Tom Verducci’s had enough

In case you missed it, last weekend there was a terrible collision at home plate that left Tofu Lou Marson on the ground after Desmond Jennings obliterated him. Tom Verducci has seen enough:

What Jennings did was unquestionably a "clean play." He tried to score on a bouncer to third base, saw the throw take Marson into the baseline and, instead of avoiding him, used his body as a weapon. An old school aficionado would even applaud it as "hard-nosed" baseball. Marson quickly was praised for being "tough," and "a football player." Such macho nonsense would not have gone over so well had Marson wound up in the hospital with his leg mangled, as Buster Posey did two years ago, or had his career ruined, as happened for Ray Fosse, Bobby Wilson, Brett Hayes and the legion of other catchers who were never the same after getting smashed by a runner at home plate.

Is that what it will take? Will it take another gruesome injury or a career ruined to stop allowing runners to plow into catchers? It is the dumbest rule in baseball -- or, more accurately, the dumbest oversight in baseball. We let runners use their bodies as missiles nowhere else on a baseball field, but they can do so against defenseless catchers. Why?

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Why? Why are we waiting for another young man to suffer great harm? One of the reasons for the inaction is that some of the closest advisors to commissioner Bud Selig are old-school types who grew up with the macho code: vice president Joe Torre and managers Jim Leyland and Mike Scioscia, all of whom sit on Selig's on-field advisory committee.