The Farce of Mercy Rules in Pro Sports

This past week, we saw a major league baseball hitter receive vitriol because they swung at a 3-0 pitch when the team was already up by about 11 runs.  Thus was violating the unwritten, “mercy rule” where teams are supposed to stop trying so hard to pound the other when the run differential is high enough.  Put simply, I think mercy rules (especially in professional sports) is utter garbage.  

In professional sports, we’re always talking about grown-up adults who are usually making an obscene amount of money.  In order to make it to the Major leagues in baseball, you have to play at the minor league level (usually 3-4 levels), so you should be adequately prepared, or you shouldn’t be elevated.  If you are in the major leagues, you should take your beating.  Plus.  Getting your ass handed to you once in awhile is sometimes the most valuable lesson.  And if you are pounding the other team, you should continue doing your best.  Hit homers on any pitch that’s juicy enough (because home runs don’t grow on trees).  Steal bases.  Play hard. All the time.  Like a professional.  You are there to win and do your best, not to tap the other team, who is also full of professionals, on the back.  Come back and be better next time.  

You want a mercy rule in little league, or pee-wee?  Okay, I can bite on that one.  Kids need to learn the maturity to handle failure, and sometimes that means filtering the experience in manageable doses.  But make no mistake, the participation trophy mentality does little good to build both athletes and humans who can withstand hardship in life.  We should be using failure as the learning experience that is can most richly be (even in school, but that’s a rant for later, or perhaps further down).  Coaches and mentor their players through failure, talking about how to react appropriately to it, and how to overcome it.  They shouldn’t be placating kids with overblown notions that life is fair, or that the kids are better than they are.  Again, this must be appropriately filtered for the level and the emotional maturity (or lack thereof) of the group in question, but the goal of growth and learning should never be abandoned.  

We all benefit from getting our butts handed to us once in awhile.  But the skill of dealing with that is developed over time.  One does not come with the ability to channel failure in a positive way.  To decide how much of it you take with you, and how to not let it completely consume you.  This must be mentored and fostered.  Overcoming failure is sometimes even more rewarding than sheer triumph.  Because once you have experience with it, you know how to work through it again and again, and eventually you have less of them happen.  And that growth is sometimes the most merciful thing that one can teach another.