Baseball, America's past time, a sport that is engraved in the nation's DNA is still alive and well. It wont die out anytime soon.Now I must admit as a child baseball was not my first choice, but as time continued to move forward and I matured just a bit, baseball has become a lot more interesting to me. It did help that a professor that I looked up to assigned the college class baseball related assignments. I appreciate and respect the sport. As a younger little person I enjoyed playing the game, yet watching the major league games was dreadful to my short attention spanned mind. Now I can watch the occasional regular season game and stay tuned in for the most part. There have been a few incidents in the past few weeks that has brought up the debate about baseball's unspoken rules. Plenty of sports writers and pundits have given their two cents on the topic. The incidents that has given 24 hour sports news outlets material is accredited to major league pitchers intentionally hitting the opposing team's batter. There a few circumstances that merit a batter from receiving a "deserving" fastball to the body.
One incident could be if a player, say like Manny Machado, who slid into second with his cleats up hitting and in this instance hurting the field player on the opposing team. The opposing team's pitcher who is looking out for his teammate here throws a 90 mph fastball to Machado when its he is up to bat. Machado takes the hit and walks to first. It was expected. Now this particular series between the Baltimore Orioles and Boston Red Sox was intense from the start. Multiple factors played into this series turning into an emotional fiery exchange between two AL East teams. Chris Sale decided to join in on he fun and aim for Manny Machado's back side the following game. Machado did not take to kindly to Sale's self imposed unwritten rule regulator.
A second incident for a major league player to be hit by a pitch is if they flip their bat. To clarify, if a batter hits a home run and flips his bat, the pitcher can take that as show boating, offensive, and even somehow disrespecting the game. The next time that same batter is up at the plate fans, players, coaches and even the umpires know what's going to happen.
There are a few more unspoken rules in baseball that can lead the discussion to continue on for days, but the issue is not about the unspoken rules. Sports in general have a variety of certain rules or etiquette that are followed in that particular sport. The issue I take part with baseball is how it allows players to solve these issues on their own in a very dangerous manner. I question whether certain sports fans or people in general lack a basic understanding in fundamental physics. This is a hard spherical object that is being launched at 90 miles per hour at a human body. I am not sure what else is needed to explain that getting hit by anything tends to hurt especially if it's coming at you at such a high speed.
The league tends to no get involved nor implements any rules or policies to prevent pitchers from intentionally hitting a batter. The occasional home plate umpire might read the situation and throw out the pitcher, but no suspension or fine will follow. My solution, have batters throw their bats at the pitchers that intentionally hit them. This way it becomes like a western stand off, a duel, but instead of it being bullets it can be replaced by a bat and baseball. This solution works out great for two reasons. First reason is that if batters throw their bats at pitchers, the pitcher might think a bit longer before he acts on throwing a baseball 90 mph at a person with a bat. Second reason, the entertainment value will dramatically increase! Move over UFC and WWE baseball is here with some real action. Or, just bare with me here, pitchers can stop throwing fastballs at batters and learn to control their temper tantrums a bit more. I prefer the former, but like I mentioned before baseball isn't my first choice go to sport. I haven't watched enough to gauge a better feel for the game. But I do know stupid when I see it.
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