...) objectivity, psychology, and limits of GOAT lists. The book is half baseball, half philosophy, and written for a general audience. (shrink)

This chapter examines Australia’s transition from a period of national mourning to a state of melancholia. The chapter explores how economic reforms, such as the Prices and Income Accord and neoliberal deregulation, led to financial instability and unemployment, fostering public anxiety and a sense of marginalisation. The High Court’s Mabo decision further intensified fears of displacement among certain demographics. Prime Minister Paul Keating‘s leadership, characterised by a progressive vision, failed to address the rising national anxiety, culminating in the 1996 election (...) of John Howard. Howard’s emphasis on a ‘comfortable and relaxed’ national identity resonated with an electorate weary of introspection and change. His reluctance to engage with symbolic acts of reconciliation and acknowledgement of historical injustices signalled a shift from collective mourning to a denial of past wrongs. This period marked a retreat from public engagement with Australia’s colonial history, leading to a national melancholia characterised by denial and the privatisation of public spaces and services. The chapter argues that this shift had profound implications for Australia’s national identity and its approach to social equity and historical accountability. (shrink)

This paper examines failure in pedagogy and baseball; how it is experienced by teachers and ball players, and how the discourses surrounding failure in education ask teachers to do the impossible—teach in the absence of failure. Failure is inherent to baseball, pedagogy, and life itself, and we aim to offer visions of pedagogy that are sustained by relationality and the latent possibilities of an unfolding present-future. Primarily, we explore A) what the inherent presence of failure in baseball (...) can disclose about coping with failure, and B) the extent to which alternative visions of education and pedagogy can generatively trouble the zero-sum failure discourses that feel overwhelmingly present in education. (shrink)

I review six bad arguments for banning performance-enhancing drugs from sports--and a seventh good one.

J.S. Russell’s classic articles, ‘The Concept of a Call in Baseball’ and ‘Are Rules All an Umpire Has to Work With?’, are canonical texts in the jurisprudence of sport, the intersection of philosophy of sport and philosophy of law that investigates formal organized sports as legal systems. This essay, a contribution to a symposium in Russell’s honor, pays homage to those pathbreaking articles, and to their author, by taking up a topic that they concern but do not squarely address: (...) the nature of rules and their contents. It argues that the rules of sports—what a given sport permits, prohibits, empowers, and so forth—are not fully determined by, and do not always correspond to, the communicative contents of rulebook provisions. Simply put, what the rules are is not always identical to what the rulebook provisions say or mean. Although the account of the determination or grounding of rules’ contents that this essay sketches is friendly to Russell’s core ‘internalist’ commitments, it is not consistent with all that Russell seems to say or to presuppose on the subject, and invites a modest rethinking of his account of umpire (or officiator) discretion. (shrink)

We explore men’s negotiation of emotional expression within larger social discourses around masculinity. Drawing on the phenomenon of men’s crying within the competitive sports context, we demonstrate that although the prevailing image of men’s emotion is one of constricted expression and experience, inexpressivity is representative neither of typical nor ideal masculinity in contemporary dominant culture. We first review the literature on prevailing cultural beliefs about normative male emotional expression, then focus on literature specific to men’s tears. Turning to a discussion (...) of masculinity and sports participation, we offer possible explanations for why counter normative emotional expressions may be particularly prevalent and public in the context of men’s competitive sports, despite wider cultural discourses that appear to discourage men’s openly expressive behavior. (shrink)

This paper interprets the batting styles of Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams utilizing key concepts of the Michael Polanyi Reader. In doing so it demonstrates the thoughtful organization of Polanyi’s work in the Reader, on the one hand, and the explanatory and descriptive power of Polanyi’s thought about practices on the other. Key Polanyi concepts utilized in this paper include: indwelling, the specifiable and the unspecifiable, connoisseurship, a-critical and critical judgment, knowledge and knowing as action, understanding, and commitment with its (...) personal and universal poles. (shrink)

I have been reading Timothy Williamson on legal evidence. And I have found a regress, I believe, an ancient regress even. He writes, "For brevity, I will use 'proposition' as a blanket term for whatever content is to be assessed against a body of evidence. Thus, we can ask how probable a proposition is on a given body of evidence." Take "Kelly is guilty": a proposition. About it one can ask, what is the evidence for it? But what is evidence? (...) Williamson writes: "Not all propositions constitute evidence. It is standardly assumed that any proposition inconsistent with the evidence is false, which presumes that all evidence is true." So evidence consists of a true proposition or a set of true propositions. But then don't you get a problem along these lines? Prosecutor makes a statement of the form, "Accept proposition P1." P1 is a proposition, so what is the evidence? Prosecutor makes a statement of the form, "Evidence is true proposition P2." But that is a proposition and so one can ask, what is the evidence for it? Evidence is a proposition or set of propositions, so Prosecutor makes a statement of the form, "Evidence is true proposition P3." But that is a proposition and so one can ask, what is the evidence for it? And so on. (My title quotes a poem by Agnes Eva Savich, published by Under the Bashō. The relevant paper by Williamson is "The content of legal evidence."). (shrink)