It wasn’t a sports fan. Go figure. The desire for money rather than sporting ideology drove an investor to attack the Borussia Dortmund football club’s bus as they were driving to a match with Monaco in what is called the Champion’s League.

The bomber attempted to misdirect authorities by leaving terrorist-like notes in the hopes that Islamic radicals would be implicated in the attack. Instead it was merely an investor who hoped publicly traded shares of the team would drop after he purchased a large number of options. Had the shares gone down, he would have realized a large profit.

All of this is reprehensible, but I’d like to take a moment to discuss why this sort of thing hasn’t happened to sports teams or players in the past.

Why don’t fans attack athletes of opposing teams? Why don’t they attack the team bus? Why hasn’t some crazed Chicago Cubs fan attacked players for the St. Louis Cardinals? Or vice-versa?

I’m of the opinion it’s inherent in the very nature of sport. Sport is better than religion, better than politics, better than wealth. People kill and maim each other in the name of these things all the time. But they don’t when it comes to sporting events. Yes, fans fight one another, but the athletes are left alone.

It’s no coincidence that sport is about as close to an example of a Libertarian Utopia as we have in this world. The better athlete plays. The better team wins. If you are good at kicking the ball; it doesn’t matter what you look like, what your politics, what god you worship, your gender, your age, the color of your skin, your nationality, or any of the other superficial things that falsely divide us.

I may hate the Cubs, really, when you think about it, everyone should. I certainly agonize when my beloved Cardinals lose. I rage against the other team and their misguided fans. I’m equally certain such fans feel the same way about me. But no one does the obvious and violently attacks the star players of other teams.

In an open system where everyone is allowed to compete fairly, frustration does not arrive at the fever pitch of violence. In politics, particularly in repressive regimes, there is a sense of hopelessness. In sport, anyone can win. It’s just a matter of managing your team and the game properly.

The reason the Cubs won the World Series is because they built a better team. They played better baseball. There is nothing to prevent the Cardinals from doing the same. I have no need to resort to violence.

If we had a world where the best individuals and businesses succeeded without interference, I think we’d see the same deficiency of violence prevail. Wouldn’t that be nice.

Tom Liberman

There’s a lot of uproar in baseball over an umpire named C.B. Bucknor who has a long history of making terrible calls and he hasn’t disappointed this season. What I’d like to discuss is the idea that no matter what sort of job you perform, someone is the worst at it. When is it time to give up and let go of that person?

Let’s accept the idea that Bucknor is the absolute worst at his job in the Major Leagues. Why hasn’t he been replaced? Should he be replaced?

It’s not as easy a question to answer as you might imagine. The first thing you have to evaluate is if there is someone better that can step in and do the job. This is not always apparent but must be determined. If you put someone even worse than Bucknor in his place, you certainly haven’t solved the problem.

The second question to ask yourself is what sort of potential for improvement is there with Bucknor? I think it goes without saying that someone new to a job won’t have as much skill as another person with much more experience. That someone with little training won’t do a job as well as someone who spent a lot of time practicing. We don’t want to fire people immediately without evaluating their potential.

The next thing to take into account is something called loyalty. I know that sounds strange, but it’s actually an important consideration. Has Bucknor performed better in the past? Has he been loyal to us? If the answer is yes, then it is often times a good thing to return such loyalty.

The rest of your employees will see this loyalty and return it down the road should you make a mistake. If you simply fire a loyal employee at their first mistake, future employees certainly take this into account. Would you want to work for someone who shows no loyalty? Being disloyal reduces your pool of eligible candidates.

There is also the idea of creating an environment of fear. If the league fires umpires after a few mistakes, that creates such a workplace. This not a healthy place to work. If you are afraid of making mistakes, rather than simply doing your job, you are much more likely to err.

Finally, you must consider contracts. You cannot break such binding legal documents. If the employee has a contract through their union or other agent, then you must gather the proper evidence in order to fire that person. Otherwise you risk legal issues.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I think Bucknor has proven his incompetence for long enough that a young umpire should be brought in as a replacement. I’m certain I don’t know all the answers to the questions I’ve posed above, but I think it’s high time Bucknor was sent on his way.

It’s easy to see an egregious error, or multiple such mistakes, and demand a firing. We sports fans are notoriously quick to call for replacements in such situations.

Before you do, just take a moment to think about all the reasons why Bucknor might still have a job.

Tom Liberman

Pittsburgh Pirate outfielder and burgeoning star Starling Marte was suspended for eighty games by Major League Baseball. As a result, we see the typical laments that always come with such revelations.

The crowd screams about what an awful human being and cheater is Marte. They fill comment posts with remarks about how he should be banned for life from baseball and how he betrayed his teammates. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, masking techniques are far ahead of detection methods. The vast majority of athletes are using performance enhancing drugs. This issue does not just encompass professional sports. There is every chance the high school track and field event you’re watching is being dominated by athletes using PEDs.

Every other player on the Pirates is fully aware Marte was using such substances because most of them are as well. So are most of the players on my beloved St. Louis Cardinals. So are most of the players on whatever professional, college, and likely high school team you follow. In addition to chemical cheating, we are now fully engaged in the era of mechanical and electronic cheating.

Cyclists have tiny motors embedded in their bikes. It is highly probably all sorts of cheating in this regard is going on that we don’t know about. Perhaps a device in a hockey goalie’s glove that tracks the moving puck and moves a few millimeters to catch it. The possibilities are as limitless as the human imagination and technology allows.

There are certainly operatives in the stands watching opponents and passing information along to allies on the bench with communication devices. Is equally undeniable that some organizations are using electronic devices to spy on opponents in the locker room as they make strategic decisions.

I’ll be honest, I suspect there is cheating going on at a grade school level with the full approval of parents and coaches. There is so much money available in professional sports it’s inconceivable to me that people are not doing so.

The advantages to be gained are both subtle and lucrative. A young athlete might gain a scholarship to a top prep school instead of a competitor. Another athlete might get a college scholarship. Perhaps another might make the major-league roster of a team rather than be mired in the minors. A coach might get a long-term contract because of a few extra wins a season based on information gleaned from a small listening device on an opponent’s bench.

At every level, there are rewards to be had for athletes and coaches who take advantage of methods we consider cheating. To live in a fantasy world where only the other team use these means, is a life of delusion.

More importantly, the methods to gain advantage whether it be PEDs, electronic surveillance, or mechanical aids, are not going away, they are multiplying. It is easier and easier to cheat and more and more difficult to catch someone using these techniques.

The final question is simply if anything can be done about it? The answer is basically no. Certainly we can take precautions. We can install anti-surveillance devices, we can test athletes for PEDs, we can use devices to look for suspicious equipment, we can apply spotters looking for spies. All these methods are quite reasonable. The reality is, cheating is here and no matter our efforts to thwart it, it will stay.

The cheaters will prosper. Those who don’t will languish. That’s an unpleasant truth.

Tom Liberman