You know they set these schedules before any of the games are played, right? So if you have a complaint about a day game being an elim game, take it up with the team that is losing. If they weren’t choking, it wouldn’t be an elim game!
Has to? I wonder.
The regional nature of so much baseball fandom means that they could probably put a lot of games on at the same time and not actually lose too much of the audience. I know that there are people (like many of us in this thread) who keep watching the playoffs for the sheer thrill of playoff baseball, even if their own team isn’t playing, but there also seem to be millions of baseball fans who turn off as soon as their team is eliminated, or who only really care about playoff games so long as their own team is still involved.
I’d be interested to see how TV ratings would go if you held all four games in two evening timeslots (early and late). Yes, it would mean that some people could not watch all the games, but that might be offset by a larger audience among people who actually have regular 9-5 jobs and who can’t watch a game in the middle of the afternoon.
Flashback to the 90s when they tried that.
What happened? I was living in Australia and spending most of my summers watching cricket.
All I remember is that both Ohio teams were in the playoffs, so the networks randomly decided which viewers got which games. I’m an Indians fan, but the area I was in was pretty evenly split and my brother who was living with me at the time was a Reds fan. I was lucky in that my cable package included two NBCs. The Columbus channel carried the Reds and Zanesville channel the Indians, so we had one TV tuned to each. My dad was an Indians fan and he was only going to have the Reds so he came over.
So as a result of Utley’s totally legal, just part of the game slide, that resulted in 3 runs for the Dodgers, he’s been suspended for the next two games.
Wow, that surprises me. So Joe Torre basically admits the Mets got completely screwed because if Utley’s slide was illegal, the batter should have been out. And obviously Utley should not have been sent back to 2nd base.
Here’s the MLB link with Torre’s quote:
http://m.mlb.com/news/article/154097810/dodgers-chase-utley-suspended-for-slide
What you said was " these plays have the potential for causing injury even if the defensive player was taking precautions." My point is, a foul ball has the potential for causing injury. A broken bat has the potential for causing injury, running into a wall has the potential for causing injury. The whole game has the potential for causing injury. Is that where you personally draw the line - plate collisions and hard slides - or are there additional potential causes for injury that we should consider banning?
And how do you reconcile it with this:
That’s exactly what Utley did. It is what any “aggresive” MLB player would have done in that situation. It is what every MLB manager would have expected their player to do in that situation. Unfortunately, a player who was trying to be a hero used poor judgement and got caught in the middle. I don’t “blame” Tejada, but he took a major risk and it didn’t work out well for him. We don’t need to change the game of baseball because of it, just like we didn’t need to when Posey screwed up.
And, while I’m unlikely to convince any naysayer here, I bet if there was a way to take an anonymous poll among MLB players and managers, you would find that they would do the same thing without hesitation under similar circumstances. You would also find that the majority of them do not want the rules changed. That is, of course, just my opinion.
From the article, Joe Torre states:
Hmmmm…
None of the actions you cite involve an intentional act by an opposing player.
It’s evidently not what the Chief Officer of Baseball, someone who was a player and manager for 50 years, expected a player should do in that situation.
Torre says he will be meeting with the Player’s Union concerning a possible rule change, so I suppose we’ll find out what the opinion of the players is. And my bet is that they’ll prefer a policy that minimizes the potential for injury.
Come now. There is an LA team playing a NY team who do you think is getting the evening spot. It is always that way
But Utley’s intention wasn’t to injure anyone, it was to break up a double play. When a pitcher throws at a batter, that is an intent to injure. If Tejada had been facing him (like he should have) and jumped out of the way (like he should have) we wouldn’t even still be talking about this.
Torre would have done the same thing as a player and would have chewed the head off of any player on his team that didn’t try to break up a double play. But he now has to be diplomatic here and is mindful of the media attention that the play has received. I take what he said with a grain of salt.
I suspect his actions are meant to be preventative as well. A two game suspension may appease the Mets enough that it prevents a brawl (or worse) tomorrow night. Having said that, I will not be surprised in the least if a Dodger player is injured (perhaps seriously) in retaliation for what happened before the series end, whether Utley’s action was intentional or not. I hope that is not the case, and I hope that the players recognize that there was no intent there, even if the fans don’t agree. We shall see.
It will be interesting to see what happens. I think the players want to play the game the way they were taught to play it rather than a safer version, but we’ll see.
We should find out tomorrow before the start of the game. I think he’ll sit out tomorrow, somehow. Maybe the MLB is having a case of press paranoia. Hey, these NL games are featuring bench clearers as much as McDonald’s feature french fries! 
I am a Chase Utley fan. He’s a long time veteran of this silly and crazy pastime and I didn’t blink when I heard he was suspended. It wasn’t on purpose, but damn, Chase, your knee was over my head and I’m 5’9"! Besides, Dodger fans (and I live in L.A.), shouldn’t the bats be effective on such a good team with talented players like, Gonzalez, Ethier, Rollins (where the hell is he?)?? Utley’s not needed that much-- that is if they start swinging at 3-2 pitches with men on base… (trust me, the Blue love doing that.)
Regardless, tomorrow’s game will feature at least ten visits to the bullpen for the teams combined, maybe 14 visits.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
This is my favorite argument, any time it comes up in any context: “Expert X totally agrees with me, even though (s)he explicitly and publicly stated that (s)he disagrees. (S)he’s just intimidated by the media - (a well-known characteristic of Joe Fucking Torre, by the way). That’s much more likely than that Joe Torre just doesn’t agree with me.”
I don’t even think a rule change is necessary. Here is the rule Joe Torre referenced:
A batter is out when:
A preceding runner shall, in the umpire’s judgment,
intentionally interfere with a fielder who is attempting to
catch a thrown ball or to throw a ball in an attempt to
complete any play;
Rule 5.09(a)(13) Comment (Rule 6.05(m) Comment ): The
objective of this rule is to penalize the offensive team for deliberate,
unwarranted, unsportsmanlike action by the runner in
leaving the baseline for the obvious purpose of crashing the
pivot man on a double play, rather than trying to reach the base.
Obviously this is an umpire’s judgment play.
The rule is already there and Utley was, correctly IMO, judged to have broken it.
The fact that there is a debate suggests that either a rule change, or an interpretive note, and accompanying umpire directive, would be recommended, if MLB intends to make a shift in game culture stick. Regardless that Torre was able to find a written theoretical basis for Utley being in the wrong (albeit a rule which explicitly makes it a judgement call of the umpire of the moment), the fact is that common practice and game culture have not previously held a runner in Utley’s position in the wrong for that reason. As has been noted, crashing the pivot man, or at least throwing him off balance, is not only tolerated but expected by all parties. Players who have been objecting have done so largely on the basis of how Utley went about this–too late and too high (which essentially amount to the same thing).
Yes, he’s too far above. That’s my first point–that it’s a matter of height, angle, and timing, not of being “wide.” He was clearly close enough to the bag to touch it, had the height and angle been better calibrated to that end.His hand is right there.
I agree, except I think that he meant to appear to be reaching for the bag, as runners typically do even when they know they’re out. Contrast this with the Holliday-Scutaro maneuver, in which Holliday kind of hopped over the bag in the process of egregiously throwing his body into Scutaro’s legs, and didn’t even gesture at touching the bag.
The general purpose of sliding is to evade the tag; takeout slides in double-play situations are an informal adaptation. Consider this image of a model hook slide, from an instructional site, in which the runner is feet first, feet and body angled away from the bag, reaching to touch the corner with his hand. His center of mass is much farther out than in most of these tackles.
It’s a force play. What tag?
No shit. I’m saying, that’s what sliding was invented for. Not for getting to the bag faster, because you don’t. That’s why players generally don’t slide into first.