Stupid Athletes Or Stupid Rules? Baseball Mercy Rule The Latest Offender

Walter Gibson www.dbbsports.comMar 16, 2009

It seems a lot of professional athletes don’t know the rules to the games they get paid millions to play. But before you deal the stupid athlete card, just remember the same holds true for Wall Street wizards. Who knew (Bernie Madoff) that fraud, embezzling, and being a big buttmunch were against the rules?

Who knew (Donovan McNabb) that there could be a tie in the NFL?

Who knew (Adam Dunn) that there was a mercy rule in baseball?

That’s right, a mercy rule. And right fielder Dunn, along with the rest of Team USA this weekend, apparently had no clue, hanging around to play ball after Puerto Rico ran up the score 11-1 in the bottom of the seventh.

FYI, this wasn’t Little League. This was the World Baseball Classic. The real deal. Full grown, properly 'roided major leaguers.

I don’t know what makes me laugh more. That the U.S. team didn’t know about the mercy rule, or that they needed to know. And not because they mercied someone, but because they themselves got mercied...by Puerto Rico, no less. Which, ironically, is the United States.

And which, even worse, has only 1 percent of the population of the U.S. mainland. Although, to be fair, more than 1 percent of the U.S. mainland population is Puerto Rican. Still with me?

In sum, we, the United States, just got our asses kicked 11-1 by a tiny island fraction of ourselves. And we didn’t even know it until after it was over.

I’d love to use this as an opportunity for more digs on stupid baseball players. The overweight bastards ruining the game these days deserve all the shit they get.

That’s not true I shouldn’t have called them bastards. That word from now on should be reserved for 11 very special children: The children of Travis Henry. Asswad.

Still, I have to take the players' side on this one. Yes, they should have known the rule. But who came up with the rule? Seriously, a mercy rule? Did Gary Bettman leave the NHL for a spot in the WBC Committee? Mercy rules are for kids.

And even that’s pretty lame. What are we teaching our kids? Don’t worry, when things go wrong, we’ll save your ass. No wonder half the country’s defaulting on their mortgages, whining like bitches for a bailout.

Besides, how’d we ever fall 11 to 1 to Puerto Rico? What the hell?

And don’t pull that we-suck-the-Caribbean-rules-baseball BS either. Japan just beat Cuba. Stoners from Holland (no, that’s not a pot leaf on their jersey) beat the Dominican Republic (what happened, Manny?). And last week, we beat the crap out of Venezuela.

True, Venezuela came back to beat both the U.S. and the Netherlands a few days later, but it should be remembered with great flag-waving pride that South Floridians verbally kicked the shit out of Venezuela’s Magglio Ordonez.

Just because Maggs left Venezuela, makes millions in the majors, and lives as a fat cat in the States these days is no reason to expect him to rescind his leftist, socialist support of a strong-armed, tight-fisted dictator who makes a hobby of slaughtering free-thinking civilians, is it? What’s the SoFla Venezuelan ex-pat community so pissed off about, anyway?

But I digress. I couldn't care less about politics. Can somebody please answer the more important question of why baseball and football players have so much difficulty with the rules?

At least basketball players have it down. Just ask Chris Webber…

Three 30-second TOs, right, Chris?