Rules of the Game

Rory McClannahan

Until this week, I had no idea what a net cord was, or that if you benefit from one that you should apologize for it.

For those of you like me whose experience with tennis was an afternoon of numerous trips to pick up the ball I couldn’t return to save my life, a net cord is when a player hits the ball and it skims the net and falls to opponent’s side in a way that is impossible to return. When this occurs, the point is awarded, but you are supposed to feel properly humble about getting the point and some sort of acknowledgement should be forthcoming.

At the U.S. Open last week, Jelena Ostapenko had some words with Taylor Townsend at the end of their match in which Townsend had soundly defeated Ostapenko. Townsend, according to Ostapenko, had “no class” and “no education” for violating this unwritten tennis rule. Of course, all of this became more of an issue because Townsend is black and Ostapenko is white. I also learned that Ostapenko has a reputation on the tennis circuit for perceived lapses in sportsmanship, taking long potty breaks or medical time outs when opponents are rallying.

I’m not prepared to make a judgement one way or another about who was in the wrong and whether an issue should have been made about this incident. I wasn’t there and I have no idea what was going through the players minds. It did, however, compel me to think about unwritten rules and their relevance.

When it comes to unwritten rules, we generally think about sports because that’s where we see the most violations. Baseball probably has more of these rules that other sports, and some of them seem a little silly. For instance, it is regarded as bad form to bunt when a pitcher has a no-hitter going. I’m not sure I get this. If I’m the manager in a tight ball game, I will use every tool at my disposal to win. On the other hand, I can appreciate the unwritten rule that a hitter should not celebrate too much or flip a bat after hitting a home run.

What I find silly, though, is the usual response to the violation of an unwritten rule in baseball. Generally speaking, the violator of said rule can probably expect a pitch at his head at the next at-bat. That’s even if the dugouts had cleared at the moment after the violation.

All other sports have unwritten rules. In hockey, it’s bad form to take an aggressive shot at an empty net or fight with your gloves on. In golf, you are generally encouraged to not distract someone lining up a shot. In basketball, its generally regarded as bad form to run up the score against a lesser opponent. This unwritten rule, I think, is only a recent development with social media and everyone having a video camera in their pocket. I was once on the losing side of a 102-3 score and no one said a word about that disgrace. Another time on this same team, we earned a moral victory by keeping our opponent under 100 points. Those players had to run killers after the game because they didn’t completely humiliate us.

Football, for its part, has codified its unwritten rules. For instance, I remember Mark Gastineau, a defensive end for the New York Jets, would jump around like a fool every time he made a sack. The NFL made a rule about excessive celebration, not only for tackles, but for end zone celebrations. I guess when you have two teams of very large, competitive men, you do your best to keep things from getting out of hand. In high school football in New Mexico, there is a written rule against running up the score.

Still, unwritten rules always seem to be somewhat fluid. And they aren’t necessarily confined to the field of play. Usually there are some shenanigans going on up in the stands. The scenario I enjoy, because it happens so frequently, is when the adult steals the enjoyment of a sport from a kid. We got that last week, again, thanks to the U.S. Open. I’m not going to look up the names because they are irrelevant and if you want to know them bad enough, they are easily found. In this case there was a Polish tennis player who was signing autographs after a match he had just won. A kid asked him for his hat, because why not? The distracted tennis player doffed his hat and handed it to the kid while looking in a different direction.

Before the kid could get a good grip on the hat, some rich dude CEO snatches the hat and quickly tells his wife to stuff it in her purse, which she does. What kills me about this is that we have seen this played out countless times. It’s almost as if these asshats don’t realize everyone has a camera, or if they do they don’t believe the rules on good manners applies to them.

There might be a very small part of me that feels bad for this CEO. If I have one wish in my life it is never to become internet famous. We all have bad days where we say or do something stupid. However, this one fact should keep all of us on our best behavior: every move we make in public, every word we utter, anything we hit the thumbs up for is there for anyone to judge and mock. And boy do we judge and mock.

I’m not defending a dumbass millionaire for stealing a kid’s cap, but he got what he deserved out of the whole ordeal. I mean, come on, it’s just a fucking cap from someone who will never be a superstar. If the old, rich dude wanted the cap that bad, I’ll bet he could have bought it off the kid and at a cost well within what he could afford. As you all know, the whole thing has played out publicly as we expected; outrage, defense of the act, contrition.

All for violating an unwritten rule.

I’ve always had a fascination with unwritten rules. In general terms they essentially define what my grandmother called “good manners.” For the most part, unwritten rules are in places to keep us all in line with the standards of the community, however you define that. Many people believe that unwritten rules are ridiculous. If they are so important, they should become laws, the argument goes. If that is your argument, I would immediately assume that you are the kind of person who would snatch a foul ball away from a kid at a baseball game.

I concede that some unwritten rules are stupid. These are the ones that come down through the corporate culture at work. An example from my own experience: I was attending a professional conference in which I was told a workshop on personality tests was voluntary. I didn’t attend because I had actual work to get done. Afterwards, I was informed by my supervisor that while attendance was indeed voluntary, she was “very disappointed” I didn’t go because it was important to her. I knew the response I wanted to give, that said workshop and the idea of personality tests in the workplace is complete bullshit and no better than horoscopes, would get me in further trouble. Actually, there was no response that would win me any points, so I said that if it had been that important for me to be in attendance, she have made it a requirement.

Needless to say, I got caught up in breaking an unwritten rule and suffered through the consequences. I lost that job, and I’ve lost a few others because of violating some other unwritten rules. In my defense, I didn’t necessarily do this on purpose, I just was unaware of said rules.

When I started this essay, I had these corporate unwritten rules in mind and I’m still opposed to many of them, feeling that they amount nothing more than office politics. With all things, though, there are exceptions, and now I have come to the realization that it is unwritten rules that give us our cues on getting along. Unfortunately, we can not expect people to act with good manners and good intentions, so we have to use these unwritten rules to keep ourselves in line.

I guess sometimes we just need a reminder to act properly humble when winning a point in tennis that we didn’t really serve. We also shouldn’t steal a sweaty cap from a kid.

Check out Rory McClannahan's new book "Shadow-Man" here.