While this is correct, it’s also easier said than done. The ball gets from the pitcher’s hand to the strike zone in 4/10 of a second and it takes 3/10 of a second to swing the bat, leaving the hitter with a whopping 1/10 of a second to decide to swing, aim, and time the swing to make contact. Specifically trying to waste a pitch by hitting it foul is a skill every hitter works on, but few ever master to the point where they can succeed more than they fail. Fouling a ball off is much more typically a case of luck (good or bad) rather than intent.
But for situations where the runner is on first or second, the balk rule is pretty important. Runners would hardly ever be able to steal bases if the pitcher were allowed to make a bunch of false motions. Hell, they would probably end up parked close to the bag because the pitcher could fake pickoffs all day long.
This is essentially what indoor soccer has (which I play as a goalie). It still changes the feel and flow of the game completely where teams have to both cherry pick and camp out against cherry picking near the goal. It at least prevents long-balling it the length of the field, but changes the whole feel of the game.
Indoor also plays on a short small field, which makes sense because without offsides the whole middle 75% of the field is wasted for tactical play since you are only trying to long-pass into the goal region anyway–so why not just delete that extra boring 60 yards of pitch that you’d just be lobbing over. Thus, indoor small-field soccer was born…
Limiting golf to 14 clubs in the bag. Let golfers carry/use as many clubs as they want. They still have to hit the shots. (In my group we abolish the rule… and one guy who carries about 20 clubs still can’t beat anyone.)
The clause of the offside rule in football (some of you may know it better as soccer) that states that a player is not offside if they are deemed to be not interfering with play. It’s open to too much misinterpretation and I tend towards the view that anybody on the pitch is interfering with play by definition (what the hell else are they on there for?).
Someone wrote here last year a great idea. It was that there shouldn’t be offside inside the box. Too many goals are disallowed.
Not sure I agree. Nothing wrong with disallowing a goal for valid reasons. If there is no offside in the box, why wouldn’t every team leave a big striker in the box all the time?
I think that proposed rule was something more along the lines of “once the ball is inside the box, offside cannot be called.” You wouldn’t be able to leave a striker in the box at all times, but it would free up play in goal-scoring chances.
I’d take it further than the A-11 offense, and say that every player is an eligible receiver. It wouldn’t be the same football people grew up watching, but it would be the same football everyone grew up playing. Playing in the backyard, no one ever stayed back to block.
Strategically figuring out what players to send out into pass patterns and which ones to keep back to block (on offense), and figuring out when to blitz (on defense) would add another layer of complexity to the game. Linemen would probably get smaller, down to TE and LB size, and by not taking those constant sub-concussive hits that arethe real problem for brain injuries in football, it might be a little better for the health of the players.
In the two years I spent as a soccer ref the offside law was constantly being reinterpreted. For a while EPL refs were only calling offside if the player was interfering with play. Then they were calling it no matter where or what the player was doing when he was in an offside position. Then they seemingly changed it again.
When I finally quit the laws made it clear that it in itself was not illegal to simply be in an offside position but that the player had to be involved in play.
I meant (he meant) that both the passer and the other player were in the box, not simply the “receiver”.
Can someone explain why this isn’t offside? The scorer is clearly behind the last defender and the ball. Is it because the ball wasn’t passed to him by a teammate?
That’s correct, from what I understand.
So if a player kicks a corner kick stands to watch his teammate head it in, should the referee call offsides when the defenders on the goal line take a step forward?
Or if a player dribbles through the defense to the end line, and backheels it to a teammate breaking in from the penalty spot who slots it home, should the goal be disallowed?
Sure, there’s a line somewhere between being completely uninvolved in the play and having a big impact on the play even though you didn’t touch the ball (distracting or obstructing defenders), and there’s going to be a judgement call at some point. But if you didn’t let the referee make that judgement call, both of the situations I mentioned would be offsides, no goal.
This would allow for far too many wedges. It’s a lot easier to hit a short-iron shot if you know you have pretty much exactly the right club for that distance. You could also have specialty clubs for various amounts of rough.
This. Like most rules, the balk rule is there for a reason. Back in the day, it was endless faking; in the live ball era, I’d expect just no stolen bases.
That would be an interesting sport. I might like watching it.
But it would be a fundamentally different sport, much like two-on-two or a HORSE contest is fundamentally different from basketball, or slow-pitch softball is fundamentally different from baseball.
Offsides is specifically suspended on corner kicks, though I was never clear on how long this suspension lasts.
I agree, it would be a fundamental change, much like legalizing the forward pass fundamentally changed the sport a century ago.
Baseball: Making pitchers bat. Simply clogs up the game, basically wastes an entire inning for the offense, risks injury unnecessarily, and who really wants to watch that crap anyway? Way past time for MLB to get the last remaining pro league in line on that.
NFL replay rule: Just apply the last-two-minutes procedures to the entire game. The red-flag business is farcical and clogs up the game even worse than pitchers batting.
NFL excessive celebration rule: Fuck that nonsense. Let 'em celebrate! Let the fans enjoy it too! Where’s the harm? OK, taunting is out, but it’s *always *been out. It isn’t hard to tell the difference, either.