Dewayne Wise Should Have Admitted Muffed Catch and Found Better Way to Cheat at Baseball

Baseball is as much a sport of gamesmanship and guile as it is skill and ability, but the sport has long had a line between plucky strategy and just plain cheating.

Dewayne Wise crossed that line Tuesday night.

Wise, a journeyman who plays for the Yankees about as often as the bench coach, was in left field when a foul ball from Indians third baseman Jack Hannahan looped toward the stands. Wise dove to make the catch and disappeared into a scrum of fans. When he emerged, the umpire called an out, and Wise took it in stride, jogging back to the dugout and even glove-tapping shortstop Derek Jeter on the way.

The one problem was that Wise didn't catch the ball. He may have had it in his glove at one point, but when the play ended, the ball was rolling around under fans' feet. The umpires never checked to see if Wise had the ball or found it strange that a lucky fan was thrilled to be holding it.

The Yankees were up 4-0 in the seventh when Wise made the non-catch, and a man was left on second base. The play may have looked inconsequential at the moment, but considering the Indians scored four runs in the top of the ninth and almost came back in a game they lost 6-4, you never know.

What you can know, though, is that Wise was out of line to let the mistake happen.

"What was I supposed to do, run back to left field?" Wise asked after the game, according to the Associated Press. "I saw him looking at my glove, so I just got up, put my head down and ran off the field."

In the long line of umpire mistakes that have been happening lately, the play was interesting because it was one that could have been overturned without the much-maligned replay or debate. It was obvious to the point that the umpires should have checked a little more, or Wise should have just been a good sport and 'fessed up. The game already suffers enough disfavor from umpires making genuinely bad mistakes — why not save it from another black eye and get the out another way?

But the issue here is not really the umpires' role. This decision obviously rests on Wise, whose taking the play in stride puts him in the category of stealing signs, pine tar and the like. Baseball players have always tried to find a way to get an edge. Some have been honest or ingenuous, like superior scouting or making fakes when fielding to fool the other team. Others have been abysmally wrong, like doctoring balls or using steroids, when the players obviously know they're out of line.

Wise's incident is a small ripple in the wave that makes up baseball, but even if it wasn't significant enough to sway a game, it falls into the "you should know better" category. What a gift! Or, what a dumb way to get caught cheating. It turned out well for him this time, but what if it hadn't been the third out? He would have had to produce the ball then. What if the umpire found out, having seen the ball in the fans' hands?

Wise was wrong to not turn himself in not only because it was the wrong call but also because it was so stupidly obvious that it was the wrong call. If you're going to cheat or get an edge, be more creative. And if you're going to go along with a fudged call, don't do it in a way that makes a mockery of the game you play for a living because a human obviously got a call — that you could have corrected — wrong.

The rest of the season and likely the playoffs will be full of calls that can go either way. Managers will argue over balls and strikes and home runs. But most of these incidents will be situations too close to call, where the game is dictated as it should be by humans making decisions. What messes up the game is when the obvious calls go wrong, and this is one of the worst examples so far of that.

Fans have enough of a beef against parts of the game that aren't flawless. Players doing things to make the game more inconsistent and unfair doesn't help.

What Wise did wasn't necessarily wrong in the unwritten rules of the game, where you do whatever you can to get an advantage (hello, Jeter). But it was cowardly, and the dishonesty is a far cry from those players who know to do what's right no matter who's looking.

Worse yet, Wise's move was an unnecessary evil. The Yankees didn't have the 34-year-old on the field to inspire the troops. He was there in mop-up duty.

And, good heavens, the Yankees can win without a blown foul call.