There are rules all over. From signs, to laws, to just customs and traditions, rules are everywhere. And rules are what I am going to talk about here.
If you look at baseball, you will see many rules. The most important of them are the unspoken ones. I believe it’s time to add another rule to this list.
Just like players shouldn’t run across the mound, they shouldn’t act. When I say that, I mean if a batter doesn’t get hit by a pitch, they shouldn’t don’t pretend they did.
A lot of the time batters act like they got hit by pitch when replays show they didn’t. Umpires, however, will assume they did, and let them go to first base.
Obviously, a player should know whether they got hit by a pitch or not. I understand when players trap the ball and act like they caught it. Sometimes the players themselves don’t know if they made the catch. But if you get can’t tell whether you got hit by a baseball coming at you 90 miles per hour, you seriously need to see a doctor.
Some people think that instant replay should be used in baseball because umpires make too many bad calls. A lot of those calls are made because the players pretend that they got hit by the pitch or made the out.
If you were an umpire, it would be hard to make a close call. There is pressure on you to make the right call, and sometimes it is hard to decide which call to make. Having players fake things makes it even harder, because you’re not sure whether to believe them or not.
Note to Chase Utley, Derek Jeter, and others: The game of baseball is not about acting. If you want to make like Chuck Connors and change to a career in acting, go for it. But please don’t do it during the baseball games.
I think that not acting should be a new unspoken rule, or maybe even an actual rule in the rulebook. There are plenty of ways to enforce it, with one possibility being the enactment of instant replay to see if the players were faking or not.
I know that some people think acting is part of the game and all, but I disagree. I think that if players stopped faking things like getting hit by a pitch, umpires would have an easier time making calls and the future of baseball could be changed dramatically.
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