Saw this on the news that the Washington team decided to purposely lose a game because they're in a situation if they lose the game then the stronger team (Iowa) will miss out on the playoff, so they bunted every pitch and lost like 8-0 while the opposing side pitched a no-hitter. Iowa complained and Washington ended up having to play Iowa in a tiebreaker and lost.
Now it seems like most of the discussion either falls into either what Washington did is dishonorable/unsportmanshiplike, or that you're supposed to do everything you can to win because winning is everything so this is great strategy if you're putting this in a manga somewhere. But I think both camp misses the point. In virtually any competitive event, cheating gets you disqualified from the event. Losing on purpose is generally defined as cheating in virtually all competitive event. So, if you get caught cheating, you lose. This has nothing to do with honor or anything else. There's a section that specifically says if you're purposely trying to lose you can get disqualified, and bunting on every pitch makes it hard to weasel your way out of 'we just didn't play very well'. In fact, this is the scenario of Naruto, which must be Machivalei for people who think purposely throwing game is some kind of awesome strategy. In the exam at the beginning that was rigged to be way too hard, the trainees are told that they must approach this exam like a great ninja, and a great ninja doesn't get caught while cheating! So if you get caught, you're obviously not a great ninja and tough luck getting disqualified, even when the event was rigged such that cheating was the only way to win. If you're cheating in a way that everyone can tell you're cheating, it's your problem for not being ninja enough to avoid the rules. I understand Washington was in a pretty tough spot as not only do they have to lose the game but they can't score more than 3 runs due to the tiebreaker rules, but if it was that hard to not accidentally score 3 runs then maybe they should have just played normally and take their chances with a matchup against Iowa later instead of bunting every pitch.
I think it's a sad day when Naruto can be considered complicated strategy because 'if you're going to cheat, don't get caught' is apparently too complicated for a lot of people to understand. We can debate on whether you should cheat or not, but if you get caught, that's your problem for sucking!
Now it seems like most of the discussion either falls into either what Washington did is dishonorable/unsportmanshiplike, or that you're supposed to do everything you can to win because winning is everything so this is great strategy if you're putting this in a manga somewhere. But I think both camp misses the point. In virtually any competitive event, cheating gets you disqualified from the event. Losing on purpose is generally defined as cheating in virtually all competitive event. So, if you get caught cheating, you lose. This has nothing to do with honor or anything else. There's a section that specifically says if you're purposely trying to lose you can get disqualified, and bunting on every pitch makes it hard to weasel your way out of 'we just didn't play very well'. In fact, this is the scenario of Naruto, which must be Machivalei for people who think purposely throwing game is some kind of awesome strategy. In the exam at the beginning that was rigged to be way too hard, the trainees are told that they must approach this exam like a great ninja, and a great ninja doesn't get caught while cheating! So if you get caught, you're obviously not a great ninja and tough luck getting disqualified, even when the event was rigged such that cheating was the only way to win. If you're cheating in a way that everyone can tell you're cheating, it's your problem for not being ninja enough to avoid the rules. I understand Washington was in a pretty tough spot as not only do they have to lose the game but they can't score more than 3 runs due to the tiebreaker rules, but if it was that hard to not accidentally score 3 runs then maybe they should have just played normally and take their chances with a matchup against Iowa later instead of bunting every pitch.
I think it's a sad day when Naruto can be considered complicated strategy because 'if you're going to cheat, don't get caught' is apparently too complicated for a lot of people to understand. We can debate on whether you should cheat or not, but if you get caught, that's your problem for sucking!
