Baseball hazing ritual revealed
The Daily Evergreen (Pullman, Washington)
April 16, 1992 Thursday
Baseball hazing ritual revealed
BYLINE: BRETT OPPEGAARD, Sports Writer
SECTION: front page
LENGTH: 1,024 words
Some people call it tradition; others call it hazing. The WSU baseball team calls it "BP at the pass."
The BP, or batting practice, is done with cardboard cylinders on the buttocks of first year Cougar baseball players in a ritual that has gone on for at least 48 years, said Coach Chuck "Bobo" Brayton Wednesday.
While the ritual may be considered a part of Cougar baseball tradition, it is a custom that fits the definition of hazing almost precisely.
According to Washington Administrative Code, hazing is "any action required of or imposed on current or potential members of a group which, regardless of location of the incident or consent of the participants produces, or is reasonably likely to produce, bodily harm or danger, mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, fright, humiliation or ridicule."
Fraternities on this campus have lost social privileges, Rush week and even their charters for hazing activities.
Neither the NCAA nor the Pac-10 have policies against rituals or hazing.
"It’s not our business," Steve Mallonee, NCAA director of legislative services, said. "It’s an institutional issue."
Brayton claims the ritual is common knowledge, but a surprised Jim Livengood said, "I’ve been here 10 of the last 12 years, and I’ve never heard of anything like that. It’s a tradition?"
Livengood declined to comment further until he talked with Brayton.
The BP ritual is the climax of the initiation ceremony, but preparation begins almost as soon as the new players enter Pullman.
Younger players watch older players "make fake clubs and talk about BP," Brayton said. "They spend hours on them (the clubs). They carve on them and write all over them. They put a lot of tape on them and some things that might bite into you."
"We keep the young guys worried for a while," he said.
The site of the BP ritual is different every year, Brayton said. The team will make the stop on the way home from a road trip, and he said they try to make it a special place.
"When I went through it in 1944, we did it at the Dalles Ferry, which no longer exists," Brayton said. "It makes it kind of memorable."
The Washington Stonehenge monument is a popular stop, Brayton said.
"If you go out at Stonehenge at night, it’s kind of spooky," he said.
Buck Bailey field on campus also has been used for the ritual.
The uninitiated players wait in anticipation of the event for several months, sources said.
"We’ll pull into places, like we’re going to do it, but then we’ll pull out and leave," Brayton said. "The guys will be saying, ‘we’re going to do some BP’ and then we’ll just leave."
In the ritual itself, initiated players line up in a gauntlet formation with two parallel lines facing each other, Brayton said.
The uninitiated players run through the middle of the lines as players on both sides hit them with cardboard calendar holders with each end duct taped for strength.
"I’m the lead-off guy," Brayton said. "It is an honor for them to get whacked by Bobo. Sometimes I don’t get a good lick, but I don’t lick ‘em very hard anyway."
Stan Schmid, vice president of university relations, said the situation is something that the university needs to look into.
"The university is not in favor of hazing of any kind," he said.
"My course is to have the athletic director look into it," he added.
A former player who asked to remain anonymous said the ritual was no big deal.
"It’s a way to pay your dues," he said.
Brayton said the entire ritual is under strict control. "More is made out of it than is there. It is highly supervised by myself and the coaching staff."
Everyone has instructions before the ritual starts, he said.
"You don’t hit a guy more than once and only in the buttocks. We also don’t let the guys spread out too much (so they have more time to get better prepared to swing)," he said.
Brayton said he has attended every BP the team has had, and said they use all the safety measures they can.
"I check out everyone’s cardboard to make sure nothing is in it," he said.
"Before we used cardboard, I’d check out the sticks. They couldn’t use two by fours or nothing," he said.
However, a former player who asked to remain anonymous, said some players take it to more extremes that others but was reluctant to elaborate.
Brayton said some guys get it worse than others because they are popular.
While participation is 100 percent, and no players have formally requested to be left out of the ritual, Brayton said, the "guys shame them into doing it."
The ritual has been toned down a lot because of society’s shrinking acceptance of such practices, Brayton said.
Up until four or five years ago, small, one-inch wide wooden slats were used in place of the cardboard.
Before that, sticks from the woods were used.
"We haven’t went out to the woods for sticks for a long time," Brayton said.
People don’t have a grasp of tradition, he said.
"You can find something wrong with everything," he said.
"If I had a weenie roast," Brayton said, "someone would say I’m forcing them to eat bad food."
"People talk about tradition, but they don’t understand," he said.
"They don’t suffer with us. Sometimes a team doesn’t have the talent. We try to bind the group together so they play well," he said.
Brayton said the positive things that come out of the ritual are the "belonging-ness, the togetherness, the part-of-ness."
"Maybe we won’t even do it this year. Maybe the last time we did it was last year," he said.
Brayton said he is willing to quit doing the ritual if someone has a problem with it.
"I understand that society changes," Brayton said. "It’s not going to be the end of the world. All I have to do is tell the guys we are not going to do it anymore.
"When I get to heaven I’ll tell Buck Bailey they sawed us off in 1993."