In 1994 my home state of California passed an initiative
measure that was officially titled “Three
Strikes and You’re Out.” The Three Strikes Law, known in other states by
the more technical sounding name of the Habitual Offender Act, ostensibly has
nothing to do with baseball. It establishes increased penalties, (25 years to
life imprisonment in California’s case) for a criminal who commits three felony
crimes. I began thinking about this law recently because two days ago, amidst
all the Presidential hoopla, California voters passed Proposition 36, which
altered the existing Three Strikes Law to emphasize punishment of violent
offenses, and to shorten prison terms for those who did not commit violent
crimes.
Intrigued by talk of the ever-controversial Three Strikes
Law, and in clear baseball withdrawal with the World Series over, I began to
consider the apparent baseball connection to this law. I did a bit of
research and was slightly surprised to note that not only was “Three Strikes and You’re Out” the
wording that actually appeared on the ballot, such laws, no matter their
official title, are referred to in legal jargon by the acronym TSAYO. Even
stranger to me was the fact that the connection of a law that shapes lives,
deaths, and demographics is so explicitly based on an arbitrary rule in
baseball.
One scholarly paper I found
referred to this connection offhand, as if it were entirely incidental,
mentioning that, “President Bill Clinton received lengthy applause during his
State of the Union address when he touted the law with the catchy baseball
name.” Or labeling a chilling graph about convictions like this: “California ‘Strikes
Out’ 4 Times as Many Persons As All Other 3-Strikes States Combined”
A less scholarly but still extensively detailed article
described how baseball players are allowed three strikes in an at bat before
they are out as a preamble to explaining how “the same concept is invoked in the language of habitual
offender laws, as three
strikes laws are more properly known, as in ‘three strikes and the offender is
out of society.’”
So,
this strongly enforced and significantly impactful law is based on the logic of
the baseball plate appearance. It was at about the time I realized this that I
began to ask an absurd number of rhetorical questions about the history of the
traditional inputs to the baseball plate appearance and its influence on the
Three Strikes Laws.
The
history of the three-strike strikeout has remained remarkably stable throughout
baseball history, with only one real blip, as Joe Posnanski noted in his profile of deadball hurler Old Hoss Radbourn: "in 1887, for one year and one year only in the National League, they changed the rules so that it took FOUR strikes to get a strikeout. Could you imagine, say, Justin Verlander having to deal with that? Hey Justin, we changed the rules. It’s four strikes for a strikeout now. Yeah. But it’s also five balls for a walk. Go on, have some fun out there."
The number of balls that equals a walk, however, has not
remained static throughout baseball history. It was not until 1889 that the
various baseball associations and leagues agreed that four balls would equal a
walk. In the preceding decades as many as nine balls had been required for a
batter to get a free pass, with the number gradually decreasing starting in
1880 before settling in at the “natural” number of four.
So here begins the long chain of rhetorical questions:
What if, like balls, the number of strikes had varied a lot in the late 1800s? What if that magical year of 1887 had become the norm, and five balls and four strikes remained the rule. Such a change would not have inherently altered the
structure of the game. After all, the only reason four and three seem “natural”
is because they are what we have grown accustomed to.
How would the game have changed?
But perhaps even more meaningfully, how would our modern
approach to crime legislation through Three Strikes Laws be different?
If batters and pitchers lived in a four-strike world, would
cops and criminals battle in one as well?
How would it affect our perception of crime and criminals?
Would we have Four Strikes Laws instead of Three, or would
we have none at all?
The almost certainly rhetorical question I have struggled
with the most however, is whether the only reason we have Three Strikes Laws at
all, and the argument, misery, and debatable justice they imply, is because of an arbitrary
rule in what was once a children’s game. If so, what does that tell us about
the role of baseball in shaping America’s cultural and political mindset, and
what does that tell us about our democratic, legislative, and judicial systems?
As I said, these are rhetorical questions, I truly do not
have answers to them, and to me at least this is somewhat troubling. Chime in
with comments if you think you have answers, or even if you just have more
questions.