Aside from three special cases, while on the field, during the regular and post-season, fraternizing with another team is prohibited. Here’s the thing: baseball pits two teams against each other. Now, this is an obvious statement, to be sure, but it is essential enough to explicitly qualify.

Time before the game should be spent hitting baseballs, throwing baseballs, and catching baseballs. Talking is fine — one of the finer things in baseball, I’ve found, is shooting the shit while taking fly balls — so long as the conversation stays between teammates. There is little other justification for this rule other than taste; still, there is something special in that baseball does not turn into a reunion on the pitcher’s mound at the game’s conclusion, as happens in football at the 50 yard-line. The winners stay and congratulate one another, the losers go home. This feels right.

The three special cases, as noted above, are as follows:

1. The All-Star Game
   
   The All-Star Game, regardless of whether or not it “counts,” forces fraternization by necessity. It would be silly to expect anything but fraternization during a game with such little conventionality.
   
   
2. First Basemen
   
   It is custom for First Basemen to chat up runners while holding them on. Their position requires them to play on the bag often, and so they are exempt from this rule. However, all conversation must be made while facing the pitcher or catcher, and at no point should eye contact be made.
   
   
3. Catchers
   
   Catchers are also allowed to chat with batsmen. Yogi Berra, for instance, famously conversed with any living thing that marched up to the plate. They, like the first basemen, play in a position that physically warrants chit-chat, and thus may do so. Talking after the pitcher begins his movement is never ever allowed, and ought to grounds for ejection if it is not already.
   
   
4. Bonus Special Case: Prodigal Sons
   
   Of course, when a once-loved son returns to face his former team, his former teammates are allowed, for the first few innings to treat him, if they so wish, as one of their own. This seemingly contradicts everything written above these exceptions, but I assure you it makes sense in the end.

Baseball is the greatest game, in part, because it is paced in a way that allows — indeed, it demands, in this writer’s excellent opinion — chatter, one of the finer spices of baseball.

On offense, runners must encourage the hitter to move them around between pitches, while those in the dugout call out Hey, little pepper, here! or Sit back and drive, kid! or Hey, find a gap! or any one of an infinite number of phrases that have been in a player’s lexicon since they first donned a uniform.

Likewise, the defense bolsters their pitcher while he readies the next pitch. Rock ‘n Fire, kid! from third, with a Hey, whaddya say? Hose ‘im now! from center, and if the situation is right, Let’s turn it!. The bench is involved, of course; after a curve just misses the zone, Pretty pitch, kid! and Nice spot! peal from the dugout, while the offensive bench shouts Good eye!

No stadium is too large for chatter, no game too insignificant; it is as much a part of baseball as pinstripes and billed caps, and the infinitude of language shall ensure that it will never go stale.

Let us hereafter refer to the home run hitter as The Player.

When The Player stands and watches his ball carry over the fence, he is breaking one of the cardinal rules of baseball: never show up the opposition. Perhaps as importantly, The Player also looks like a jackass.

But it is well-established that baseball is a humbling game, and thus one of its most basic rules is to respect the opposition. In a 162-game season (or, hell, even a 16-game season) the opportunities for The Player to be humbled far outnumber the opportunities for The Player to humble. 

See: Bull Durham.

What are you doing standing here? I gave you a gift. You stand here showing up my pitcher? Run, dummy!

I’ll say up front that this is rather a point of contention between me and my teammates, and I would expect popular opinion to vary likewise. As a kid, I remember playing through pitching machine wearing white socks and stirrups, but with my pant legs pulled to my shoes. Then, in the Federal League (the first year of live pitching), our shortstop wore his socks high, and I remember thinking now that is how a ballplayer is supposed to look.

And so I wore my socks high with pride. Still do.

However, during high school this notion of “dirty” style crept into the dugout. Kids started sneaking tins of dip before the ballgame, wearing their caps flat-brimmed (a topic for another day), and wearing pants with the elastic band in the ankle snipped, so the pant would fall around their shoe.

The majors perpetuate these trends, of course, and I suppose that’s fine. But for me, a real ballplayer doesn’t wears his pants like pinstriped pajamas; instead, he wears his socks high as the greats once did.

The leadoff man’s* job is to feel out the pitcher for the rest of the team; his greatest strength should be patience, followed closely by perception. A high OBP is a bonus, but far more advantageous is his ability to stay at the plate, exhaust the pitcher’s arsenal, and notify his team of anything, well, noteworthy.

Pitching is temperamental. Some days a pitcher comes out and throws the best curve of his life; some days his tailing fastball grooves the meat of the plate every time. Better to have the leadoff man go seven pitches into the count and fan on that dirty curveball than leave that surprise for the next man. It is the team’s job to pick up that out — a task made easier when the pitcher has fewer secrets.

* And by leadoff man, I mean the first hitter of the game. After that, a patient leadoff isn’t a bad thing, but perhaps foolish, depending on the situation.

This is the most important rule. In fact, I’m going to argue that this is the rule; every following rule will be but a facet of respecting the game — and that means something different to everyone.

I started this blog for that very reason: so that I have a soapbox from which I can shout my crotchety perceptions on how one ought to watch and play this wonderful game, and shake my tiny fist at that which I find detestable.

I hope that you who read this also have opinions to this end, and I hope you’ll use the “Ask” feature, or GMail/GTalk (briancobb88@gmail.com) to suggest rules, discuss rules, or call me names. Anyway. Until the first real rule, I leave you with this quote by Earl Weaver, in the same vein as this blog:

You can’t sit on a lead and run a few plays into the line and just kill the clock.  You’ve got to throw the ball over the goddamn plate and give the other man his chance.  That’s why baseball is the greatest game of them all.