The beauty of Bryce Harper defiling the Braves logo

Over the weekend, Bryce Harper defiled the Braves logo behind home plate at Turner Field. Absolutely defiled it. My friend told me that Harper put his crotch on the logo, pushed his chest up, and howled at the moon. Then he ...

Aw, man. That’s kind of boring. But! It was certainly enough to annoy Braves fans all across the land, which means that even though the Braves didn’t throw at Harper for the defiling, it’s probably a good idea to explore the unwritten rules of what Harper did.

Before moving on, note that other players do this occasionally. Matt Cain defiled a Padres logo on the back of the Petco Park mound, but it’s really hard to find Internet evidence of this. This is the best I can do:

That specific clown/bro verbiage is what’s known as “foreshadowing” in the literary world.

Unless you’re a Padres or Giants fan, you probably never heard of that particular logo defiling. That’s partly because it happened in 2009, which is a decade in Internet years. Another reason that escaped attention is that it was a weekday Giants/Padres game. It would be news if Bryce Harper picked his nose on camera, but the Padres wouldn’t make national news unless a player pulled live scorpions out of his nose, one after the other, for 40 minutes. Harper doing it is probably more important than the actual act.

Let’s talk about the actual act, though, and how it’s different from other unwritten rules. Mainly, this one is very easy to prevent with an addition to the rule book. A player stealing a base with an 11-run lead is impossible to legislate against. There are no taunting penalties for piling on. Players have to enforce the penalties on their own, so they fire hard projectiles at each other. Makes sense.

If baseball wanted to, they could fine players $50,000 for every logo defilement. And we would never, ever hear of this problem again. It was something Harper likely did on a whim, without premeditation, and the thought of a financial sanction would be more than enough to deter him.

That’s the first option. Make it a written rule and watch it go away. That’s unlikely to happen, of course, because no one really cares except for oversensitive fans and perhaps the grounds crew. And me! I love this stuff.

The second option is to leave this as an unwritten rule and have it be a jerknary in the coal mine --a way for us to figure out which players would actually do something this childish/amusing and react based on how awful/hilarious we think it is. I, for one, am on Team Amusing, but maybe that has more to do with my bias and Cain doing it first. This option -- the status quo -- is what is going to happen, and we won’t hear about logo defiling until the next time someone does it, and even then only if it’s a player we care about.

The third option, however, is my dream. The third option is to make this a thing, an arms race, a part of the theater. Players could actively scout out ways to defile the logos when they’re at different ballparks. They’re already getting heckled and booed, and it would be a delightful release. Drag a cleat through the dirt. Methodically futz up the patterns in the outfield, inning by inning, until the 50-foot grass sock at Fenway resembles something obscene. This could be something. This could be something.

All it takes is an enterprising soul, the Bill Veeck of baseball players, someone who appreciates a slight detour to the WWE side of professional sports. Baseball can definitely use someone who makes logo defilement a part of their road trip routine. He could scout out targets in every park, and maybe a grounds crew could mess with him, setting the logo in something that’s more like quick-set cement, and watching the player get his cleat caught and look like a dummy.

It’s a tradition waiting to happen.

It won’t happen.

So, in the absence of this wondrous new logo-defiling tradition, we’ll have to deal with players like Cain and Harper on a case-by-case basis, and laugh at the upset fans sporadically. Strangely enough, the appropriate penalty for this sort of thing just might be a baseball to the butt. A childish eye for a childish eye. The other unwritten rules are usually so finicky and silly, and a lot of them translate to “Stop playing baseball with a big lead.” This one actually does translate to, “screw you and your team.” The Braves apparently don’t care so much about the unwritten rules, though, and they didn’t retaliate. That’s a shame.

Of course, there’s a little bit of a postscript: Harper says he didn’t mean to do it in the first place (and I kind of believe him).

Logo defiling is entertaining, childish, stupid, beautiful, and far, far too rare. Good work, Bryce Harper. Silly work, Bryce Harper. More of it, please.