I’m currently reading the latest book by Paul Dickson that brings together “the etiquette, conventional wisdom and axiomatic codes of our National Pastime”.  In The Unwritten Rules of Baseball, Dickson provides a fascinating insight into the vast array of self-policed laws by which the game is run. 

There were two prime examples in MLB this week of the unwritten rules involving umpires.   

The first was a variation on a rule that applies to all sports.  No matter what the situation is, players are not allowed to aggressively make contact with the officials, whether that involves bumping against them or giving them a shove (ala the infamous Paulo Di Canio incident).  If you do it then you are guaranteed to be making an early exit from the game. 

So long as that rule stands, and it always should, it must also be the case that the officials are not allowed to manhandle the players in any way either.  Umpire Paul Schrieber broke that rule on Wednesday night when he physically tried to usher away Tigers hitter Magglio Ordonez, who was arguing a strike three call.  There was no great force involved and you could understand how it would have been an involuntary reaction by Schrieber (casually placing his hand on Ordonez’s back while saying something along the lines of ‘I’ve made my call, let’s just get on with the game’), but he shouldn’t have done it.

While Ordonez looked at the umpire in disbelief, his manager Jim Leyland erupted like a volcano.  Leyland is a master at blowing his top and this was one of his most impressive displays in recent memory: a full-on, vein-throbbing, finger-pointing uninhibited rant that continued well after he had been tossed from the game and was pacing in the dugout.   Once tempers had cooled down, all parties accepted the incident for what it was, one that shouldn’t have happened yet was a pretty minor act, and moved on.  Schreiber apologized, Leyland accepted his ejection and fine with good grace and Ordonez cheerfully pondered what sort of punishment he would have received had it been him who had touched Schreiber.

The incident highlighted another unwritten rule: the manager must always protect his players.  Leyland was ejected for his outburst and fined as a result; however he was only doing his job.  The manager must stand up for his players, especially if that means he can stop one of them from being ejected from the game (i.e. by arguing the player’s case for him and taking the ejection in his place).  It was one of legendary Orioles manager Earl Weaver’s ten laws: “the job of arguing with the umpire belongs to the manager, because it won’t hurt the team if he gets thrown out of the game”.

Sometimes the incident develops so quickly that the manager can’t get to home plate in time to intervene.  That happened to Yankee manager Joe Giradi on Friday night during his team’s game against the Twins.  Johnny Damon struck out during the first inning on a very dubious third-strike call and when it happened again the next time he was up to bat, the left-fielder couldn’t control his emotions. 

Dickson notes there are various rules that players have to adhere to when it comes to arguing with an umpire, ranging from the way you do it (“a batter is supposed to voice any complaints to the umpire without turning to look at him”) to your choice of words (there are some that you just cannot say, which probably don’t need to be repeated here).  Most pertinent to the Damon incident is the steadfast rule that applies if a player wants to stay in the game: “NEVER draw a line in the dirt with your foot”.

Damon used his bat instead of his foot, although that didn’t make much of a difference.  As soon as he started lowering his bat to the dirt to show home-plate umpire Wally Bell where the pitch was, the YES commentator said “Uh oh, don’t touch that, that’s gone”.  And he was right.  Former Yankee Paul O’Neill started to say “any time as a player you show them [the umpire] where that ball is …” and didn’t complete the sentence, but you could fill it in yourself: “… you are going to be ejected”.

There was no argument with Damon’s resulting ejection because everybody in the game knows you just cannot do what Damon did.  Showing up an umpire like that is not acceptable, even when you are in the right (which Damon certainly was: that pitch was not even close to the inside corner). 

There were no hard feelings from the player after the game, but he didn’t let the incident go without making a seemingly off-hand comment that may have been more calculated than first appeared.  Damon said, “I’ve known Wally for a while, and I was just fired up from the two strike-three calls … but it’s over with. We won, and hopefully, the strike zone’s not that big again any time soon”.

It will be interesting to see how wide Wally Bell’s strike zone is the next time he is behind the plate for a Yankee game.  For all the unwritten rules in baseball, there isn’t one that stops you playing mind games with the umpires.