Do manners die inside the lines?

[Williamsburg2599]

They may be a moral question/personal belief question as much as a baseball question, but is there "room" for manners, politeness, and chivalry in baseball? There are countless players with bad knees, hammys, ankles, ect... and even players who are disabled(like the pitcher with the San Diego organization who is missing a couple of fingers). Should players go out of their way to avoid collision with one of those body parts in a close play with that player or act like they don't know he/she has an injury and play like they would if any player was there? What about chivalry? Now with at least one women player at the college level, and countless women players at the HS, and Babe Ruth levels, what happens if a women is playing 2nd or home and there is a close play or a double play to break up?

[ironman]

Now on the chivalry thing... If you are a serious ballplayer, then you have to do the same things you normally do in game situations. However, you would probably have to adapt to her being your teammate in the locker room, etc. of which there is no way around.

[ironman]

Can't imagine having to be in this situation as a wrestler.

[captlid]

I watch plenty of MLB and amateur games. My overall impression after observing both is that players do not go out of their way to hurt their opponents.

The only exception I see to this is a runner crashing a catcher in the majors. Also think its done not to injure the catcher but
1. to score a run by preventing the catcher from gloving the ball or to knock it out of their hands.
2. to prevent injury to a runner's legs from sliding into a stationary target, shin guards. Similar to the breakaway bases used at the lower levels?

It really boils down to sportsmanship. I personally think there's absolutely nothing wrong with lowering a shoulder to knock the catcher down. (I played roller hockey!) There's a clear cut difference between what's acceptable in terms of physical contact in baseball versus what's not.

Example's
1. Headhunting, no no
2. Spiking an infielder above the knee, no no
3. Throwing inside, ok
4. Breaking up double plays with a hard slide, ok

[SamtheBravesFan]

Well, my view on it with women could be a little simplistic, but it's what I think. If women ballplayers come around (there probably will be, something I'd welcome), they should except and be prepared to be treated like any other player with them. If people put a "target" on women ballplayers, that's just something they're going to have to deal with as part of being a major league baseball player. I'm not talking about sexism, I'm talking about getting barrelled over, taken out on a double play or hit by pitches.

[SRO]

You can play hard without being a weasel and I think most of us can usually tell if someone is playing selflessly or is simply trying to cheat.

[Utility07]

If theres a player, who is at a disability, or somehow different, they chose to be there. Its their problem not yours. If they expect special treatment, tell them to suck it up, and that they are just like everyone else once they get inside those lines. There is little to no room for politeness.

Notice one of the rules in baseballs rulebook is "No fraternizing with the other team"

I played against a team that had 9 guys last year. One guy tweeked his ankle on the 1st base. They moved him from center field, to 1st base, where he had never played before, to avoid forfeiting.(This league does not allow 8 players) Guess what alot of our guys did the rest of the game?

Yes, we bunted at the first baseman.

[rugbyfreak]

Notice one of the rules in baseballs rulebook is "No fraternizing with the other team"

I fully agree with keeping a game's competitive edge as sharp as possible. After all, at age 47, in men's softball, I still take out the guy at second to break up two every time.

But for players to be told to be competitive in the rulebook? I have always found baseball's fraternization rule absolutely pathetic, and on several levels.

First, any league that feels it has to remind its players of this surely has a self-image problem. For most of my life, I had merely thought it was another of baseball's ******* macho codes, most of which are so lame they only end up being macho-wannabe. Example: You got hit by a pitch? Don't rub it.

Then a guy added some insight for me. He said it was written into the rulebook sometime in the Deadball Era, when the dirty little not-so-secret secret was that ballgames were routinely for sale to the highest-bidding bookie. It was common knowledge that at least one game in the very first WS (1903) was thrown. Game 7 of the 1912 WS was definitely won by the Giants, with the Red Sox' noncompetitive consent. (Players were pissed at ownership for declaring the Game 2 tie a non-game, meaning Game 7 was being called Game 6 as far as gate-receipt sharing was concerned. Since the agreement in those days called for the players to start drawing their share beginning with Game 5, not sooner, by negating Game 2 from the ledger, they were losing a whole game's worth of receipts. So, with Boston up 3-2 entering the "7th" game, they conspired to guarantee one more game by letting the Giants win.)

Anyway, this whole business made the baseball powers so nervous, they thought they could stamp it out by forbidding players to hang around the batting cage! Like so many countless other times in its history, MLB failed to look in the right place for the answer to a problem: the mirror.

Salaries, of course, were notoriously cheap, but it was more than that. It was the draconian manner in which they treated players, especially in financial matters, that were a constant reminder of an industry that was nothing short of serfdom. That WS share policy, so shamelessly stacked in the owners' favor, since the WS seldom went 7 games, and in the event of a sweep, they got nothing.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: You create conditions like that, you should expect the worst. And in the fix of '19, they certainly got the worst, but it was a fitting culmination from a player group that had had enough. I'll stop just shy of saying that MLB deserved that fix, but I think it would have been healthy of MLB to take part ownership of the events and realize they had had a hand in it. Of course, that was never going to happen. They were too busy up on their pulpit, spouting sanctimonious odes of indignity, hiring famous judges to "clean up their game." But for the owners going forward, nothing changed. There was no talk of them cleaning up their game.

As to the topic of onfield manners, far be it from me to advocate being soft to the enemy, but here's one I've always thought should exist. With all the silly beanball brawls we've seen in recent years, I've noticed many of them started because players have become so touchy and sensitive that they have started to assume that nearly every HBP is intentional, so they do that charge the mound thing, which sometimes makes me laugh.

What isn't funny is that the player's poor judgement often escalates into something worse. To defuse the whole thing, seems to me the pitcher could make a simple gesture: Walk down from the mound and ask the batter if he's OK. Any batter would automatically have to dial down his umbrage. Instead we get that stupid little ritual: The hit batter stares down the pitcher for a sign of intent; ball is now in his court, but instead of dousing the whole thing like I suggested, he returns the puffery, offering a complex series of primordial signals (somewhat like a mating dance) involving stares, glares, arm motions and finger-points.

But the message is very clear to the batter, and he answers with the requisite heaving of the bat towards the pitcher, and then charging the mound, there to engage in a pathetic show of boxing that hints of childhoods where they got beat up more than they did the beating.

But I swear, in all the thousands of games I've seen, I've never seen a pitcher extend this courtesy once. What's the downside? It would easily pass the locker room macho test, I would think. Your teammates wouldn't think you weak, not these days, where most of the guys are getting pedicures, examining each other's feelings, and then running off to step class.

So, unless these pitchers all want the brawl ("bring it on, baby!") and enjoy creating the impression that the hit was intentional, the only other conclusion I can draw is that this is such a reflexive, involuntary ritual that they could not devitate from the script if they wanted to. Sort of like that weird red bag of skin that a lizard gets under his chin when he is threatened, or that eerie, throaty moan that a cat does only when she's in heat.

[Richmond Hill Phoenix]

I've always liked baseball because the guys on the other team had faces. You can talk to them, and be friendly. I generally don't harbour any ill-will towards them. I want to win the game, but I don't necessarily want them to feel de-moralized or injured.

I catch and I always try to hand the batter the bat if it's a foul ball, throw the bat back to the bench if the batter gets on base etc... I'll even chat with the guy while he's in the box if he feels inclined to do so. I always liked it when guys would talk while they're on first base, or during a stoppage in play. It differentiates the game from hockey, football etc...