I'm reading several articles written by David Sirlin, the videogame designer and player, on Playing to Win. The basic concept from his articles (and presumably from his book) is that in competitive games, many people are bound by their own made up set of rules and morals that actively work against them winning the game. He refers to these people as "scrubs". Scrubs are the people who will refer to some tactics as "cheap" even though it might be strategically, the best tactic to win a game.
It got me to thinking about baseball. Of all competitive sports, I'd say baseball's the one filled with the most "scrubs" as people say. It's perpetuated by the fans, myself included.
One of the more obvious "scrub" incidents to Padres fans was when Ben Davis bunted to break up Schilling's no-hitter. While that was somewhat unique, that sort of scrub situation actually comes up somewhat often. A pitcher will get to the 6th inning with a high pitch count and having given up no hits and suddenly the question becomes, "Do we leave this guy in to try to get the no-no?" All of a sudden, there's an extra rule that a team is playing by that's been self imposed and actively working against them. All of a sudden, one team is playing like scrubs.
I know it's something that gets pointed out often, but it's just interesting to think that professionals who claim to always play to win often times are holding back for no good reason at all.