Best American Sports Writing Week 5: Deceit and Disqualification
Week 5’s stories focus on cheating and disqualification: consequences handed out by one sport that seem almost unfair, cheating in another sport that opens up numerous questions, and cheating a sports team out of millions that led to the biggest consequence of all: jail time and a ruined life.
In Tim Layden’s “Disqualified”, Maximum Security, the horse that had crossed first in 2019 Kentucky Derby, had been disqualified, which was a rarity for the event itself. But because of this, Country House, a horse whose trainer even said “needs some things to happen” to win the race, was declared the winner, going from 20th to the first place slot. The way that the writer wrote this to where the reader could feel that it was a disjointed environment; that something had gone wrong, right down to the weather conditions, was well done. From the derby officials had just declared a winner instead of going through the traditional process of a steward’s inquiry, as well as refusing questions, and the trainer of the now-winning horse even feeling like his team had not really won, and wishing that it had been “nice and clean”, all worked nicely in creating an environment of chaos for this story, which was and may very well be a once in a blue moon occurrence for the Kentucky Derby.
The Athletic’s story on the Astros Cheating Scandal was incredibly in-depth when it first broke, and it still holds up now, as more fallout has continued from the initial piece. There were no names named in the story regarding the Astros, which was interesting in terms of The Athletic not labeling anyone a cheater until the commissioner’s investigation. With the exception of Mike Fiers and Danny Farquhar (two opposing pitchers who were interviewed for the piece), as well as Fiers’ namedrop of 2017 teammate Brian McCann, no other players were named at all. It just felt very cut and dry in saying “this organization cheated by stealing signs, and Major League Baseball needs to sort it out.”
The story also puts forth the idea of this being the beginning of a Pandora’s Box in baseball. In addition to mentioning that the hitter who was involved in starting the sign-stealing scheme had benefited from sign-stealing a year prior, the story mentioned an Astros source that said that “the Astros should not be the posterchild for this, what with so much going on with other clubs.” It’s a very dirty job for the commissioner’s office, but it’s two sides of a coin: on one hand, you do your darndest to eliminate cheating in your sport. But the other side of it is what could be found upon further investigation: how many other teams cheated as well? How long did they cheat? How much did they benefit? All these questions could leave a black eye on the sport that it has not seen since the Mitchell Report of 2007. That potential “what if?” scenario pending the results of the investigation was a good way to end the article by The Athletic.
ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz’s story on Jeff David was a different twist from the first two stories: a sports team’s employee cheating the team out of millions of dollars. It shows how cheating of this nature can start in the smallest of ways (at least relative to the billions of dollars in sports team revenue), but eventually grow to serious levels, almost like a Ponzi scheme, and even the smallest stone unturned could lead to the bubble bursting.
The way the author wrote this story, from present to past to back to present, while illustrating how David and his family’s lives would change in that time, from Jeff being hired by the Miami Heat and starting a new life in southern Florida to being behind bars and away from his children for seven years, was very well done. It illustrated what was mentioned previously regarding how the matter had escalated, and mentioning David’s delusion about how he would just give the money back and that would solve everything (especially since part of the money was between David and Kaiser Permanente, and therefore, the Kings knew nothing about it), showed what goes through a cheater’s mind when they get caught, not just in sports, but in real life as well. The “winners” are not really happen about it, and everything is just left as one giant mess.
