Last week White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski appeared to be hit by a pitch and hobbled to first base. The replays showed that A.J. clearly had not been hit by the ball and the fact that he was faking like his foot hurt was somewhat ridiculous. But to imply players should be punished for such things is somewhat ridiculous.

One, if Pierzynski wasn’t hit, it’s very clear that he did, indeed, lie. It’s not as if the pitch was close to his foot, the umpire told him to take his base and he sort of shrugged, “OK, if you say so.” He scampered out of the box, then hopped around like something was fractured.

And two, I wasn’t suggesting that Pierzynski should have been, or should be, punished. I’m arguing that there should be a mechanism to punish players for doing what Pierzynski did. It would be tough for the umpires on the field to levy this punishment, because a player probably wouldn’t lie unless he was 95-percent sure the umpires couldn’t catch him. What I’m suggesting is a post facto punishment, in the form of a suspension.

Players (in all sports) get the benefits of wrong or inaccurate calls ALL the time. How many times have we seen a replay where the official got the call wrong? I realize that most sports plays happen in just a few seconds, so sometimes a player probably does believe that he caught the ball or was safe or whatever, even though the replay will show he is wrong.

The biggest problem would be proving that the player was actually lying. In this case it seems pretty obvious that A.J. was lying. But it is possible that the ball grazed his foot and he just embellished it a bit. Is this any different than an NBA player making it look like he is hurt after flopping on a charge?

We have referees and umpires for a reason. If they aren’t smart enough to see things like this happen, either replace them, or accept it as part of the game.