quote:Originally posted by 3FingeredGlove:
PGStaff posted a link to an article that quotes a different article. His link has a phrase in the title (which Jerry accurately captured) of "no need for rules changes".
But that's not what Ray Fosse said. From the original article by John Shea:
"The game has been around more than 100 years, and now they're going to start protecting catchers?" Fosse asked. "I can't see anything that can be changed. In high school, you can't run over a catcher. But that's high school. This is professional baseball. The idea is to score runs. If the catcher has the ball and he's standing there, the runner has to stop? Is that the protection?
"I can't believe anything can be done, and I don't see how you could regulate something like that."
That's different than "no need". And those of us who have watched FED or NCAA baseball know that it is possible to regulate these collisions, and to sharply reduce the frequency of potentially injurious incidents. Probably Ray Fosse hasn't watched many college games in the last few years, and so doesn't know the practical application of rules designed to reduce the number of collisions.
It will take a change to two behaviors that are currently allowed in pro ball: Catchers do sometime blocks the plate, and runners retaliate by crashing into the catcher. Sometimes runners crash the catcher even when he isn't blocking. If we require runners to attempt to avoid, and penalize obstruction at the plate, there will be far fewer collisions. We'll still have train wrecks when the throw carries the catcher into the runners path, but it will put a stop to intentional collsions.
Totally agree. High school and college baseball are excellent versions of the game imho and neither has suffered in excitement by "regulating" the collision.