The unwritten rules of baseball are usually applied by opposing teams.
From time to time a judge intervenes.
Example: The NCAA Regional Tournament in Greenville on Monday. With a place against Texas in the Super Regionals bet, East Carolina was accumulating on coastal Carolina. As the Pirates took a 10-2 lead in the seventh inning, weak outfielder Bryson Warrell stepped onto the plate.
There he made his team’s best 18th home run of the season, making three more runs to increase the ECU’s lead to 13-2 on the road to a 13-4 victory. As the moonlight hovered over the right wall of the field, Warrell took some time to admire his work. It was too long for the home referee, who got up from his position and pushed Worrell out of the penalty area and went down the line of first base.
It was not a violent push or even a blatant one. But this was an example of a referee putting his hands on a player and doing it during the game.
Baseball is mired in a debate about the decency and concern for pitchers’ feelings at the expense of bragging about beaters who get the best out of them. This judge clearly has an opinion on the subject.
Meanwhile, his job is to make calls on the field and maintain order during the game. His opinion on the conversion of bats or boasting of any kind during these duties is irrelevant. It certainly does not require touching a player, even when the said player admires a home run in the middle of a shot.
The quickest way to push a player out is to put his hand on the ump. The rules in this case obviously do not apply in either way.
Bryson Warrell of East Carolina. (AP Photo / Ben McKeown)
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