Getting it right

By DAVID GREEN

It's human nature, I suppose, to want what we don't have. It's defensible, perhaps even honorable, to work to eliminate all imperfections that we discern.

But anything can be carried to an unhealthy extreme, and as Randy Travis sang some years ago, "I hear tell the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

That's especially true in the world of sports, where we have become obsessed with getting everything perfect with regard to referees' and umpires' calls, strict adherence to rules -- and the finishing order of automobile races.

Now, as a self-diagnosed obsessive-compulsive, I must admit I can relate. I like a place for everything and everything in its place. I'm among the worst offenders in the "Kill the ump!" crowd. I want my favorite teams to win, but fairly. And I want accurate results of races.

However, we're pushing the envelope in the sports world. We have instant replay in just about all major sports. We obsess about the effects and the fairness of "performance enhancing" substance use. And some policies of the NCAA border on revisionist history.

On Sept. 21, the Renault Formula One racing team will appear before the World Motor Sport Council to defend itself against charges that it conspired to fix the outcome of the Singapore Grand Prix -- a race which was contested exactly 51 weeks earlier, on Sept. 28, 2008.

According to a Brazilian television report, Nelson Piquet claims his crash early in the race was by design, the purpose to trigger a sequence of events that would put his teammate, Fernando Alonso, in position to benefit from pit-stop intervals and overcome a competitive disadvantage.

It should be noted that Piquet came forward only after he was sacked by the team, so his motives (and, by extension, his accuracy) require investigation.

Speculation is that, at worst, the win may be taken away and the French team may be excluded from the rest of this year's competition. Some observers have wondered whether the runner-up -- Nico Rosberg, in a Williams-Toyota -- will get credit for the victory, whether other performances by Alonso and the Renault team this year and last (Alonso also won the next race after Singapore, at Japan, last year) will be altered, whether driver and constructor points race from either or both seasons will be affected, and so on.

Of course, F1 could follow the lead of America's NCAA and merely "vacate" the achievements of its designated criminals. There would be no winner of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix.

NASCAR is well on its way to this sort of micromanagement, as evidenced by the Tuesday morning "rap sheet" that has become almost as regular as the sunrise. With regard to individual events, the stock-car sanctioning body has the slightly less pure motivation of producing a crowd-pleasing spectacle, hence its green-white-checkered finish rule and other procedural changes. NASCAR is less concerned that the most deserving driver is rewarded, although (with apologies to Bill Clinton) I suppose it depends on what "deserving" means.

At some point, it all leaves a very bad taste in my mouth -- at least as bad as that left by the "We wuz robbed!" complaint triggered by incidents such as the blown call by umpire Don Denkinger that cost the St. Louis Cardinals a World Series championship in 1985.

Most sports contests have a time frame in which an error committed by officials or an infraction committed by a competitor must be addressed. After that time, it is considered an uncorrectable error. Criminal law has a similar philosophy in its various statutes of limitation, although some crimes (such as murder) are exempt.

Here's a suggestion: If it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Piquet crashed on purpose, and that the team conspired with him or ordered him to do it, then he and Renault should be penalized. If it can be proved that Alonso was in on it, punish him, too. Fine, suspend, exclude the guilty parties.

But leave the race result alone, please.Make revisions in archived reports and records of the investigation and its results. Don't pretend that it didn't happen.

The bottom line is that a sports event's outcome almost never hinges on any solitary incident or moment. Even my beloved Cardinals still had the remainder of the bottom on the ninth inning to hang onto their 1-0 lead, and then they had Game 7 to overcome Denkinger's blown call in that 1985 World Series. In addition, the Kansas City Royals had to score two runs after Denkinger's Game 6 mistake in order to win.

If Piquet crashed on purpose, he may have certainly helped Alonso win. But Alonso had to perfectly execute the remaining 40-some-odd laps of a 61-lap race to make the skullduggery work.

Any honorable person wants correct and just outcomes, and I'm not advocating the abandonment of rules and regulations.

But it's folly to think we can get everything right. It does a disservice to everybody to lead them to believe that we can do so, in any endeavor.