Changing Baseball

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Remember when Pete Rose bowled over Ray Fosse in the All-Star Game?

Rose was coming around third.

Fosse was blocking the plate.

Rose hammered him and was safe at the plate.

Fosse suffered a busted shoulder and never regained his All-Star form.

Rose always called it a 'good baseball play'.

It won't ever happen again.

The blocking the plate rules have changed.

Cut to last year's playoffs.

Chase Utley threw a slide at second base.

He broke the leg of the Mets Shortstop Reuben Tejada.

It was a garbage slide.

Utley thought it was a 'good baseball play.'

The rule has changed for the 2016 season.

Everyone is in agreement that the rule is stupid.

I'm not a huge fan of replay.

It sounded like a good idea knowing that an ump couldn't cost a kid a perfect game with an absolutely horrendous call at first...

...or that a homer could be ruled fair when an ump blew it.

But it's gone too far.

Now a runner holds the tag on the guy sliding into second. If the guy (who is clearly safe) lifts his spike a quarter of an inch off the bag to dust himself off and the tag remains, the runner is out.

Garbage.

(Unless it happens in favor of the Yankees).

But garbage.

And the bat-flipping, grandstanding, celebrating by dragging a dead parrot around the bases...

...I am an old guy...

I hate it.

Why are they messing with my game?

Stop it!

We still need good baseball plays...

...free of orchestrated celebrations!

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