Ethical Ranks

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Rank Baseball's Ethical Scenarios

Want to play the "Baseball Ethics" game? Two randomly selected actual ethical incidents from baseball's storied history are listed below. Please tell us which one you consider to be "worse." In other words, select the one you think is less ethical than the other. This exercise originally ran in August, 2008. After 35,000 votes, we compiled the results in this article.

This material was developed for an American Studies course at Carleton College. You can read about it in this article. The entire bibliography of sources is on this page.

Here are your first two choices. Select the less ethical one and you'll be given the opportunity to make even more choices. Thanks for helping.

1. Pop-up decoy

Players have "acted" in an effort to gain advantage since the earliest days of baseball. To wit: With a runner on first running with the pitch, the ball is popped up in the infield. The shortstop pretends it is a ground ball, and the runner comes sliding into second. When the ball is caught, the runner is easily doubled off first. Bobby Grich loved working this play. Note this sort of decoy is perfectly legal and considered "acceptable" by baseball veterans. (Wulf)

2. Bought and sold

Throughout most of baseball's storied history, owners made large profits off of baseball, but the players themselves were bound to their teams. This was known as the reserve clause. A player had to re-sign with his team, and could only change teams if he were released or traded. This left the players with no leverage to negotiate contracts. The best a player could do was to hold out. But that strategy had limited effectiveness in that the player had no choice but to re-sign or leave baseball.

No surprise, the players were often exploited by owners who colluded to keep salaries low. Baseball star Curt Flood attempted to battle the reserve clause in the late 1960s. He was traded from St. Louis to Philadelphia but refused to report to the Phillies. Instead he demanded that he be made a free agent. In a 1969 letter to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn, Flood wrote, "After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel I'm a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes."

Flood took Kuhn to court, eventually losing in a 5-3 Supreme Court decision. Flood never played baseball again but he paved the way for others. The reserve clause was finally over-ruled in 1975.