Baseball Needs To Start Writing Down Its "Unwritten" Rules...With Explanations

Last night I was half paying attention to SportsCenter when they showed a clip of a batter from the Washington Nationals rushing the mound after a pitcher from the Florida Marlins threw a pitch behind him. The batter was a lot shorter than the pitcher but he jumped up and connected with a left hook right before he was swarmed by the first baseman of the Marlins. I heard an explanation about him stealing bases when the score was about 15-3 or something like that. I assumed that he was on the team that already had 15 runs and was showing up the Marlins, hence the pitch thrown behind him.

No biggie right?

Then today I was of course watching SportsCenter again and I heard the full explanation of what happened according to them. So the Washington Nationals player was Nyjer Morgan. And it turns out he had been hit by a pitch in the 4th inning when HIS team was down by over 10 runs. Now evidently there was already bad blood there because Morgan had run over the Marlins catcher on a play at the plate in a previous game and knocked him out for the year with a shoulder injury.

Now remember this was still the early part of the game, the 4th inning, when he stole the bases. But according to the "experts" on ESPN Morgan broke another one of Major League Baseball's unwritten rules by stealing. I literally had to hit rewind to make sure I heard that right.

The guy said with a straight face that basically a team that is down by that much should just give up and go home. When did that become what baseball is all about?

Mind you because Morgan stole two bases he was then in position to score and did score when a teammate hit the ball to the outfield. And mind you it turns out the Nationals eventually scored 10 runs even though they still fell short of the win. But this just doesn't make any sense on any level to me.

Can you imagine that same mentality playing out in any other sport? Hell nowadays I hear more about players loafing in baseball than I can ever remember but now because a guy actually hustles he's in the wrong? And what message is that sending to kids playing the sport?

Also it seems that Morgan was wrong for rushing the mound after he had already been hit by a pitch and the pitcher threw the ball behind him on his subsequent at bat.

Huh?

Maybe its just that people don't like Morgan. And I understand that he has had some other situations in the past to make people be wary of his antics. But if its true that he was in the wrong in this situation then MLB should be ashamed of itself.

One guy on SportsCenter even went as far as to say Morgan was wrong for running over the catcher ON A PLAY AT THE PLATE!!! But hasn't Pete Rose been lionized for running over a catcher in a meaningless All Star game???

I have to be missing something here.


Here in Tampa, the Rays have a very talented player by the name of B.J. Upton who has gotten into trouble several times for loafing, either when out in the outfield or when not running out a base hit. Hell most fans would LOVE to see the kind of hustle from him that Morgan has shown. And the truth is he would probably be held in much higher regard if he went that hard.

But now people are saying Morgan is wrong for busting his ass?

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the worlds biggest baseball fan anymore but I am just not buying that Morgan was wrong here. And like I said before, if he IS wrong then that says more about Major League Baseball than it does him.

I'd love to hear what you have to say on it though. Maybe I've got it all wrong. But I don't see how that's possible.

My Son Will Play Catcher!

Both of my kids are left handed which of course has made for some adjustments. They write differently, heck they even read definitely so I have had to become familiar with the unique challenges that left handed folks face.

But this New York Times article was pretty startling to me. Did you know there aren't any left handed catchers in the Major Leagues and haven't been for a very long time?

The letters keep coming. Every few weeks, Benny Distefano will open his mail and find a letter from a Little Leaguer, or a parent of one, asking for advice. He is the only person they know who understands.

Twenty years ago, Distefano, then a hanging-on major leaguer, served as a left-handed catcher in a major league baseball game. No one has done so since. Like Ladies Night and pitchers named Wilbur, left-handed catchers are effectively extinct — for reasons on which there is bizarrely little consensus.

“I have no idea,” said Joe Mauer, the Minnesota Twins’ All-Star catcher (right-handed, naturally).

“Is it because there are more right-handed hitters?” offered Atlanta Braves catcher Brian McCann.

“There’s been nobody come into a game for 20 years? Really?” said a nonplussed Joe Torre, an All-Star catcher throughout the 1960s. “Well, first off, left-handed pitchers don’t throw the ball straight.”

Major league teams have been panting for more catchers since shinguards, begging for mothers to allow their sons to play there, and yet they cut off an entire stream of talent that happens to throw left-handed. In the last 100 years, Dale Long caught two innings for the Chicago Cubs in 1958, Mike Squires the same for the 1980 White Sox.

And since Aug. 18, 1989, when Distefano caught for the last time, baseball has embraced retro uniforms and even revenue sharing — but not the likes of Distefano. The minor leagues do not have one left-handed catcher right now.

“It’s a slow-changing game,” said Distefano, now the hitting coach of the West Michigan Whitecaps, a Detroit Tigers Class A affiliate. “It takes a creative manager that’s willing to go with something that might be a little outside the box.”

I grew up playing baseball and I am a pretty big fan of our team down here, the Rays. But it never even occured to me that there were no left handed catchers. Well I can tell you one thing, if my son decides he wants to play baseball he will definitely play some catcher. I have a feeling that at some point they might be in demand if for no reason other than nobody else will have one on their team.