The Chicago Cubs’ Mike Quade And The Unwritten Rules Of Baseball
“I probably have to get a copy of the Milwaukee and the Los Angeles unwritten rules books,” Quade said in an unsolicited commentary after the game.“I don’t know if they missed a sign or if it was a hit-and-run or something. I’ve got to brush up on my unwritten rules things. There might be a Los Angeles and Milwaukee version I need to read.”
There are unwritten rules that make a little sense, even if they’re silly on the surface. You plunk our best hitter, we’ll plunk yours. If a reliever somehow gets an at-bat against another reliever, he shouldn’t see anything but a fastball.
But the “Hey! Stop trying!” unwritten rule is the most ridiculous one in the not-book. It was the fifth inning. Not only that, but it was a seven-run lead -- were not talking about something insurmountable. Last season, there were 47 innings in which a team scored five runs or more.
Baseball needs some sort of Geneva Convention to settle this. Don’t like a player stealing with a big lead? Throw him out. That might be the worst part: that’s exactly what the Cubs did. They got one out closer to the end of the game.
The alternative is as follows. Let’s name these the Quade Rules:
- If a team has a lead of seven runs or more, they forfeit their at-bats for the rest of the game.
- The losing team then gets all of their innings in a row, though the bases will still clear after three outs.
- If the losing team gets closer, the winning team can choose to stop play and replay any of the innings that were skipped over. This way they can start trying again.
One of the best things about baseball is that it doesn’t have a clock. The pitcher doesn’t kneel down in the grass and wait for the game to end. That leaves a chance -- however unlikely -- for a game like this, and that’s something no other sport can say. Quade’s welcome to be a keynote speaker at the Cooperstown Convention and present his changes to the game. Until then, baseball players should try to score runs when their team is up, and they should try to prevent them when they’re in the field.
