Dumbest argument in this thread. If you run out onto your neighbor’s front lawn and tackle him, taking him hard onto the turf, is that assault? Yes. But it happens dozens of times in a football game. Obviously the same rules don’t apply in the context of a sporting event.
I think it was a cowardly cheapshot, but I don’t think this happens enough to be a real problem. The McSorley incident, the last horrible cheapshot, was almost 4 years ago. Shit, I’m sure we can find a pattern in any sport where something bad happens every 4 or 5 years.
True. And these events do not really call for an overhaul of the rules or the game itself.
But when they happen, the offenders should face the music.
Oh, hell yes.
I think we have a new winner for the dumbest argument award:
Show me where the laws against assault & battery say “except in sporting events”.
Tackling is written in to the rules of football. When you agree to play, you give consent to be tackled. Just like when you agree to have sex, you give up your right to claim you were raped. What happened here can’t be explained away like that.
Saying that “you’ve got to expect incident like this every so often” is like saying “you’ve got to expect a certain amount of crime in the ghettos”. Well, yeah - but that doesn’t mean you don’t arrest and prosecute when you catch somebody grabbing a lady’s purse.
So, should a pitcher who throws at a batters head be suspended and charged with assault?
I think he meant “face the music” in terms of a suspension, fine, and most likely having a ball thrown at his head for retribution.
The issue here is one of determining what a reasonable person would define as the level of implied consent, which in baseball isn’t always easy to see.
The idea that Todd Bertuzzi should not be charged because we don’t charge football players for tackling each other is preposterous. We don’t charge football players for tackling each other because they are quite obviously consenting to be tackled. A reasonable person - actually, any SANE person - would think it fairly obvious that if you voluntarily play football, you are consenting, by nature of the sport, to be tackled and blocked. Hockey players are clearly consenting to be checked, hooked, and pushed around.
There is no precedent at all, however, to believe that hockey players are consenting to be ambushed from behind with a sucker punch, have their head deliberately driven into the ice and THEN be punched again while lying unconscious in a pool of their own blood. Bertuzzi HAS to be charged, or else the Vancouver Police aren’t doing their jobs. Frankly, it’s open and shut. We have direct evidence of premeditation. There’s motive. Bertuzzi has a long history of disgusting on-ice behaviour, going back to his days in the OHL, and he’s a liar besides (“I didn’t mean to hurt him!”) The video evidence is hard to refute. We have video evidence that even after Moore was clearly horribly injured, Bertuzzi tried to keep punching him. What’s to doubt here?
To get back to your baseball player, the answer it: it depends. Batters in Major League Baseball know pitchers will pitch inside to move them off the plate; that’s why they wear helmets. I would argue that their is implied consent for pitchers to take the risk of throwing inside. as a result of which players will get hit from time to time. But if you could actually prove a pitcher was deliberately trying to bean someone (which would not be easy to prove) I would absolutely, 100% agree that pitcher should be charged with assault. You can kill someone doing that, and in fact someone WAS killed by a pitch once (Ray Chapman) and other men have been very, very badly hurt (Dickie Thon, Tony Conigliaro, etc.) Beanballs are considered dirty pool today, and go beyond any reasonable level of violence. If you wanna hit someone, hit him in the ass (easier to hit anyway.)
Do they constent to become paraliyzed?
In otherwards shit happens in the context of the game. What Bertuzzi did was a cowardly, no doubt about it, but it wasn’t totally out of the character of the game. We’ve occasinonally seen cheap shots like this before, and we’ll continue to see them in the future.
But for fucks sake, leave the cops out of this, I don’t see why they should be involved.
Can you show with any degree of certainty that the pitcher intended to hit the batter in the head? Or was said pitcher simply brushing the batter back off the plate? Or did the ball just get away from him? In the last World Series a pitcher threw a ball that missed it’s mark by a full 90 feet! Shit happens.
So, to answer your question, no.
However, should the batter freak out and assault the catcher with the bat, then yes. Some things are clearly a part of the game, other things just happen *during * a game and should not be excused.
Depends on the rules of the game. If fighting is within the parameters of the NHL’s rules, and it doesn’t lay out specifically what is and isn’t allowed, then it’s not open and shut at all.
As you say, it all depends on a reasonable level of implied consent. But it’s perfectly obvious that the same laws do not apply within the context of a sporting event. To what extent they apply may depend on that concept of implied consent, but all the same the rules change. A tackle is not a tackle is not a tackle, so I’d say that it’s preposterous to argue that a sucker-punch is a sucker-punch is a sucker-punch.
Are you saying that a punch to the face, any punch, is legal according to the rules of hockey? Can you provide a rule number?
And I can see no reasonable way of arguing that this was NOT a sucker-punch. Moore had his backed turned and was skating away when Bertuzzi grabbed him by the back of the jersey and punched him in the side of the head. This guy had no way of defending himself, as he never saw the attack. He only felt the blow.
I don’t see the NHL doing anything soon about fighting, for fights sell. If the market changes such that folks stop tuning in due to the fights, then the league will clean up its act, but as long as folks prefer watching games with fights, then the league will not make serious efforts to stop fighting.
The NHL is a business, folks.
Late hits and clipping are against the rules in football; should assault charges be filed whenever that happens?
Back when I was in law school, we had pretty much this exact same discussion in Torts when we were covering intentional torts (e.g., assault). The answer, as some have alluded to, boils down to consent – what types of harmful and offensive touchings have the players consented to? Pretty much everything allowed by the rules would be included in that. So would some touchings that are illegal by the rules of the game but are nonetheless accepted as part of the game. Exactly where the line between “against the rules but legally acceptable” and “assault” is drawn is, like so many things in the law, extremely vague and subject to individual judgment.
Well, fighting is clearly only “within the parameters of the NHL’s rules” insofar as there are clearly laid out penalties for engaging in fighting. That said, there is a certain level of acceptance for fisticuffs in hockey. However, that acceptance is for a behaviour totally unrelated to the incident in question. What is accepted (to a degree) is a couple of guys squaring off, dropping gloves, and having at it. This acceptance, such as it is, is entirely irrelevant in this case, since the behaviour in question bears no resemblance to squaring off and fighting.
I think if charges are laid Bertuzzi should and will be found guilty. If he wants to get retribution for something that happened to a teammate in a past game, he needs to stick to thundering bodychecks.
Count me as one who used to avidly watch hockey when the Maple Leafs were a dominant force in the NHL, but lost interest since their demise. Back in the 60’s, teams didn’t take on players for the primary role of “enforcer”, but there sure were a lot of spontaneous fights, mosts brief. I never enjoyed that aspect of hockey.
Having said that, focusing the criminal blame for the result of a punch onto Todd Bertuzzi is absolutely bullshit. If I understand his role on the Canucks correctly, it was his job to cover for his less combative team mates by intimidating opposition players through his physical presence and skills which includes violence. Most teams seem to have such a player and it seems to me that the NHL does little to discourage the practice. That is where the criminal liability should exist. Amongst the owners of the league.
Bertuzzi did his job. He did it well.
No. Bertuzzi is paid almost $7 million to score and help the team win (hopefully the Stanley Cup). He failed misserably at that. The Canucks were poised to maybe make it to the conference finals and without Bert, they’ll be lucky to make it out of the first round.
Todd Bertuzzi may be a huge hulking player who has about 3 inches and 30 pounds on Steve Moore, but you are completely wrong about Todd Bertuzzi’s role on the Canucks. He’s an all-star forward coming off a 46 goal season, not the team’s designated enforcer. (Moore had already fought Matt Cooke earlier in the game.)
The Canucks were fined $250,000 by the league, which is a big deal considered their tight budget. I wish Canucks coach Marc Crawford had been disciplined. He had two weeks to defuse this situation, did nothing to rein in his players once they were down 9-2, and continued to send out players to start up trouble even after Moore was carried off the ice.
Oh, I wondered if I should have stayed out of this thread. I just assumed Bertuzzi’s role. Thanks for the correction.
The hits are technically illegal, because of timing and placement. Most can be chalked up to screw ups. Well, a lot, anyway. And of those we can say that a player is trying to acheive an advantage* in the game* by breaking the rules. And for that, there are penalties built in.
However, when a GB Packer player (who’s name I forget) picked up Bears QB McMahon and threw him down well after the play had ended *, well, that’s something different. That wasn’t to gain an advantage in the game, that was to injure. And even if the play were still going on, that would not be considered a hit but a flagrant foul. And yes, that guy should have been arrested.
Yes, the QB does consent to be hit during the course of a play. Hitting is a part of the game. That doesn’t mean he consents to be assaulted after the play.
Look, I’m not saying that every time a fight breaks out that a crime has been committed. I don’t really care about the fighting in hockey or other sports. IMO, boys will be boys and tempers can fly and that is something for the league to deal with. But that’s not what this was. This was so far outside the bounds of what is acceptable that the authorities* must * step in. This was not a part of the game.
*[sub]the play was caught on tape. McMahon had thrown the ball, several seconds elapsed as he and the defender looked downfield, then the defender grabbed McMahon, picked him off the ground, and threw him down head first. Clearly, this had nothing to with the game[/sub]