Cardinals pticher Josh Hancock was killed in a car crash. The game scheduled for tonight between the Cardinals and the Cubs have been postoned? Why?
I’m going to sound very cold hearted here, but I believe The Show Must Go On. Have a moment of silence before the game, but don’t reschedule the game. I’m not a Cards nor Cubs fan, so the decision doesn’t affect me directly. If I was killed in a car crash tomorrow, my company wouldn’t shut down.
I agree. Moment of silence, drape his number in black somewhere on display, and play the game for him.
I’ve got mixed feelings. The St. Louis players would not be at their best. My gut says they should play, but I remember when a co-worker died recently, and - yeah - we came to work, but we didn’t do too well for a couple of days.
You probably don’t play a game for a living. I don’t have a problem with it.
I agree. When work is a game, work can wait.
When I worked at a newspaper, a co-worker died, but the paper still had to go out. But this game could be played any of the other six times Chicago plays in St. Louis this coming year.
They reschedule games because of rain, they can reschedule a game because one of the players died.
It’s kind of nice to see ANY small sign of humanity influencing corporate decision making. But I’m probably imagining this – someone probably figured out their hot dog and beer sales would be down in tonight’s game.
Cubs fan here, and I have no problems with the cancellation. Games can always be rescheduled. It is, after all, just a game. The St. Louis players and staff should get the brief time to mourn and remember their friend and teammate.
On a smaller note, a game tonight would probably favor the Cubs in that the Cardinals would be a bit preoccupied, I would think. I’d rather both teams be at their best when they play.
There are two unrelated points really:
This is a competitive effort where the players need to be at their best to do their work. If they’re not at their best, the score becomes 35-0. Other jobs where you need (not want) the workers at their best every moment tend to be lenient about things like this too, e.g. airline pilots, brain surgeons. For jobs where a half-baked effort will be tolerable for a day or two, it’s fine to order the workers to shuffle back to work.
Ultimately, this is show business. IOW, the purpose of the Cardinals is to please the fans / audience. If they played the game, would they lose following, where the crowd began to think of them as heartless shits rather than as sports heros?
The answer to 2 changes over the years. My belief is that in, say, 1948, the common public attitude would be that playing the game after a minute of silence would show grit & respect to the fallen player as well as the greater game. They’d react negatively to calling the game.
In 2007 folks are much more attuned to the pain & suffering and victimhood in general. The player matters as a person, the team & league organizations are just moneygrubbing business entities. They’d react negatively to playing the game.
Not sure which attitude is healthier overall, but they certainly are different from each other.
We can probably all recall that after 9/11 all pro sports came to a halt. After a few days the Feds decided it was safe enough to have large gatherings at stadiums. Then came a fierce but quiet debate about when it was respectful enough to the Victims to have the first game. NFL, MLB, and NBA held an internal debate that essentially amounted to “We’ll restart play after somebody else does; we’re afraid of how the audience might react & we don’t want to be first.”
I’m not sure exactly how that deadlock broke, but I suspect somebody at the White House pushed them to get in play. I do know that the first few games in each sport had utterly flag-drenched uber-patriotic pregame & midgame shows with hefty military & police/fire participation. IMO, the Feds essentially underwrote the risk of adverse public reaction.
Your question contains its own answer.
Would I cancel the game – the essentially frivolous entertainment occasion – in response to a genuine human tragedy? Would I ask the dead man’s team mates – players in this game – to put aside their feelings and grief and loss so that strangers might still be entertained?
Hell yes. It’s a freaking game.
We’re not talking about Little League here. These men are paid millions of dollars to do a job.
For instance, in my job in the brokerage industry, the NASD asked us to remember the victims of the VT shootings. However, the markets weren’t closed. Only the death of a president closes the markets.
I would postpone the game.
If one of our team were killed tomorrow, my company wouldn’t shut down, but my team would mourn the loss of a co-worker and friend.
His team deserves the chance to mourn their loss.
So? The markets weren’t closed, but Virginia Tech sure was.
I wouldn’t expect other teams to cancel their games, but I can see why the Cardinals game got called off. I think it was the right decision.
And, as Cheesesteak pointed out, it’s the nature of the business that, occasionally, games have to be rescheduled.
The point of MLB is to provide a fun and enjoyable experience for the fans. Could they have done that under the circumstances? Doubtful.
Sadly, these same two teams canceled a game just a few short years ago when Darryl Kile a pitcher for the Cardinals died of apparent heart failure the night before the game. I believe this was in 2002.
Joe Girardi came out onto the field to announce that the game would be postponed.
I doubt there was much decision making this time. They had plenty of time to cancel and they had little reason to play.
There are two schools of thought on this, but we know what these same two teams did last time.
I remember very clearly the day Thurman Munson died. A large part of the team flew out to his funeral in Ohio and then flew back and played that night. Inspirationally, Thurman’s best friend on the team, Bobby Murcer hit a game winning Homer that night. There was much collective weeping in the stands, in the dugouts and in the living room of baseball fans watching that night*. I see nothing wrong with playing and I see nothing wrong with choosing to postpone.
Jim
Sure, it’s “their job” to play. I would still have to go to work if one of my colleague’s died. BUT, to perform my job, I can fumble through and not have to be at peak performance. I wouldn’t do a good job, no way. My productivity would suck, but I could probably still manage with tears of grief blurring my vision.
Different jobs have different demands on you. I wouldn’t want a big rig operator driving his semi down the express lane while he’s preoccupied with the death of his best friend. I’d rather the produce in his trailer get delivered late. I wouldn’t want a surgeon to keep a scheduled liver transplant if he was mulling over his pal’s death and wasn’t able to totaly focus on someone’s internal organs.
Elite athletes rely on high performance measues to do their job. Their job is going to be more significantly impacted by their mental state than mine. If their “product” is a good game, then they aren’t going to be able to deliver anyway. From a general business sense, why put out a substandard product, when you can wait a little longer, so it can live up to expectations (take note Microsoft)?
And ultimately, their job is to entertain us. No one is going to be enjoying the game with such a dark cloud hanging over it. Let them have a few days off. It’s not big deal.
As What Exit noted, it happened before, with Darryl Kyle. For a while, they didn’t know why he didn’t show up at the ballpark. Somebody went back to the hotel and found him dead. The game was further delayed until his family could be notified. The managers of both teams met with all the umpires, and they unanimously agreed to postpone the game. I’m sure it was much the same yesterday. Again, Tony LaRussa personally notified Josh Hancock’s family.
Perhaps, some other teams are more businesslike. The Cardinals are a family. I’m pretty sure the Cubs are the same way. When your brother dies, there’s a sign on the shop door, “Closed, due to a death in the family.” It’s a matter of love and respect.
I was looking forward to seeing the game on ESPN, but I agree with the decision to call off the game. Rest in peace, Josh.
This is one of the most cold-hearted things I’ve read in a while.
-This is a young kid.
-He spends 12 hours a day, nine months a year, with these people.
-He has no wife, no kids, he’s not FROM St. Louis.
-He spends the most emotional moments of his life with these people. You can be snide and derisive all you want about the “worth” of sport, but the ups and downs of it are real to the people that play.
For these reasons and dozens of others, these people were his FAMILY.
If they want to mourn one of their own, who the hell are you, who the hell am I, who the hell is ANYONE to tell them that they ought to be fucking entertaining us instead?
I’m sure I could have respected their decision had they opted to play, but I’m happy they recognized that there are more important things in life than baseball. Let them mourn and reflect. And the game was only postponed, not cancelled. I imagine there were few, if any, individuals who experienced any seriously negative impact as a result of the postponement.
How about the people who make their living working at the stadium? Don’t sell any beer, don’t collect a paycheck.
Sell the beer at the makeup game, collect that paycheck.