Columnist Dean Juipe: Hughes makes the right call

Dean Juipe

Monday, May 22, 2000 | 8:58 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

It was a quick and decisive verdict, the type that leaves every impartial observer feeling justice was served.

"Hurray."

"It's good to see it."

"Nice job."

Those were some of the remarks in the aftermath of a tough call that came down Friday. Yes, "hurray" and "it's good to see it" and "nice job" were comments also directed to the jury in the Binion murder trial, but they were just as apropos a few hours later when the executive director of the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association, Jerry Hughes, made a decision that determined the state's 4A baseball champion for 2000.

Ruling with the type of iron hand that the early West's "hanging judge," Roy Bean, or first baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, would have appreciated, Hughes went for the jugular. He saw the challenge as a matter of principle.

He threw Durango High School and Reno High School out of the state baseball playoffs, a decision that gave Silverado its first state championship.

It was a gutsy move, albeit one right by the books.

Hughes, unlike the folks at Indiana University who investigated basketball coach Bobby Knight and then decided to turn the other cheek in spite of a mountain of evidence that would have justified his removal, didn't spare the whip. Before the umpires on the field could sort out a seventh-inning melee, Hughes had tossed both schools from the tournament.

The donnybrook, which occurred in the bottom of the inning with Durango on top 8-2 and apparently headed for the title game with Silverado, was the result of a close play at the plate in which players from each side became entangled. When tempers flared, both dugouts emptied.

But a zero tolerance edict was in effect, and it had been since Hughes issued a memorandum earlier in the season in which he reminded every school in the state that if it left its dugout for a confrontation, it would automatically forfeit the game being played. He distributed the memo following a scuffle between Douglas and Carson high schools, and he didn't hesitate to enforce its provisions in the state tournament.

When players from both Durango and Reno left their dugouts, each team was charged with a forfeit that eliminated it from the tourney. There were two other end results: Silverado, 2-0 in the event and awaiting the Durango-Reno winner, got the trophy without having to play a championship game; and Hughes made it clear that his policies, including this one that emphasizes sportsmanship even in the most trying of times, will be enforced.

No one involved has any excuses; the rules, as well as the potential penalties, were well known and should have been given a higher priority by the offending coaches. And as for Durango feeling as if it was a victim and that Reno players taunted them following the double forfeit, as its head coach claims, that's just too bad.

On-field scuffles are nothing new in baseball, yet they're tiring and pointless. They shouldn't be accepted at any level of the sport.

One thing about it, they're not being accepted in Nevada. Hughes, as a one-man judge and jury, sent a message that won't soon be forgotten.

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