{"id":1353,"date":"2013-03-12T09:52:14","date_gmt":"2013-03-12T13:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=1353"},"modified":"2018-05-17T15:36:17","modified_gmt":"2018-05-17T19:36:17","slug":"baseballs-unwritten-rules-in-question-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalsarmrace.com\/?p=1353","title":{"rendered":"Baseball’s Unwritten Rules in question Again"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The nasty WBC brawl resulted from several breaches of “Baseball Etiquitte.” PHoto topsy.com<\/p><\/div>\n

We all by now have heard about the Mexico-Canada brawl<\/a> over breaches of \u00a0“Unwritten Rules” of the game. \u00a0 This brought back into play a post I wrote mostly in May of 2011 on the same topic.<\/p>\n

Now, the WBC’s pool play requires Run Differential to be brought into play, so you can kind of understand the “bunting with a huge lead” breach that led to the brawl. \u00a0But that fight was simmering all game as one small situation after another (mostly involving the Canadian catcher Chris Robinson<\/strong>, a career minor leaguer<\/a> in the Baltimore organization) kept raising the level of irritation on the behalf of the Mexican team. \u00a0It had all the classic signs of a brawl-to-be: the “better” team (Mexico) was losing while not trying as hard, and was getting more and more irritated with the scrappy team taking the game too seriously and playing too hard. \u00a0Take out slides at 2nd base, bunting in non-bunt situations. \u00a0Eventually a guy gets hit and a very serious fight takes place. \u00a0You had a player in Robinson taking the game too seriously versus a bunch of MLBers for Mexico perhaps not taking the game as seriously.<\/p>\n

What did I think of the bunt? \u00a0I thought it was in bad form frankly. \u00a0Yes the run differential counts … but I don’t believe Canada was in a situation where things would have come down to run differential. \u00a0I think Robinson had been “over-playing” the whole game and wanted to get one last dig in.<\/p>\n

Back to my original May 2011 article on the topic; ESPN has a feature called “Player X,” wherein an anonymous professional athlete in one of the major sports pens an article from time to time writes an article about topics that may not otherwise be written about.\u00a0 Because of his anonymity, he can name names and call out fellow professionals without the normal press-overreaction.<\/p>\n

In May of 2011, a post was written<\/a> about “Baseball’s Unwritten Rules” (it may be insider-only, I’m sorry).\u00a0 Being that this is a topic I’ve written about in the past (see this June 2009 post<\/a> on my previous blog), I found it relatively interesting.\u00a0 I wrote the June 2009 post right after a very infamous “unwritten rule” was broken, specifically bunting to break up a no-hitter\/perfect-game.\u00a0 In fact Player X recounts another such situation where Curt Schilling<\/strong> had a perfect game broken up by a bunt single.<\/p>\n

Years ago, after a long back-and-forth email conversation related to this same topic with a friend of mine (who wasn’t necessarily a baseball aficionado but did have some thoughts on the issue) I came up with this list of “unwritten rules.”<\/p>\n

Unwritten professional Etiquitte rules of baseball<\/strong><\/p>\n