Ah, the mysterious they.
Lurking in the shadows, pulling the strings, controlling every aspect of our lives.
They. Them.
Shrouded in mystery, known only to themselves. A club, a cabal, a top-secret organization of the truly powerful. They move, they push, they manipulate. Nothing happens without their approval.
The mysterious they.
I read about them most recently on social media during the first weekend of April. THEY weren’t there (or were they?) but they were being talked about by those who know, those who see the signs, those in tune with their nefarious machinations.
What had they done this time?
They had infiltrated the mind of an NCAA referee.
How had they done it? Mind-control drugs? Ultra-cosmic harmonic frequencies? A weird magnetic ray?
No one knows. No one can know. No one must know how they do it.
All anyone knows is that THEY wanted Iowa and South Carolina in the championship game of the women’s college basketball tournament.
That, by the way, is a compilation of dozens of quotes I read after the April 5 semi-final game between Iowa and Connecticut. UConn’s Aaliyah Edwards was called for an offensive foul with about four seconds left and Iowa up by two. The Huskies’ Paige Bueckers had the ball and might well have sunk a three-pointer for the win, but Edwards’ attempt to set a screen drew the ref’s whistle because she was still moving and because she threw her left her arm into the Hawkeye defender. This is illegal whether you do it on the opening tipoff or four seconds from the buzzer.
But no, THEY wanted Iowa to win. THEY wanted better TV ratings for the championship game.
One of the enlightened truth-seekers didn’t refer to THEM but instead said “It was in the script.”
Ah yes. The script. Provided, no doubt, by the mysterious they.
(If this were Blue’s Clues, we would have one thing to write in our handy-dandy notebook: Whoever THEY are, they benefit from higher TV ratings. That narrows it down.)
I don’t know how goddamn sad your life must be to give it over to any nonsensical conspiracy theories, let alone the ones that attribute everything to the mysterious they. (Or heck, maybe every conspiracy theory eventually gets to that point.) The Iowa-South Carolina championship game drew 18.7 million viewers on a Sunday afternoon. A UConn-South Carolina matchup might have drawn 18.8 million. Or—oooh!—only 18.6. Or THEY might have pulled some strings and made sure the championship was scheduled for prime time where the number of viewers might have hit eleventy billion.
What were they thinking? Why didn’t someone bring that up at the last big THEY meeting?
“Yeah, the prime time idea might work, but there’s still the fact that we want Iowa in the championship game.”
“Why?”
“When you’ve been here longer we’ll instruct you in the arcane reasoning of the THEY. Anyway, here’s what we’ll do. We find a referee sympathetic to our cause. We make sure the game is close, then, just when Connecticut has a chance to win, we snatch that opportunity out from under them by calling an offensive foul for an illegal screen.”
“What if UConn doesn’t commit an illegal screen?”
“Good point. We’ll have to get to the UConn center too.”
“And how exactly do we make sure the game is close?”
“Hey, do you want to be part of THEY or not?”
I have no patience with anyone who thinks sports are scripted. (Obviously, of course, professional wrestling doesn’t count. Professional wrestling isn’t dramatic enough to be sport and isn’t funny enough to be drama, so I’m not sure what it is.) These folks show up in big numbers at championship time and reached new heights of absurdity during this past Super Bowl, which, according to those who understand THEM, the Kansas City Chiefs were allowed to win because of Taylor Swift.
No one will give you a logical or even ridiculous explanation why Taylor Swift would be the reason the Chiefs were given the victory. No one will have an answer for why the Chiefs were scripted to win in 2023 when Taylor Swift wasn’t even dating a Chiefs player.
But the inability to come up with a coherent reason is interpreted as just another example of how THEY work. We don’t have to explain it—we just know.
And we just know THEY wanted Iowa in the NCAA championship.
For, uh, reasons.
You Have to Let ‘em Play Unless the Call Goes Against My Team
Conspiracy theories aside, the rest of the social media commentary from the Iowa-UConn game fell into three categories:
1. That was not an illegal screen. She had her feet planted and did not reach out with her left arm.
Not sure what game these people were watching, but it’s possible that their eyesight might actually have been improved by looking directly at the April 8 eclipse.
2. OK, sure, maybe it was an illegal screen but the refs shouldn’t have called it because they didn’t call an illegal screen earlier in the game.
I have a lot of respect for any referee, umpire, or other sports official not named Angel Hernandez. I expect them to call a fair game. I expect baseball umpires to be close to perfect because there’s generally only one thing going on at a time. I give basketball refs a lot more leeway because of the fast pace of the game, and I have no idea how football officials manage to keep track of everything. Any time they throw a flag for twelve men on the field, I’m going “How do they know? Who can tell at a glance the difference between 11 and 12 players?!” Point is, some calls get called, some don’t. But a referee has split-seconds to make these decisions, and he or she doesn’t have time to remember every call or non-call from earlier in the game. Edwards’ attempt to set a screen was an offensive foul. The ref saw it and called it.
3. Yes, fine, it was an illegal screen but the refs shouldn’t have called it because with just a few seconds left in a crucial game the outcome should be decided by the players.
By this logic, the referees should sit down with, I don’t know, a minute left in the game? Two minutes? One whole quarter? Should we have referees at all? Should we have rules? What if we let the players decide the game and one of them wants to decide it with brass knuckles? I would contend that the outcome of the game was indeed decided by the players. One group of them scored more points than the other. One player committed a foul with about four seconds left, costing her team a chance to put up the potentially game-winning shot.
THEY Didn’t Tell Me Who Was Supposed To Win
I don’t know how deep the mysterious THEY go, how far into the weeds they go to control our lives and create the illusion of free will. I don’t think they were controlling the outcomes of Babe Ruth League baseball games in the summer of 1980, the year I made a few bucks umping the bases for Hillsboro home games, but if they were, nobody told me. Nobody ever slipped me a C-note and said there’s more where this comes from—if Veedersburg beats the spread.
But I do have some mostly fun memories of my time as an umpire.
1. First game of the 1980 season. I’m umpiring first base and I’m a little nervous. I’ve already told the league commissioner that I’ll only ump the bases because there’s no way I want the pressure of calling balls and strikes. Still, there’s pressure. People are looking at me. People assume I know baseball and that my eyesight is fine. First batter for the visiting team comes up and hits a grounder to short. He speeds down to first. Shortstop throws. First baseman makes the catch. The play is close. It could go either way.
And I freeze.
Seriously—I make no call at all although I do continue to stare at the base for a while. I wait for the chorus of boos and the throwing of raw produce. But amazingly, the runner takes his place at first and there’s no squawking from either side. Apparently the runner beat the throw by so much that any idiot could see he was safe. The fans must have thought “Man, that guy was so safe the umpire didn’t want to insult our intelligence by making the safe sign.”
2. Later in the season the regular home-plate umpire didn’t show up for a game. I can’t remember why. I just remember the Hillsboro coach saying “Dono, we’ll get a volunteer to do the bases if you ump the plate.” I said “I told the commissioner I would not under any circumstances umpire home plate.” The coach appealed to my baseball knowledge: “You’ll be better at it than whoever we get to do the bases.” I said I wasn’t comfortable doing it and I didn’t need the pressure. The coach pleaded. I said there’s got to be someone else. The coach insisted there was no one else. He begged. “Dono, we’re going to have to forfeit if we don’t have a home plate umpire. Come on, man, you have to do this for us. Please.”
Framdammit, I said. Fine. Give me the shin guards.
I took my place behind home and man, I was never so glad for a game to be over. As I recall I tended to call some high strikes, but consistently so. I didn’t have to make any controversial calls, didn’t have to invoke any obscure rules. The fans were mostly considerate but there was one guy who was on my ass all night long.
And that guy was the Hillsboro coach.
3. Still later in the season I was back on the bases where I belonged, and a kid from Hillsboro hit an inside-the-park grand slam against Veedersburg. (There was no outfield fence, so all home runs at Hillsboro were inside the park.) I don’t remember if it was a walkoff game-winner or just a home run to give Hillsboro the lead, but I do know this: If the other team had appealed the play I would have called the batter out because he missed second base by a mile.
Fortunately the other team didn’t notice, so the Hillsboro coach didn’t have to pass out torches and pitchforks to a bunch of angry townspeople.
Or maybe THEY just wanted Hillsboro to win.