Maybe I was wrong about Chris Sale.
Maybe the recently pardoned — sorry, traded — White Sox ace was merely ahead of the societal curve when he shredded a throwback jersey and was subsequently excused from U.S. Cellu-Rate Park back in July.
Sale was suspended five games for destroying clothes he didn’t want to wear. Last week, the Associated Press reported the new collective bargain agreement between Major League Baseball and its players union includes a policy that prohibits “requiring, coercing or encouraging (players from) dressing up as women or wearing costumes that may be offensive to individuals based on their race, sex, nationality, age, sexual orientation, gender identify or other characteristic.”
Taste is a characteristic, right?
If you sense that I am not taking baseball’s hazing ban seriously enough, you may have a point. But that’s merely because baseball isn’t taking its hazing ban seriously enough.
Hank Nuwer, a journalism professor at Franklin (Ind.) College has been writing about hazing since 1975. He has published four non-fiction books on the topic. We spoke Thursday, the day he sent the manuscript for “The New Hazing Reader,” an all-new version of a title first published in 2004, to Indiana University Press.
“I’m on final deadline for the book,” he said. “I had to go into two chapters and change the tone and information to reflect this (MLB policy) change.”
In other words, no sweeping rewrite was required, because baseball hardly swept away hazing. Baseball officials conceded dress-up days haven’t been banned, merely a few costume options.
The policy, according to the AP, states, “The purpose of this policy is not to prohibit all traditions regarding rookies or players, but rather to prohibit conduct that may cause players physical anguish or harm, may be offensive to some players, club staff or fans, or are distracting to the operation of the club or MLB.”
So, keep buying the doughnuts, rook. And if we can’t make you wear a Wonder Woman costume anymore, well, He-Man will do just fine. Let’s just all keep this off of Twitter, shall we?
“I’ve already read the (complaining) by some players about this,” Nuwer said. “I expect hazing to continue, absolutely.
“No. 1, it goes underground. No. 2, they find new ways to harass — I can see some rookie getting a $30,000 food bill for a dinner he’ll be forced to attend.”
Honestly, my first impulse was to praise baseball for taking a step in the right direction. But the league is at least three years behind the NBA, which, in the wake of widespread publicity given to the NFL’s 2013 Richie Incognito bullying scandal, reiterated a much more comprehensive hazing ban to its teams.
And I hadn’t yet spoken to Nuwer, who has detailed 212 hazing-related deaths in the U.S. since 1838, including at least one each year since 1969 and a total of 155 from ’69 into 2016.
More Top Picks Best Premium Ab Rollers For Core Strength
“Close to 50 percent of all college students have gone through some type of hazing,” Nuwer said. “With high school hazing being so prevalent, having a (partial) ban at the pro level sets a helpful precedent, but …”
It’s short of a solution, which as Nuwer sees it is “Zero tolerance.”
Personally, I got lucky. My high school and junior college athletic career was spent playing tennis, where the athletes abused equipment more than each other. I never joined a frat.
From afar, I viewed those conducting hazing rituals as extensions of playground bullies. Bullies, I knew. And looking back, those bullies I knew were most likely working through some crud from a home life I could scarcely imagine by picking on the skinny kid.
So the equation for me was: Hazing = Bullying = Damaged.
Nuwer understood the presumption, saying, “When I started doing the research, it was all in abnormal psychology.”
But eventually he found normal individuals swayed by the group.
Those who accept hazing as part of an initiation, or rite of passage, Nuwer said, “are people who want to be accepted, who want to have a sense of community, and are not only driven toward it but pleased to be singled out and recognized by the players they want to be like.”
The rite, he said, must be passed along.
“That’s how you get your self-respect back,” he said. “If you went through it and don’t get to do it back, you don’t get your self-respect back.”
That’s why Nuwer advocates for zero tolerance of hazing practices. Any secret initiation rite has the chance to go wrong.
T.F. South athletic director Marc Brewe noted, gratefully, he hasn’t had to address any such issues in his eight years on the job, crediting a proactive staff as much as a district-wide policy enacted three years ago.
“I don’t think there’s a type of kid who does this,” he said. “I just think sometimes when you have groups of kids together, one thing leads to another and something crosses the line.
“Inevitably, there’s going to be some screwing around. But our staff is mindful of that. I’d rather have zero tolerance than give them a little rope. We want to make sure everyone’s high school experience is safe and secure.”
And MLB wants to make sure they don’t have to answer to any offended observers on social media. So congrats for that.
Phil Arvia is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.