Fair Play

The other day the kids were playing ‘catch ball’ in my drawing room with chairs acting as the net. The only rule I formulated for them, a very simple one was that whoever strikes the net while throwing the ball is out.

One bright player derived a corollary- whoever’s throw falls before it is caught by the opponent team is out. The first kid to feel cheated by the rule protested but was silenced by the majority. To avenge for this, this kid started trying to persuade others into deliberately dropping the opponent’s throws. Surprisingly enough the scene didn’t deteriorate into a chaos.

But still it didn’t quite make sense and I had to chide the kid and stop the play.

But wait! Wasn’t the kid playing by the rules? After all isn’t a sport indifferent to such arbitrary judgments as fair or foul play? Doesn’t anything go as long as you are winning or trying to win?

Hmm…the argument sounds pretty logical except a small fallacy- the fallacy of context dropping. The argument ignores the larger context- the purpose of playing catch ball. The purpose of any game is to reward the better skilled person, in other words reward effort and not the lack of it (dropping the catch), and so the degenerated catch ball was not a sport but an exercise in loosership!