Contents
Introduction: What Are the Unwritten Rules… and What Happened to Them?
1. Respect the Game, and Play to Win
2. When Numbers Change the Game
3. Some Teams Get It
4. Leave Your Ego at the Door
5. As Adrian Beltre Proves, You Can Still Have Fun
6. When a Bat Flip Can Lead to a Bloody Lip
7. Here’s Some Flipping History
8. If Baseball Is “Tired,” Shouldn’t It Be Okay to Show Some Emotion?
9. You Can Earn the Right to Celebrate
10. The Puig Way to Play Baseball
11. Loving the Game the Latin Way
12. There Will Always Be Some Culture Clashes
13. “You Should Hear the Screams” for Javier Baez
14. Jose Urena, Keith Hernandez, and an Old-School View Fading Away
15. Is There Still Room for a Purpose Pitch?
16. Kenley Jansen’s Blacklist
17. Torey (Just Like Earl) Takes a Stand
18. When It’s Still an Eye for an Eye
19. Is There a Statute of Limitations on Revenge?
20. When Even Teammates Don’t Like It
21. Don’t Call Me Coach (But You Can Come Talk to Me)
22. The Kids Are Alright (and It’s Okay to Hear from Them)
23. Watch What You Say (or Tweet)
24. Why Can’t We Be Friends?
25. When There’s a Fight, You’d Better Be There
26. If You Show Someone Up, There’s Going to Be Trouble
27. The A-Rod Rules (or Stay off My Mound)
28. The Jeter Rules (or Acting Can Win You More than an Oscar)
29. Every Player Can Be “Johnny Hustle”
30. Deception Is (Sometimes) Part of the Game
31. Is It Okay to Steal (and We’re Not Talking Bases)?
32. It’s Only Cheating If You Get Caught
33. Can We Say “No-Hitter?”
34. Can You Bunt for the First Hit?
35. You Don’t Pull a Pitcher Before He Allows a Hit (Unless You Do)
36. Starting Off with an Opener
37. The Wade Miley Game (or When a Probable Starter Only Faces One Batter)
38. You Can Start, But You Can’t Finish
39. Bullpen by Gabe
40. Bullpen by Gabe, Part II (or Position Players Can Pitch, Too)
41. If a Big Game Is Tied, Shouldn’t Your Best Pitcher Pitch?
42. When You Play for One Run (or Is the Bunt Dead?)
43. Thou Shall Not Sacrifice an Out
44. Welcome to Japan, Where the Bunt Still Lives
45. You Don’t Have to Concede a Run (Even in the First Inning)
46. You Can Make the First Out at Third Base (If You Play for Joe Maddon)
47. You Can Pick Your Poison
48. You Can Break Up a Double Play
49. You Can Argue a Call (but Many Don’t)
50. You Can Run (but You’d Better Know the Score)
51. When You Sit to Wear a Crown
52. There’s No Need to Say You’re Sorry
53. It’s the Players Who Police the Game
54. Baseball Is Still a Game of Numbers
55. When It Comes Down to It, It’s Still about Playing the Game Right
Acknowledgments
Sources
Introduction: What Are the Unwritten Rules… and What Happened to Them?
YASIEL PUIG LEARNED HIS BASEBALL IN CUBA. Kenta Maeda grew up in Japan. Kenley Jansen comes from Curacao.
In every one of those countries, the rules of baseball are the same. Three strikes, you’re out. Circle the bases, you score a run. Nine batters in the lineup, nine innings in a regulation game.
It’s all in the rulebook, everything from 1.00, Objectives of the Game (win by scoring more runs than the opponent), to 9.23 (d), Suspended Games (all performances shall be considered as occurring on the original date of the game).
It’s all in there… except the part that tells you when it’s alright to flip your bat… and the part about when it’s acceptable to retaliate when your teammate(s) get hit by a pitch… and when no one will have a problem with you bunting for a hit… or speaking to a pitcher who hasn’t yet allowed a hit.
There’s more, because the unwritten rules of the game are nearly as extensive as the written ones.
This isn’t the NFL, where the rulebook determines how and where you can celebrate, and what you can use as a prop. In baseball, the players decide that. Cross the line, and your teammates will let you know. Cross the line by too much and the opponent will let you know, with a 99 mph fastball to the ribs.
The unwritten rules tell you how the game really should be played, both at the major-league level and while you’re coming up through the minor leagues. Everyone who wants to play the game right has to learn them. Every fan who wants to watch the game and fully understand it should know them.
The only problem is the unwritten rules change over time. The written rules change, too, but Major League Baseball publishes a new version of the rulebook every year with changes noted.
The unwritten rules change more gradually. They change as society changes. They change as the players change. They become the reason some guys get called “old school” and some don’t.
There was a time when rookies were expected to shut up and “know their place.” Not true anymore.
There was a time when playing for one run made perfect sense, so teams used the sacrifice bunt with regularity. Definitely not true anymore.
There was a time when as soon as the leadoff man in an inning reached first base, you’d wonder if the manager would put on a hit-and-run play. Now, the hit-and-run is so rare that when I asked major-league scouts how often they’d seen it done in a full season, most said they could count the number on one hand.
There was also a time when a pitcher might throw at a hitter simply for taking a big swing, and certainly for taking a little extra time getting around the bases on a home run. It was expected, and perhaps even accepted, that a hitter who had great success against a certain pitcher could expect a brushback pitch to come his way soon.
The few times that happens now, it becomes a major controversy and the pitcher who does it gets criticized and suspended.
“In today’s game, I think there’s a mutual respect,” said Chili Davis, who debuted as a major-league player in 1981 and has been around the game as a player or coach ever since. “Guys don’t throw at guys because they beat them.”
Pitchers throw harder than ever now, but when you ask scouts and coaches how often they’ve seen one of today’s pitchers use intimidation as a weapon, many of them say, “Never, at least not intentionally.” If a pitcher comes far inside, it’s often because his command just isn’t very good and he missed his spot.
Oh, and that starting pitcher? There’s a good chance he won’t make it three times through the opposing batting order. That’s a big change, because in the game as it was played 20 and especially 30 years ago, a manager wouldn’t go to the bullpen if he had a lead and his starter was still throwing the ball well and getting hitters out.
In 2018, several teams regularly began games with an “opener,” a pitcher who was designated to throw the first inning or perhaps the first and second innings. The Tampa Bay Rays didn’t have a traditional five-man rotation at any point during the season.
It wasn’t a rules change that brought that about. It was more of a culture change, a change to what smart baseball people thought.
The embrace of analytics and all
forms of big data has changed the game and changed the definition of playing the game right. Many analytics-inclined fans and even executives wish and hope that it will change more, especially in areas like bullpen usage.
Today’s general managers are more open to change than ever. Today’s managers are, too, even some you might think of as decidedly “old school.” Bob Melvin admits now that he was resistant to analytics when the Diamondbacks new front office turned to them heavily in 2006. He became so comfortable with the new methods that in 2018 he was in his eighth year with the Oakland Athletics, working for Billy Beane of Moneyball fame and using an opener rather than a traditional starting pitcher regularly in a pennant race.
Don Mattingly never seemed completely comfortable with the Dodgers after Andrew Friedman took over baseball operations and big data dictated decisions beginning in 2015. But in 2018, when Mattingly was managing the Miami Marlins, he didn’t brush away a question about whether he would consider using an opener.
“I don’t think you’ll see us doing that,” Mattingly said. “But I think you have to be open-minded to anything. Analytics, shifting… you have to evolve with the game. You should never close your mind to anything. I’ve always heard that you’re looking for the best way, not looking for your way.”
That’s a long way from, “It’s either my way or the highway and we’re going to weed out the rats,” as Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson told his team when he took over the Tigers in 1979.
Anderson was a brilliant manager, several steps and several innings ahead of most of those he managed against. But he was also the guy who once said, “If I need a computer, it means I don’t have a brain.”
Computers are standard for just about all of us now, and laptops, smartphones, tablets, and even smart watches are a common sight in any manager’s office. The information generated by computers shows up every night in every major-league dugout and influences nearly every decision made in every game.
So of course the unwritten rules have had to change. But they didn’t disappear.
Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred acknowledged as much at a press conference in 2016. Asked how he felt about celebrations, bat flips, and the like, Manfred said the players determine how the game should be played.
“Overall, baseball has always had unwritten rules that kind of govern what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate,” Manfred said. “The way I think about the changes we’ve seen in the last couple of years, is that we have a really exciting, new, young generation in the game. And just like the players 20 years ago, they are going to develop a set of unwritten rules as to what’s acceptable and what’s not.”
Plenty of players and more than a few managers wish Manfred and other executives would stick to the idea that players can govern the game themselves. Many of them believe baseball has gone too far with changes in the official rules and with heavier suspensions for what they see as simply “policing the game.”
Changes in the official rules have affected the unwritten rules. Baseball has basically outlawed collisions at home plate and hard slides to break up a double play, taking away what once would have been considered essentials for “playing the game the right way.”
The use of instant replay to uphold or overturn umpire calls has changed the interaction between players, managers, and umps. Disputes remain, especially over balls and strikes, and even that could change if baseball ever goes to robot umps or some other form of strike-zone technology to make those decisions. But arguments, ejections, and working the umpires aren’t nearly as big a part of the game as they were before.
In a July 2018 segment on FanCred, former major-league player and manager Bobby Valentine was asked what he would do if he were made commissioner.
“The first thing I’d do is take away that rule at second base [on potential double plays],” said Valentine, who played both shortstop and second base during his career. “The most athletic play you ever saw on a baseball diamond was a double play. The second baseman, the shortstop, the shortstop coming across, doing a ballet step as he dodges the runner in midair, throws a strike to first base and then might roll on the ground as he’s doing it. That’s the true athletic play of baseball, and that was taken away from the game…. I think that that was the biggest mistake baseball has ever made.”
Valentine also bemoaned the way instant replay has cut down on ejections and arguments. The fans loved those, he said.
So did he. Valentine, remember, was the New York Mets manager who was ejected from a 1999 game, then came back to the dugout wearing a fake mustache and dark glasses.
The prevalence of social media has changed the game in other ways. Players are more accessible to fans than ever, except that accessibility over the Internet has led many of them to guard their actual private time and lives even more closely.
Puig and Maeda and Jansen and every other player who comes to the big leagues quickly learn that the unwritten rules matter. Follow them and you win acceptance from players, officials, and fans. Fail to learn them or decide to ignore them and people will be talking about you, and not in a nice way.
Just because you can play the game one way in Havana, Tokyo, or Willemstad, that doesn’t mean the same will be celebrated in New York, Boston, or Chicago. Or in Los Angeles, where Puig, Maeda, and Jansen helped take the Dodgers to the 2017 and ’18 World Series.
As Martin Prado put it, “Just because you walk around your own house in your underwear, that doesn’t mean you can walk into your neighbor’s house and do the same thing.”
Prado, who grew up in Venezuela and signed with the Atlanta Braves when he was 17 years old, learned the unwritten rules so well that he became one of the game’s most respected veterans. He learned from his teammates and he tries to pass on what he knows to the young players he comes in contact with.
Those players learn the unwritten rules over time. Some are lucky enough that they had fathers or other relatives who played the game at a high level. Others had influential coaches in high school, in college, in the minor leagues, or in their early years in the majors. Even more of them relied on teammates.
Those players learn the rules, and then as a group they adapt them to their time and their cultural norms. Since it’s the players who police the unwritten rules, it’s also the players who tend to adjust them. It’s not all in their hands, because managers make decisions and more often than ever front-office people do, too.
They will all pass the rules on to the next generation. And then some of those rules will change again.
1. Respect the Game, and Play to Win
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG FOR JUSTIN VERLANDER to realize how fortunate he was.
Fortunate that the fading Detroit Tigers decided to trade him in August of 2017. Fortunate that the Houston Astros, after not showing much interest either at the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline or through almost all of August, decided on the final day of the month that Verlander was the missing piece in their carefully built puzzle.
Verlander was fortunate no team had put in a waiver claim, which would, in effect, have kept the Tigers from trading him that month. And also that when the Tigers came to him to seek his approval—he had full no-trade protection—he agreed to the deal. It went right down to the last minute—even the last seconds, Verlander would say later—but he said yes.
It was a fortunate decision, and not just because two months later Verlander would be celebrating the first World Series championship of his 13-year major-league career.
It was more than that. It was that Verlander had stumbled onto a team that played the game of baseball the way he played it, that followed the game’s unwritten rules as he had learned them.
“This team does,” Verlander said, after he had been with the Astros for nearly a full year. “Everybody [with the Astros] does.”
The Astros, for all their young talent and new-school embrace of analytics, were still
old school when it came to the things that mattered most. They still believed in playing the game hard and playing it right, in respecting the game and respecting their opponents.
And most of all, they believed in playing to win.
The best teams still do, even if many of the details of how they do it have changed. Baseball has legislated against hard takeouts at second base and bowling over the catcher to try to score a run. The high-and-tight fastball as an attempt to intimidate has more or less left the game. Beanball wars are much less common, with at least one major-league manager telling his pitchers he doesn’t believe in intentionally throwing at batters. What once would have been seen as over-the-top celebrations are accepted without a second thought, and rookies come to the big leagues without even once being told to sit down, shut up, and know your place.
The details have changed. The bigger picture hasn’t.
Talk to prominent major leaguers, from veterans like Verlander to kids like Aaron Judge and Juan Soto, and one of the words you hear most often is “respect.”
“You always ask yourself, ‘Is it disrespectful to my teammates? Is it disrespectful to the game?’” said Walt Weiss, who played 14 seasons in the major leagues and later coached and managed.
Respect the game. Respect the uniform and the organization it represents. Respect your teammates, but also your opponents.
“I respect people who respect me,” said Javier Baez, an emerging star with the Chicago Cubs.
Winning teams and winning players do all of that. Verlander found all of that when he came to the Astros, who were 80–53 the day he arrived.
And rather than the culture being the result of the winning, Verlander came to believe it was the other way around.
“I think it’s the cause of winning,” he said. “When everybody comes in, no matter whether you’ve got one day [of service time in the big leagues] or 15 years, you know everybody is there to kick the other team’s ass every day. That’s the only reason you’re here. It’s a different feeling. The best teams do [have that].”
The team Verlander left in Detroit was no longer one of the best. The Tigers had gone to the World Series twice and the postseason two other times in Verlander’s first nine seasons. but the team he left had a 58–74 record, on the way to 98 losses.
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