The unwritten rules of baseball/softball

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Feb 7, 2013
3,188
48
I don't know if you have been following the recent series between Boston Red Sox v. Baltimore Orioles but there was an incident that brought out the "unwriiten" rules of baseball. One of the Orioles players, Manny Machado, slide hard into 2nd base and injured a Red Sox fielder. After that, Machado was thrown at 6 times in the series. In retaliation, a Orioles pitcher threw at a Red Sox batter and was thrown out of the game.

The unwritten rule is to allow the players to police themselves. For example, a player hits a home run and slowly trots around the bases "showing up" the pitcher, the next at bat he gets a fastball to the head. A player looks into the catcher to "sneek a peek" at where the catcher is setting up and he get a fastball to the ribs, etc. In retaliation, the other team's pitcher throws at the pitcher who threw at his player, and it goes on and on. A sort of vigilantism...

My personal opinion is the umpires enforce the rules of the game, not the players. IMO, if you intentionally throw at a batter you should get a signficant numbers of games suspended without pay. I think this would put a quick end to this nonsense and old school mentality.

What say you?
 
Oct 11, 2010
8,337
113
Chicago, IL
I think DD intentionally hit batter, they were an ***.. DD hit her hard in ribs, it had to,hurt.

I did not ask because I did not want to get on my high hourse telling her how wrong that is.
 
Oct 11, 2010
8,337
113
Chicago, IL
Longer story ......

DD supposely hit her 1st at bat, not even sure ball hit her. She dropped and we were calling the paramedics, she made a marcasite recovery and limped to 1st. Ball was not even close to her leg, she limped to 1st.

(I need to say 1 more thing, C caught the ball. :))
 
Last edited:
May 17, 2012
2,804
113
Unrwitten rules in baseball = the *white* way.

Notice how these fights usually break down between ethnic backgrounds?

I enjoy watching the WBC or Korean baseball where you don't see that nonsense. I love the bat flips.
 
Jul 16, 2013
4,659
113
Pennsylvania
There are two versions of "unwritten rules" in my opinion. The first revolve around class, professionalism, and respect for the game. I am completely in favor of those. An example going against these would be when Arod was running from 2nd to 3rd on a pop up and yelled when he got behind the 3rd baseman, attempting to district him. In my opinion, that was bush league. The second type of unwritten rules are those that you are speaking of, and I am not a fan of those. If you don't like bat flips, the solution is simple; don't give up a homer. If you want to prove your point to the other team, do it on the scoreboard.
 
Jun 6, 2016
2,714
113
Chicago
I'm all for umpires (or the league) doing the policing, and I strongly support draconian penalties to prevent the stupidity.

It can be hard, if not impossible, to determine whether a pitcher threw at a batter on purpose, but let's say we know with 100% certainty headhunting was intentional. How to stop it from *ever* happening again? One-year suspension plus a fine so great even Clayton Kershaw would need to get an off-season job to pay the bills, team loses enough first round draft picks to sink the organization for a decade, eight-figure fine for team, team's manager is suspended for 50-100 games and fined a year's salary. Yeah, all that is WAY over the top. But if you really, truly are interested in getting it out of the game, that's how you do it.

Suspending a guy so he misses one start is worthless. Fining a guy the equivalent of pocket change does nothing. If you want to get dumb stuff out of the game, show the players, managers, and teams you won't tolerate it. Otherwise, you're saying it's just not that big of a deal. My biggest pet peeve is when leagues talk about wanting to stop something they claim is so horrible and then doing nothing about it.
 

MTR

Jun 22, 2008
3,438
48
I don't know if you have been following the recent series between Boston Red Sox v. Baltimore Orioles but there was an incident that brought out the "unwriiten" rules of baseball. One of the Orioles players, Manny Machado, slide hard into 2nd base and injured a Red Sox fielder. After that, Machado was thrown at 6 times in the series. In retaliation, a Orioles pitcher threw at a Red Sox batter and was thrown out of the game.

The unwritten rule is to allow the players to police themselves. For example, a player hits a home run and slowly trots around the bases "showing up" the pitcher, the next at bat he gets a fastball to the head. A player looks into the catcher to "sneek a peek" at where the catcher is setting up and he get a fastball to the ribs, etc. In retaliation, the other team's pitcher throws at the pitcher who threw at his player, and it goes on and on. A sort of vigilantism...

My personal opinion is the umpires enforce the rules of the game, not the players. IMO, if you intentionally throw at a batter you should get a signficant numbers of games suspended without pay. I think this would put a quick end to this nonsense and old school mentality.

What say you?

It is childish bullshit and if the owners had 1% of the courage to run a clean business as they have money, they would do something about it. Unfortunately, they don't have 1% of the 1%
 

MTR

Jun 22, 2008
3,438
48
I don't know if you have been following the recent series between Boston Red Sox v. Baltimore Orioles but there was an incident that brought out the "unwriiten" rules of baseball. One of the Orioles players, Manny Machado, slide hard into 2nd base and injured a Red Sox fielder. After that, Machado was thrown at 6 times in the series. In retaliation, a Orioles pitcher threw at a Red Sox batter and was thrown out of the game.

The unwritten rule is to allow the players to police themselves. For example, a player hits a home run and slowly trots around the bases "showing up" the pitcher, the next at bat he gets a fastball to the head. A player looks into the catcher to "sneek a peek" at where the catcher is setting up and he get a fastball to the ribs, etc. In retaliation, the other team's pitcher throws at the pitcher who threw at his player, and it goes on and on. A sort of vigilantism...

My personal opinion is the umpires enforce the rules of the game, not the players. IMO, if you intentionally throw at a batter you should get a signficant numbers of games suspended without pay. I think this would put a quick end to this nonsense and old school mentality.

What say you?

It is childish bullshit and if the owners had 1% of the courage to run a clean business as they have money, they would do something about it. Unfortunately, they don't have 1% of the 1%
 
May 16, 2016
1,024
113
Illinois
That was not that dirty of a slide. IMO. He did get cleat him but it does not look intentional to me. Link to the slide below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXIVg8ovjA4

Here is Chris Sale throwing at Machado. He does not throw anywhere near his head.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ualXJEnTpuw

This one is much more dangerous, and I do not like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ualXJEnTpuw

This is another time they throw at his knees, and part of the previous video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0PL453dS74
 

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