Baseball, Life and The Law Part 1

When people ask me where I'd like to be when I die, I always answer the same way: at a baseball game, surrounded by family and friends.

For years I've been trying to enjoy my law practice, and I enjoy it; however, it has been mostly family law, which is certainly difficult to enjoy all the time. I have recently added estate planning to my practice, which I think will enhance joy in my practice; however, I think it's important that I'm honest with myself and say that I really enjoy baseball more than I enjoy any of the above, except for my family and friends-LOL.

Why am I starting this blog now? I have thought about it many times; however I never thought I had the time and let's just say that the Astros' getting sanctioned by major league baseball has triggered my actually sitting down and writing. Now this blog may take the form of a video blog in the future but for now it's going to be written.

I want to start out by writing about why I think the Astros' punishment should not have been as severe. And then I'm going to compare it to life and my law practice. First of all, I've always valued and been concerned about honesty in the courtroom, which is one of the reasons I moved to Austin. It's not that I condone the cheating (after all the electronic cheating was specifically against new rules that were established); however, “stealing signs” isn't stealing at all because when a catcher gives the pitcher signs, the only stealing involved is whether the other team can somehow see what the catcher is signaling.

That has always been practice in baseball and to me, or to almost anyone else, it's not cheating or stealing at all. It's because baseball has not caught up with technology in general that led to this rule in the first place.

The question is if it's okay to try to figure out a catcher sign with your eyes, then why wouldn't it be okay with a camera? On the other hand, rules were established against such technological “seeing”, and the commissioner warned teams that it would not be tolerated. So from that point of view, the Astros shouldn't have done it, or at least they should have stopped it when warned. Then they should've lobbied to change the rules.