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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   25227 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 30, 2023

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Yeah, I think in ice hockey especially, fights aren't seen as pathological, but rather as an important part of a self-policing culture. I can understand that. What I don't understand is why the local district attorney would take that stance (and not prosecute offenders).

Baseball doesn't have the same opportunities to deliberately inflict injury within the standard ruleset of the game, so the same sort of culture never developed.

Interestingly, and consistent with your theory, my sense is that the proximate cause for most professional baseball fights is a perception of inappropriately aggressive play on the part of the opponent: high-and-inside fastball, sliding into 2nd base with spikes up, and so on. It's also interesting to me that in both baseball and ice hockey, the culture broadly prohibits using weapons in fights. The first thing a hockey / baseball player will do at the start of his fight is throw down his stick / bat. Again, this is consistent with the theory that fights serve to self-police / enforce expectations for conduct.

What I don't understand is why the local district attorney would take that stance (and not prosecute offenders).

I actually don't know what the statute looks like there, but prosecutorial discretion with regard to a scuffle between mutual combatants with no injuries involved probably suffices to cover most cases, even if the locale doesn't have a carveout for athletics specifically. How many bar fights where nothing happens other than a few punches thrown and both guys walk off, with neither one all that aggrieved or interested in pressing charges end in convictions? Likewise, on the flip side, I would guess that criminal charges would be likely in the event that a hockey fight happened, didn't get broken up for some reason, and the winner of the fight proceeded to continuing raining blows on the downed man until he was severely injured. There's also going to be something related to the nature of athletic events, because you're obviously not going to pressure charges for throwing a nasty check either. Whether a hockey fight qualifies as "just part of the game" in that sense or not is probably close enough to any reasonable line that you'd need a particularly grandstanding prosecutor to show it any interest.

There have been criminal/civil prosecutions for hockey violence in the NHL. They usually involve pre-meditated acts where the victim was unable to consent to fight. Two recentish examples would be when Marty McSorley hit Donald Brashear with his stick, and Todd Bertuzzi sucker-punching Steve Moore, both incidents where the aggressor attacked a player unawares.

Pedantic point: the UK doesn't have district attorneys, they have crown prosecutors.

As to why the crown does not prosecute, my understanding is that it is because the governing case law (R v Donovan) holds that athletes are inherently consenting to be harmed, so long as the injury does not rise to the level of grievous bodily harm.

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