Unwritten rules depend on your side
On August 24, 1814 British troops stormed Washington, D.C. and famously burned down the White House, the U.S. Capitol and any other government building they could find. Their commander, Major General Robert Ross, however, ordered the troops to leave private property alone — with one exception.
American soldiers, along with some civilians, liked to lie in wait inside buildings and take a pot shots at the enemy as they marched past. When that happened, Ross declared, the building was to be torched immediately, regardless of its status.
Ross thought such sniping was cowardly. Worse still, it violated the unwritten rules of war.
Yes, unwritten rules existed even back then. As usual, the two sides had contrasting views as to what they actually were. As usual, one side felt it had been wronged and looked for a way to enforce the unwritten rule — in this case with a torch.
Two hundred and five years later the game of baseball takes a little more civilized approach to unwritten rules and their perceived violation. Torches are never used, but beanballs and brawls sometimes erupt.
Frequently nothing more
than harsh words and bruised feelings result from supposed transgressions. That’s what happened in two notable instances last week.
On Sunday Max Muncy of the Dodgers hit a massive home run against Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner. The ball easily cleared the right field fence and landed in the portion of the San Francisco Bay known as McCovey Cove.
There’s an unwritten rule that after hitting a home run a batter does not show up the pitcher but batters and pitchers clearly have different interpretations of the meaning of the rule. Bumgarner became enraged when Muncy stood at home plate admiring his work, then began to circle the bases at a snail’s pace.
Words were exchanged and Bumgarner took a few steps towards Muncy before an umpire stepped between them.
The game continued without further incident, but afterwards each continued to badmouth the other.
In any other setting the solution might be for someone to tell both of them to grow up. But these are ballplayers and this is how ballplayers have behaved for generations. Everybody agrees it’s sinful to break an unwritten rule. What they don’t agree on is what those rules state.
A few days earlier a Trenton Thunder game in Hartford received national attention that is seldom accorded to AA baseball. Hartford had a 3-0 lead as Trenton’s Matt Lipka reached in the ninth inning with a bunt single. Normally that would be regarded as good baseball but it wasn’t this time. The
hit was Trenton’s first of the night.
There is definitely an unwritten rule in an unwritten rulebook that a player does not break up a no-hitter with a bunt. In this case it was a combined no-hitter, but that didn’t prevent some of the Hartford players from reacting furiously. After the game angry words were
exchanged as players confronted each other on the field.
A day later a number of major leaguers weighed in on the topic and the verdict was nearly 5050. Some objected to Lipka’s decision to bunt while others asserted that he had every right to do whatever he thought would help his team win
the game.
Interestingly, some players hedged. One major leaguer said that bunting for the first hit of the game was acceptable only in the first four innings. After that, it was disrespectful. Another supported Lipka, pointing out that the score was 3-0. If the score had been 4-0 or higher, he said, Lipka would have been wrong.
Huh? Now it seems they’re drawing lines in the middle of the unwritten rules. Isn’t that a little bit like trying to carve a picture out of a bowl of jello?
I, for one, applaud what Lipka did. The game was still up for grabs in the ninth inning. His team needed base runners — two to be exact — before the tying run could come to the plate. His job in that situation was to get on base, and he did it the best way he could.
If that ruined somebody’s
no-hitter — in this case somebody’s combined no-hitter — so what? A good baseball player plays to win, and that’s what Lipka was doing.
A FEW STATISTICS (Wednesday’s games not included): Gary Sanchez of the Yankees has hit 20 homers. Interestingly, he has scored only 10 other runs… Adalberto Mondesi of the Royals has stolen 25 bases. No one else has more than 17…The Rays are tied for first place in the American League East but are last in the AL in home attendance, averaging 13,790 per date…The National League’s edge in interleague play has grown to 66-52 – a percentage of .559. That’s a higher percentage than the NL has ever posted over a full season… Trevor Bauer of the Indians leads the majors in innings pitched with 99 1⁄3. Unfortunately, he also leads in walks (45) and hit batsmen (11) and has a 4-6 won-loss record…Maikel Franco of the Phillies leads the majors in intentional walks with 13…The Brewers have only four sacrifice bunts – all by pitchers… The Dodgers have played only two extra-inning games and lost them both… The Mets lead the NL in errors with 48… Opponents are batting .151 against the Astros’ Justin Verlander...The toughest player to fan has been David Fletcher of the Angels, who has whiffed only 15 times in 240 plate appearances…The Mariners won 13 of their first 15 games this season. Since then their record has been 15-40…The Diamondbacks are 11-19 within their own division. They’re 24-14 against everybody else.