103
And in baseball, home teams often “
doctor”
their fields to
suit their strengths and minimize the strengths of their
opponents. For example, if a home team knows they will
face a fast team, they will spread water or sand between
bases to slow down the runners of the other team. Other
techniques used by home teams
to cheat include increasing
the heat in the visitor’s locker room to make the athletes
sluggish. And some schools even use psychological tricks
such as painting the visitor’s locker room pink, a color said to
reduce strength and make people less aggressive.
Normative cheating extends to off-the-field areas of sports as
well.
Colleges compete to recruit the best high school players in
the country. Although there are rules about when and how often colleges can
contact recruits, coaches are adept at bending these rules. For instance, it is
against the rules to send newspaper clippings about
a university sports team to
players being recruited. However, if a newspaper clipping is attached to the back
of a letter, it is technically OK, even if the letter has only one sentence.
Normative cheating has even crept into American high school sports. If a
good athlete wants to play for a school far away from where he lives, he may
move to the home of a relative or friend that does live near that school. That
way, he technically lives within the school district of his new school. He has
obeyed the
letter of the law, but not the spirit.
Reading Time
_______ minutes _______ seconds
537 words
26
doctor --- to change or fix in an illegal way
37
recruit --- to seek new members
47
letter of the law --- the exact wording of the law
30
35
40
45
