Is there any justice?!

[Ytown Tribe fan]

Suppose two good players have provisions in their contracts for a huge bonus should they win the batting title.

Comes the last game of the season, and one is a few points ahead of the other. The only way he can lose his bonus is if he goes 0-4 or worse AND the other player goes 4-4 or better.

The trailing player goes 4-4 in a day game; the leading player sits out the night game and wins the title.

Is this actionable? If the trailing player can show that the leader was not injured in any way, and his failure to play cost the trailing player a chance at a huge amount of money, would a lawsuit be winnable?

[Slippery Pedro]

Final game of the 1986 season, Fenway Park, Yankees v. Red Sox - - Boggs was leading Mattingly for the battling title - - same sort of deal, Mattingly need a bunch of hits and Boggs had to have a bad day for Mattingly to win the title.

Boggs sat out the game with a supposed(*) bad hamstring and Mattingly played - getting a lot of hits that day - but, without Boggs having a bad day, via the no show, Mattingly fell short of Boggs for the title:

1986 AL
1    Wade Boggs          .357
2    Don Mattingly       .352

(*) I say supposed bad hamstring - as, in the next game that the Red Sox played - which was the 1st game of their 1986 post-season, Boggs led off the game, bunted, and legged it out for a hit. Some sore hammy.

To the "can they sue?" question - - - no way. It's not an agreement, contractual or otherwise, that every player has to play every game. What would be the basis of the suit?

[Ytown Tribe fan]

Actually, "failure to perform" may be actionable, whether for a negative or a positive result. Only baseball's exemption from anti-trust legislation keeps it apart from the rules and regs of most other businesses.

We all know that Mattingly would never hire a lawyer to get a bonus, unless it was something he earned and the owner refused to pay. Even then, he might not, unless the PA strogly suggested he do so. Don was all player.

And there was a measure of justice anyway. Boggs lost the MVP award to Clemens, even though he had a better case for winning it. Mattingly, of course, stole the award from Rickey or Brett the year before.

[SmedIndy]

I doubt it. There's enough history of players sitting out a game to protect a batting title that it wouldn't get very far.

[KCBOOMER]

Originally posted by Slippery Pedro
Final game of the 1986 season, Fenway Park, Yankees v. Red Sox - - Boggs was leading Mattingly for the battling title - - same sort of deal, Mattingly need a bunch of hits and Boggs had to have a bad day for Mattingly to win the title.

Boggs sat out the game with a supposed(*) bad hamstring and Mattingly played - getting a lot of hits that day - but, without Boggs having a bad day, via the no show, Mattingly fell short of Boggs for the title:

1986 AL
1    Wade Boggs          .357
2    Don Mattingly       .352

If those were the final BA's then Boggs could easily have went 0-5 and only lost 3 to 4 points off his BA. So he didn't cost Mattingly anything, nor did he back into the batting title.

AS for legal action let's hope to hell not.

[pjl7]

I don't see where a failure to perform has anything to do with legal standing. Absent a specific statute or regulation (which doesn't exist) there are only two ways to recover damages. First, you have a contract of some sort which doesn't exist. Second, you can prove a "tort" with some kind of negligence or intentional misdoing. In order for a "tort" recovery to be possible, the one party must owe the other party (or society) some duty to act in a certain way (i.e. the duty to drive responsibly). Again, that doesn't exist here. The only party who could have any legal basis to go after a player who feigns an injury is the player's employer. I suppose that in some odd world an owner like Charles Comiskey might refuse to pay a bonus on the grounds that a guy sat out of the game and thus breached a duty to the team, but today a team would rather be able to market a batting champion than withhold a bonus.

[WiredTiger]

I would say that the "wronged" party could sue but would not win. It would be tough to prove that someone wasn't injured or just needed a day off.

The bigger question is... can I sue the Detroit Tigers for fraud?

[pathogan]

sat out the last game of the season, Yaz lost out...so it goes

[LeGrandOrange]

Actually, Johnson was 2-3 in the final game of the season before being pulled, with Yastrzemski's season already finished and his batting average decided.
Don't forget the brouhaha that came out of the 1976 AL Batting race, where George Brett beat out Hal McRae for the batting title after Steve Brye "misplayed" a blooper of Brett's and gave him an inside the park HR.

[Fuzzy Bear]

These posts put forth good arguments as to why performance clauses should not be part of a player's contract. Baseball is a team sport. The clubhouse should be a place where individual and team interests converge.

Performance clauses take away from that. They place invisible (and sometimes not so invisible) pressures on a manager on who to play, who to sit, who to disable, and who to send to the minors. Think of the discord that would come about if Carl Everett was slumping, or didn't hit a pitcher well, and was benched for a game late in the season, and that benching affected his performance clause. I wonder if there is a direct relationship between the organizations with tumultuous clubhouses and organizations that load up contracts with performance clauses.

[Skip]

Originally posted by Fuzzy Bear
I wonder if there is a direct relationship between the organizations with tumultuous clubhouses and organizations that load up contracts with performance clauses.

I am under the impression that performance clauses are pretty much ubiquitous, at least for average and better players. Is that true - I dont really know. If so, then the issue of dealing with them would be more or less the same throughout baseball.

[sweaver]

I believe that at some point it was made "illegal" to put performance clauses like batting average and home runs and wins into contracts, because of things like this. Award voting as well as games, innings and other such things remained OK. I don't know where this stands right now.

[Ytown Tribe fan]

Originally posted by Fuzzy Bear
These posts put forth good arguments as to why performance clauses should not be part of a player's contract. Baseball is a team sport.

That is a really good point. Also, clauses are not often based on the things that really help a team. After all, giving Rickey Henderson a bonus for being the batting or HR or RBI champ would be just stupid.

I've never heard of a player getting a bonus for leading the league in OBA or OPS or OTS or SLG or secondary average.

Then there's the weight clauses, which basically set an affordable price for being a fat slob. The player knows exactly how much he has to pay for the privilege of having that second Chalupa. (Any implied reference to Colon or Sabathia is purely coincidental.)

[nyy26wc]

The only things performance bonsuses can be given for are voted upon awards (managerial selections to the All Star Game are included in that category), IP, AB, PA, games played, games pitched, games started.

As far as whether that hypothetical player can win a lawsuit, absolutely not. Can he file a lawsuit? Sure. It will be real easy for him to find a lawyer who wants to charge some billable hours before a 12(b)(6) motion throws the case out of court. Meanwhile, the lawyers for the sitting out player will be happy to have the case filed, so they can charge some billable hours before they prevail on 12(b)(6).

[TimmyB]

Baseball, sport of the unwritten rules, ought to have a "no nursing it/no wimping out" rule... y'know, the expectation that you stand up to the challenge.

While this is somewhat related, yet somewhat ...

Ted Williams went into the final day of 1941 nursing a .400 average. He played a double header, when 6-8 and ended up at .406 -- no nursing there.

Who else has been involved in close races of sorts and not wimped out? (I realize asking this may be dangerously close to another thread topic...)