Left field
The Reuters global sports blog
Do breaches of sporting etiquette matter?
Baseball etiquette, or the so-called “unwritten rules” of the Summer Game, has elbowed its way into the sport’s headlines this early season.
We’re not talking about pedestrian infractions of Emily Post protocol like admiring a home run off your bat for a couple of extra seconds, or taking too languorous a home run trot around the bases, or stealing a base with a big lead.
Alex Rodriguez miffed Oakland Athletics pitcher Dallas Braden, who yelled at the Yankees slugger when he took a short cut over the pitcher’s mound on his way back to first base after running on a foul ball.
Braden, who a few weeks later hurled the 19th perfect game ever in Major League Baseball, said he would not stand to be disrespected that way. Even his grandmother, Peggy Lindsey, chimed in. “Stick-it, A-Rod,” she told reporters.
Yankees back winning — good for baseball?
Homegrown talent and store-bought superstars — the Yankees formula for success for their 27th World Series championship claimed Wednesday with a Game Six victory over the Philadelphia Phillies that returned the team to the winners’ circle for the first time in what seemed to Yankee Nation like an endless nine years of waiting.
A bottomless checking account for free agents is not the only thing making the Yankees great.
Fixing baseball’s embarrassing problem
“The cat – mmrrrooowwwrr – is out of the bag!” – Seinfeld’s Cosmo Kramer upon the realization that his first name had finally been revealed.
Alex Rodriguez (click link for video), Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez are among the players linked to performance enhancing drugs. The cat, is most definitely out of the bag.
Does Sammy Sosa deserve a place in Cooperstown?
The deference once shown to the stars of America’s favorite pastime has given way to widespread cynicism when records are shattered, especially since Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa engaged in a spirited race in 1998 to break Roger Maris’s single-season record of 61 home runs, a chase that gripped the country with excitement.
In a bid to remove clouds of suspicion chronicled in the book Game of Shadows, Major League Baseball commissioned the “Mitchell Report”. While baseball is not the only sport facing problems, it’s the only sport so invested in an image of sweet American innocence.
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Resident Left Field Expert
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