Jackie Robinson West player DJ Butler takes a peek from behind the curtain as he and the team watch the events on stage at a rally at Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park on Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2014 in Chicago. (Jose M. Osorio/Chicago Tribune/TNS)Wednesday morning a lot of sports fans woke up to alerts on their cellphones that were disappointing, even heartbreaking.
The Jackie Robinson West Little League team which won the U.S. title this summer, the first all-African-American team to do so, had its title vacated after the Little League uncovered evidence that the team knowingly fielded players from outside its boundaries.
Personally, I was disappointed by the story. The Little League World Series is the kind of sporting event that breeds love, not hate. Even when rooting for one team or another, it's hard to really dislike the opponent like is so common for college and professional sports.
The stories of these teams and players are often touching and inspiring, as was the case for Jackie Robinson West.
But now that story will forever be tainted.
It's just deserts, really, for a sports fan culture that puts winning above all else. We justify all sorts of things if it means winning games. Whether it's cutting players or uprooting their lives unnecessarily or withdrawing contract or scholarship offers, we as fans overlook it if it means winning.
So with such a high priority on winning at all costs, should we really even be surprised that teams are cheating or fudging the rules?
Is it really all that shocking that teams will go into the gray area of the rules, even blatantly beyond them, for the all-important "W"?
Whether it's the New England Patriots allegedly deflating footballs or the Atlanta Falcons admittedly pumping in fake crowd noise during home games or Anderson Silva failing a drug test for steroids (which he denies), we've seen a whole rash of instances in just the past few weeks of teams and athletes going outside the lines so they can deliver a victory or two.
Can we really blame them? After all, we sort of did this.
Winners are glorified. Winners make money. Winners become immortalized long after their careers and lives are over.
Losers are forgotten. Losers get fired, cut, traded and waived. They struggle financially and on the field, they get booed in the stadiums and insulted on social media.
If you were an athlete, could you really say beyond even a sliver of a doubt that you wouldn't do all that you could do avoid being a loser?
In an interview with Dan Patrick Wednesday morning, NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. said that his team has to find ways to bend the rule book without breaking it.
That's the simple truth of things. Teams need to find that competitive edge however they can get it, even if that means stepping into that gray area between definitely a violation and maybe just frowned upon.
Sometimes teams blatantly break the rules, like Jackie Robinson West did last summer. These instances are unforgivable.
But in those other cases, when teams, athletes and coaches slip through loopholes and bend the rule as far as it can be bent before it snaps, can we really sit on a moral high horse and condemn them?
After all, with the win-or-go-home culture we've created as sports fans, didn't we drive them to this in the first place?
Reach the columnist at icbeck@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @icbeck21.
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