Old School Baseball

[Erik]

All these Mets fans complaining have forgotten about 2007, when in a crucial game vs. the Phillies, they complained about Marlon Anderson being called for sliding way out of the basepath toward Utley to try to break up the DP. There were no injuries but he was much farther out of the basepath than Utley was this time.

The wording of the rule should be clarified and the rule should be more consistently enforced. But in the middle of the playoffs is not the time to make changes.

[revo]

Lol, check out how far Hal McRae goes to take Willie Randolph out:

https://youtu.be/GIiYw53nGd0

Edit: Can you not embed video in this forum? I demand my money back!

You should be able to embed video. And wow, that play was egregious.

[james33]

The wording of the rule should be clarified and the rule should be more consistently enforced. But in the middle of the playoffs is not the time to make changes.

This.

[Moonlight J]

F*ck Utley -- anyone going in over the bag before sliding should immediately be called out using the existing rule book. Umps blew it and baseball blowing it more, but I guess they've finally decided enough is enough and are going to use this as the watershed moment to get things moving in a safer direction.

He should play as he is due his due process, but if baseball issues pre-game warnings, the chickenshit wins. That's the real deal with this is players continue to do this because there is no retribution from the league. Iwamura had his career ended by it, hopefully Kang isn't in the same boat, but baseball is an incidental contact sport. That was a malicious slide; he could move Tejada's foot without sweeping the leg past the bag.

Why is that, or this slide, permissible in baseball? In both cases, both he & the batter should have been called out using the existing rules that the umps have just ignored because Utley is just "making a good hardnose baseball play"

https://twitter.com/RosenbergMerc/status/653067605830336512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

[james33]

I've always heard old school baseball types say that in turning the DP against a hard charging runner, drop down your arm submarine style and throw it low, to prevent these takeout slides. I'm not sure I've ever seen it work though, and not sure a middle infielder would have time to recognize the slide and change his delivery so quickly (?)

[joncarlos]

Stupid move by the league to postpone his appeal. He's in New York anyway. This whole thing has been a comedy of errors.

[umjewman]

Lol, check out how far Hal McRae goes to take Willie Randolph out:

https://youtu.be/GIiYw53nGd0

Edit: Can you not embed video in this forum? I demand my money back!

Yeah, but that was to the Yankees detriment, and we can agree that things to the Yankees detriment are inherently good. So, not a great example.

[DMT]

The replay is a joke now.

[Moonlight J]

I think most folks are in agreement that the rules should be clarified and that they should be enforced differently than they have been for the (at least) last 40 years. Fact is, though, that this is the state of affairs in the MLB and the selective enforcement of this play during the playoffs is no more than a PR move, as Overkill astutely noted. This exact thing has happened without penalty literally hundreds, probably thousands, of times. Selective enforcement is by its very nature unfair.

Everything requires an impetus to change. Baseball is choosing this event to say enough is enough. They're handling it poorly, in MLB fashion, but they'll fix this and hopefully these slide tag bullshit reviews this offseason.

[Moonlight J]

I've always heard old school baseball types say that in turning the DP against a hard charging runner, drop down your arm submarine style and throw it low, to prevent these takeout slides. I'm not sure I've ever seen it work though, and not sure a middle infielder would have time to recognize the slide and change his delivery so quickly (?)

Yep -- my coaches taught us to come in low & make the guy tapdance around the bag by aiming for their feet. He would have our infielders practice throwing from down low angles to condition us to come in low and a few guys were domed by throws once, but never twice.

[TranaGreg]

Yep -- my coaches taught us to come in low & make the guy tapdance around the bag by aiming for their feet. He would have our infielders practice throwing from down low angles to condition us to come in low and a few guys were domed by throws once, but never twice.

yeah, my issue with that as a former infielder was that in a tight game the thrown ball bouncing off a helmet can go a long way in who-knows-what direction ... I had no problem throwing the ball at the runner tho (and yes there's almost always time to adjust your throw to go high or low).

a related issue from the Tex-Tor series - Rougned Odor putting his entire knee down to cover second base on steal attempts. There were a couple of head first dives where this came up, but guys will start sliding with cleats up if he keeps that up.