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Don't feel like reading? Skip to the bottom and post your New Rule!
If there's one thing baseball has a lot of, it's rules. The sport's rule book is 125 pages deep, not including the seven-page index. There are 37 pages on the official scorer. Thirteen pages are required to define all the terms and nine pages are required to keep the pitcher in check.
This all started with Alexander Cartwright's Knickerbocker Rules of 1845, which began with the excitable, "Members must strictly observe the time agreed upon for exercise, and be punctual in their attendance." Cartwright's rule book had 20 rules in it. Yep, 20.
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| You know whose songs won't be allowed in non-Boston stadiums? This guy's. (Getty Images) |
Looking down the timeline to 1925, pitchers were now permitted to use rosin bags. In 1969 the save was introduced and in 1973 the designated hitter became part of the American League, on an experimental basis.
Nearly every year the rules change, but the griping about the rules? That stays the same. Former White Sox owner Bill Veeck once said, "I try not to break the rules, but merely to test their elasticity."
Former player and minor league skipper Lee Walls took it a step farther, saying, "Players like rules. If they didn't have any rules, they wouldn't have anything to break."
Then there's Hall of Famer Billy Herman, who, well, he was a bit on the extreme end of things. "Rules are made to be broken, so there won't be any rules," he once said.
The thing with the rules is, they don't just apply to those on the field, they also apply to the fans and media -- like rule 3.15.
"No person shall be allowed on the playing field during a game except players and coaches in uniform, managers, news photographers authorized by the home team, umpires, officers of the law in uniform and watchmen or other employees of the home club."
The rule goes on, and on, and on. As they all do. Which is why we're here to help write and re-write the New Rules of Baseball. Here's how it works:
CBSSports.com will start things off by bringing three new rules to the table. There are absolutely no restrictions on the subject or style of the New Rules. A New Rule can simply erase an established rule like the DH. A New Rule can add something new, like a DH in the National League. Or a New Rule can be something silly, like a team can only have a DH if the person's last name is Baines.
You can also change rules we, and community members have presented. So if you don't like my rule of, "if a fan catches a foul ball on the fly, it is an out, but only when the opposing team is at bat," you can change or modify it.
| New Rules of Baseball |
| Want to add your own rules? Share them on the message board. Or, read Scott Miller's new rules. |
Each week we'll scan the message board for the five best rules. We'll put them in a poll on Monday and let the community vote on them. The two rules with the highest vote totals will be selected and etched into our New Rules of Baseball '08.
Let's get this started with my New Rule of Baseball:
No stadiums, not listed in media guides as residing on Yawkey Way, are permitted to play Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," or any cover/rendition/spoof.
Here is MLB producer Adriane Rosen's New Rule of Baseball:
No team, stadium or minor league affiliate can have cheerleaders, dancers or baton twirlers before, during or after a game.
Here is MLB senior writer Scott Miller's New Rule of Baseball:
Unless you're sitting in a box seat or bleacher seat in Wrigley Field in Chicago, or you're sitting on a rooftop seat across the street, there will be no tossing a baseball onto the field following an opponent's home run. You do this in Wrigley Field, where they invented it, it's cool. You do it in any other park in the United States, you're simply an unoriginal copycat.
Those are our three New Rules of Baseball (Scott went ahead and added a few more, as you can tell). Share your rules on the message board below until Wednesday at 1 p.m. ET, and let's do as Yogi Berra says, "we made too many wrong mistakes."
