In baseball, there is a long tradition of deception and trick plays. Anything that agrees with the rules is fair to use against your opponents. You can hide t

In baseball, there is a long tradition of deception and trick plays. Anything that agrees with the rules is fair to use against your opponents. You can hide the ball and pretend a different person has it, pretend there are three outs when there are only two outs, pretend that the ball has gone past you into the outfield when you've actually caught it, etc. Contrary to the article, it is even an accepted part of the game in youth baseball, because it isn't considered a negative gesture towards your opponents. (I played youth baseball, and I can tell you that there are people who get very angry about trick plays, but they are typically people who have not played the sport and don't realize that it's done in a spirit of cleverness and desire to win, not disrespect.) What was extraordinary about the trick play in the story was that 1) it took advantage of a rule that even competitive players and coaches might not understand perfectly, especially in the heat of the moment, and 2) it flustered the other team so much that it caused intense distress, and they handled it just well enough that the distressing situation dragged on to the point of making everyone uncomfortable, even the team that executed the play. Of course everyone who was there that day had to live it in a real time, and you can't complain about how they reacted, but with a little bit of distance, I don't think the batting team did anything wrong. I don't approve of personally disrespectful behavior, but baseball has a long tradition of this kind of trickery being completely orthogonal to the question of respecting your opponents. Winning on a trick play is no less respectful than winning by hitting a triple or striking someone out. Both teams are constantly challenging each other in ways they hope the other team can't handle, and one team gets beat and goes home losers.