I paid to see maximum effort from both teams, every inning, every out. If Miles doesn’t like it, if he’s conceding the game, he can walk off the field. Otherwise, he can bite me.

When Davey Lopes was managing he went on and on about how classless some guy was because he stole a base or two against his team while they were trailing by a few runs. Someone took the time to check out Lopes’ career and found he’d done the exact same thing as a player a dozen times or so.

Brewers fire manager Ned Yost

This is a tricky issue, the issue of unwritten rules, and it seems to me it’s because each player thinks the code is universal, when in fact it’s the exact opposite: no two players have the same code, really. I think there are some situations where one shouldn’t go overboard in certain situations: see Pete Rose ending the career of Ray Fosse on a collision at the plate in the all-star game, or Utica College calling three timeouts and spiking the ball in the last drive of a game to get a touchdown that would put them down by only 30 (okay, you might not be familiar with that last one).

Most of the cases, I think, are gray areas. Ben Davis broke up Curt Schilling’s perfect game with a bunt single, and Bob Brenly was HOPPING mad after the game, as were a lot of d-backs fans. Schilling, however, was totally fine with it.

I think the Mientkiewicz example is a gray area too; I think Mientkiewicz has a good argument, but Miles as a right to be mad. One might also bring in the larger context that although the game may have still been winnable for STL, both teams’ seasons are pretty much lost, so why risk an injury at that juncture? Would Mientkiewicz have done this in game #162?

These sort of “unwritten rules” are a large part of the intrigue of the game for a lot of fans, especially the ones that played. It’s a way of relating to other players and knowledgable fans. It’s unreasonable to expect a player to play for the ultimate win 100% of the time, no matter the situation; these are humans with relationships with each other, who care about each other’s injuries and seasons. It’s also unreasonable to expect all players to abide by some sort of code, mostly because there’s no way we could figure out exactly what the code is.

Also, as far as the brawl in Anaheim goes, I think you may be right about the Yankees taking exception to the steals, but I don’t know if the evidence for that is there. Pudge never said a word to Torii, he just gave him a minor shove. I think this was a result of Pudge having the ball well before Torii had a chance at home, and Torii barged into him anyway. I think the brawl was a result of him taking exception to this, although I still don’t know what about that little shove caused Torii to march across the field and shove Pudge back; in similar situations I’ve seen that almost always results in words being exchanged. This is baseball, however, and there is so rarely an opportunity for fisticuffs, I just think the players and fans will take any opportunity they can get.