The Letter of the Law, Written and Otherwise

Joe West (umpire, with all the subtlety of a terrorist attack) carps from the proper heart, but in the improper manner, about the unconscionable length of a game between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. All of a sudden, everyone is interested in the letter of baseball law.

Alex Rodriguez (infielder, bombardier, and boor, not necessarily in that order) returns to first base after running full out on what proves a foul pop, crossing the pitcher's mound rather than taking the reverse route on the basepath. Dallas Braden (Oakland Athletics pitcher with three lines, a sub-.500 winning percentage, and an ERA at his league's average at best) huffs and puffs about crossing his mound and inspires more talk about the unwritten law than calls to shut his face until he gets more lines on his card and more black or gray ink on his resume.

The problem with West's rant is that he is correct by default, which doesn't appease assorted Yankees and Red Sox alike who rhapsodized in West's wake about the sort of game their fans prefer to see when the two lifelong antagonists square off.

They have a point. I imagine much the same thing goes through players' and fans' minds when, say, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants square off; or, when the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals go at it. Now it seems headed for something very similar between the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets. To see those contests and expect no hitter to step out of the box to regroup, no pitcher back from the rubber for a quick tip from his catcher or a quick breath while trying to out-think his challenger, is to see contests in which no available weapon or resource is left uncalibrated.

Braden may be a barely-established lack of entity, but he, too, is correct by default, which doesn't appease assorted players (some of them Yankees) and observers who think Rodriguez continues to see himself as a privileged character, his unquestioned (even by his enemies) work ethic notwithstanding, accountable to few beyond the celebrity ladies he seems wont to squire, never mind that it seems an open question as to whether he is accountable even to them. The good news, if we may call it such: Not even his worst enemies have ever accused A-Rod of turning a clubhouse into a singular house of horrors.

But baseball, the thinking person's sport, is the game that is unfettered genetically by the clock. What to do, then, about actual or alleged artificially elongated games, never mind that to a real baseball fan time comes to a stop from the first pitch to the final out?

Heaven forfend the umpires should enforce the written law, as it is written. (Say, the 12-second rule for time between pitches.) Heaven forfend the teams should adhere to it. The former are often accused (with justice) of enforcing or interpreting the written law with their own particular biases. (The forgotten factor in the offense explosion of the 1980s and 1990s: the incredible shrinking strike zone, often determined by an umpire's preferences, not by the written law; and, usually turning the strike zone into a region approximating that of a garrison belt buckle.) The latter are often accused (with like justice) of circumventing the written law by any means necessary. Including but not necessarily limited to treachery, skullduggery, and creative landscaping. Not necessarily in that order.

Three seasons ago, Matt Holliday slid across the back point as Michael Barrett blocked the plate, and a legion of San Diego Padres fans screamed bloody murder that Holliday, whose run merely meant their first postseason for the Colorado Rockies, should have been out. An equivalent legion of Rockies fans screamed bloody murder right back, arguing that Barrett had blocked the plate illegally, the ball not quite having reached his hands as he set himself in the block. Rockies fans were correct. Says who? Says the rules, says who. The catcher is not permitted to block the plate until or unless he has the ball in his hands. In any way, shape, or form.

Catchers have developed myriad techniques for plate blocking without quite crossing into the obvious, but by the letter of the law the baserunner has the right of way on the basepath in question so long as the catcher doesn't have the ball. It was that plus the separation of Ray Fosse from his shoulder which still causes debate over just how far over the line Pete Rose crossed in the 1971 All-Star Game. Technically, Fosse stood athwart the rules: he was blocking the plate. Sort of. He didn't have the ball in hand, but neither did he have his entire form across the third base line as Rose approached and bore down on the plate. (Watch the film. Note the angles. Fosse had only one foot on the line.)

Rose actually had plenty of room to score. It is one thing to knock a plate-blocking catcher off the line, since the catcher is violating the written law. But now we come to the unwritten law, part of which says that you don't scamper like a spoiled brat across the mound when returning to base following a foul, part of which says you don't try dismembering or disemboweling a catcher (or anyone else) in an All-Star Game.

Joe Posnanski, the charming Sports Illustrated columnist, has summarized baseball's unwritten laws rather compactly, and perhaps a little surprisingly. They are worth examining, one by one.

1) You don't step on the foul line. This refers to crossing onto or off the field, customarily. It also refers more to superstitions than to any actual unspoken code. (A Baltimore Orioles pitcher, Mike Cuellar, God rest his soul in peace, was infamous for refusing to get his foot anywhere near the foul line when approaching or leaving the mound.)

2) You don't bunt for a hit with a no-hitter in the works. This is generally considered to be unsportsmanlike conduct. And while a sourpuss could forge a splendid argument that your job — no-hitter or otherwise — is to get your butt on base any way you can, short of pointing a gun at the pitcher and ordering him to throw you something you can hit or to keep the ball out of the zone, there is something tawdry about dropping a bunt to break up the no-no. Unless you're Rickey Henderson, that is.

3) You don't peek back at the catcher to see where he's setting up. Not overtly, anyway. A hitter who can't see slightly behind his eye-skull matching point and have a pretty fair idea where the catcher is setting up, especially if said hitter has a preference for hitting from the back half of the batter's box, is a hitter who probably needs to make a date with his optometrist post haste.

4) You don't aim for the head. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why Manny Ramirez flipped his in the 2003 American League Championship Series, when Roger Clemens threw one straight up, an inch or two from his helmet visor, a half inning after Pedro Martinez (who took a back seat to very few when it came to enforcing the unwritten law) tried to push Karim Garcia back off the plate, but threw a rider that escaped his control and flew behind Garcia's back, rather than across his chest. It was the principle of the thing, especially considering Garcia had also tried to draw and quarter Boston second baseman Todd Walker while trying to break up a double play.

This is also why there was such a ruckus raised, anticipating the confrontation, over the Mets' responsibility — with the Yankees coming to Shea Stadium for an interleague contest — to send Clemens a message even Stevie Wonder couldn't miss, after Clemens had made a mini-career, seemingly, of tattooing Mike Piazza (who owned him at the plate) on any part of the body he could reach. Not to mention the infamous World Series broken-bat javelin throw toward Piazza jogging up the first base line. Which leads to...

5) You don't throw behind the batter. Well, now. Assuming that a message is called for — protecting your teammates, for example — would you rather see a target on a head? When Shawn Estes, then a Mets pitcher, took the mound against Clemens that fateful afternoon, Clemens was in the batter's box and Estes threw one right behind Clemens's knees. Oh, the screaming. (Chicken! and Cop-out! were two of the more benign epithets.) The umpires sent forth the warnings post haste, while Clemens flashed a knowing grin after stepping out of the box. While the world was questioning Estes's intestinal fortitude, he had done precisely as he should have done. He had taken the offensive weapon right out of Clemens's hands. And the Mets took the offensive, period, the absolute highlight of the afternoon coming when Estes himself hit one over the fence at Clemens' expense, a two-run shot in the bottom of the fifth. (The Mets went on to win it, 8-0.)

6) You don't charge the mound with your bat in your hands. Sound as a nut.

7) You don't steal bases when your team is up a certain number of runs (the number, Posnanski says, is negotiable). This is one about which I'm not entirely certain. If you consider that Berra's Law is immutable and irrevocable, you consider concurrently that until the final out is secured and recorded the other fellows still have a chance to overtake you. (Darin Erstad, longtime California/Anaheim Angels field sergeant: "As long as we have an out, we have a chance.") Don't think it can't happen. John Smoltz will be happy to disabuse you. In his brief career as a splendid closer otherwise, he was the opening victim when the Mets scored nine in the ninth to overtake and beat the Braves.

Now, if you're talking about a 19-2 blowout with three outs to go, you might have a case on behalf of this rule. Might.

8) You don't swing for the fences 3-0 when your team is up a certain number of runs (this number, Posnanski says, is also negotiable). Refer to No. 7.

9) You don't shout anything racial when you are verbally and viciously taunting your opponent. Sound as a nut. Shouldn't even be a topic. Common decency, you know. (Though of course that doesn't always stay in the memory bank in the heat of the split second. Which reminds me of the single most effective way I ever knew for anyone to tape the racists' mouths shut on a baseball field: Joe Black, Brooklyn Dodgers Rookie of the Year in the making, in due course the first black pitcher to start and win a World Series game, listened to the Cincinnati Reds' bench serenade him with a chorus of "Old Black Joe"... and knocked down the next seven Reds in the lineup.)

10) You don't start walking to first base before the umpire says "ball four." This is an unwritten rule?

11) You don't stand at home plate for too long and watch your home run fly (time is negotiable, Posnanski says). Sound as a nut, and should have these riders attached: a) You don't throw at the next hitter in the lineup merely because your ego was just driven over the fence; b) You don't crowd the plate trying to take the strike zone, which is already being enforced arbitrarily enough, away from the pitcher. If you're pitching and you must send a message to the fellow who just hit your best service into the bullpens, wait until you get a crack at him the next time he comes up to hit. Then just push him off the plate with a well-thrown inside pitch. If you're hitting and you want to take half the already-arbitrary strike zone away from the pitcher, don't be shocked when he comes inside, on the legitimate (or, at least, the established-for-the-day) inside wall of the strike zone. He isn't exactly throwing at you; he's trying to throw an inside strike that he has every right to throw.

Which reminds me: Umpires, knock it off with the warnings just because a pitcher's trying to throw the inside strike and a hitter's fool enough to crowd the plate. You'd have thought baseball would have learned about plate crowding when Ray Chapman took one on the cranium from Carl Mays that meant his life; and, when Tony Conigliaro took one on the crown from Jack Hamilton that ultimately meant his career and, in due course, his life. David Wright, Mets third baseman, took one on the coconut from Matt Cain last season, and there are those who say his plate confidence hasn't recovered completely.

12) You don't shout as you are running by when an opponent is trying to catch a fly ball. I didn't even know this was an issue. But I'm the one who was shocked when Alex Rodriguez tried karate-chopping the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's glove as Arroyo was laying on the tag up the first base line. And you'd have thought I'd seen enough in baseball not to be shocked by just about anything. Even considering what we know now, undiluted and incontrovertible, about A-Rod's self-possession, that was a play to cost you respect in the Little League.

13) You don't spend too much time celebrating strikeouts. This one seems a first cousin to the unwritten law against standing in the box to admire your home run's flight. Though I still think it used to be a hoot when Dennis Eckersley, in his young starting years, would celebrate a punchout by looking as though he were fanning the hammer on a pistol.

14) You don't help an opponent. Unless, of course, the circumstance is extraordinary. Willie Mays pulling the bleeding John Roseboro out of the crowd and into the Dodger clubhouse for medical attention, following the Juan Marichal bat incident (which was provoked by Roseboro in the first place, not that it excuses Marichal, but that's another story), is only the most infamous of such circumstances.

I know of another one. Down the stretch in 1964, Johnny Callison — whose Philadelphia Phillies were knee deep in what proved their infamous collapse — was playing in a game despite a violent case of flu. He reached first base against the Cardinals and the umpire, seeing the shape he was in, allowed the Phillies to bring him a warmup jacket. Callison so struggled to get the jacket on and buttoned that Bill White, the Cardinals' first baseman, stepped over and did the job for him.

Then, of course, there were Dale Murphy and Ryne Sandberg. So respected were they by teammates and opponents alike that, whenever their clubs got into bench-clearing brawls, their opponents made sure neither Murphy nor Sandberg was touched. From the look of it, Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins has something of the same reputation today. So far.

15) You don't crash into a catcher in an All-Star Game. See above.

16) You don't rabbit punch someone during a bench-clearing brawl. No problem. But you also don't go rambling across the field looking to paste one into the pan of an enemy pitcher young enough to be your great-grandson (well, that's only a slight exaggeration) and strong enough to take you apart merely by glaring at you. Ask Don Zimmer and Pedro Martinez.

17) You don't spit at an umpire. Assuming the umpire doesn't take a swing at you. (Don't think that's impossible. Ask West, who once incurred a suspension for pulling a Phillies pitcher, Dennis Cook, from amidst a bench-clearing brawl and body slamming Cook to the ground.) And assuming he is behaving in a fashion reasonably called civilized during a dispute. (See the real story behind the Roberto Alomar-John Hirschbeck incident.)

18) You don't slide into second base spikes high. If you can't execute a takeout slide without raising your spikes, you really don't belong in the game.

19) You don't tag somebody hard in the face. Or in the cup, for that matter.

All of which is just one more reason why baseball, for all its controversies and crises, remains so invigorating a game in discourse as it is in play. In baseball, you are inspired to think and discuss the law. In other sports, you are too often inspired to enforce the law. Not the law of the game, written or unwritten, either.