Closing the Book on Baseball's Unwritten Rules

Major League Baseball just isn't what it used to be. This game was once a world of 2-1 nail biters that hinged on moving that key runner into scoring position so a perfectly played suicide squeeze could bring him home. Today's game has evolved into one of ripped, weight room jocks waiting on deck to see if one of their muscle-bound buds can bring in three or four runs by smacking a monster homer with one air-splitting swing.

A lot of stuff hit the fan late in July when Ricky Henderson took second base in the seventh inning of a game in which his Padres led Davey Lopes' Brewers 12-5. Davey went ballistic because the move challenged one of baseball's long-standing unwritten rules. You just don't do that to a team when they are down. That's showboating! That's rubbing their face in it!

This must just be a disrespectful San Diego Padre thing because it drew the ire of Arizona manager Bob Brenly when Ricky's teammate Ben Davis had the audacity to bunt his way on base to break up a Curt Schilling no-hitter late in May. My God, he must have been mad. What was he trying to do, get in position to score a run? Stop the madness!

"All these unwritten rules need to be written down somewhere," said Brenly. This was right around the same time that Dodgers' manager Dusty Baker saw red because Brenly had Matt Williams out there swinging at 3-0 pitches in a game in which the D-backs held a handy 6-run lead in the middle innings. These guys just have no conscience. How many runs does any one team need any way?

Try maybe 15! That's how many the Seattle Mariners should have had the night of August 5th if they were going to have any chance of fending off the rabid Cleveland Indians. Here was the best team in the majors leading a team searching some momentum by 12 runs after 2 ½ innings. Pack it up boys! This one is in the books!

Well, not so fast, me buckos! Anybody who witnessed that Sunday night game enjoyed the thrill of a baseball lifetime. These Indians hacked away in the 7th, 8th and 9th innings and had the gall to tie the game to force extra innings.

Those dirty Clevelanders broke a few hundred unwritten rules by fighting back from the shadows of two outs in the bottom of the ninth. Heck, they could have done the gentlemanly thing and succumbed to their last out three different times in the ninth. But instead they threw the unwritten rulebook away scoring 5 runs to take the Mariners to extra innings, and then winning by one in the eleventh. Oy Vay! What chutzpah!

And as if Mariner skipper Lou Piniella didn't already have enough to spit and cry about in this fiasco, it was none other than that mouthy Indian reliever John Rocker that came in to strike out the side in the 11th ending a 3-game Cleveland losing streak.

So lets talk about unwritten rules and all of the insolent things you are not supposed to do to win a game in this world of modern baseball. Lets see, you are supposed to lie down in submission before a pitcher and his no-hitter and you never swing from your heels when you have a 6-run lead in the middle innings.

I remember in the mid-eighties you could always find a healthy handful of pitchers sporting ERA's under 3.0 in the bigs at the end of any particular season. Today, if you sport an ERA somewhere around 4.0 you are signing a huge contract and leading somebody's bullpen. That's the way it is today when hitters 1 through 8 on most big-league rosters can belt the ball into orbit around the moon.

Come on all you Daveys, Dustys and Bobs of major league baseball. Wake up! Our father's big leagues are nowhere to be found. Heck, the “Bigs” you played in are gone forever, too.

No longer do we see drag bunts and cunning strategy move men into scoring position. The day of scratching out that 2-1 win by the sweat of your brain are gone. This is the new age of major league baseball.

And it is the new age bigger, faster, stronger, harder-hitting major league ballplayers that people pay their money to see. They fill today's nostalgic retro ballparks to see football scores and 70-homers a season. It's time to close the book on baseball's unwritten rules and enjoy this new baseball for what it is. Crude, rude and in-your-face entertaining.