July 14, 2024

By Patrick Kennedy

Canadian Baseball Network

Records, a wise observer once pointed out, are made to be broken.

That's usually true. But not always.

Case in point: The 511 career victories chalked up by pitcher Cy Young, a charter member of Baseball's Hall of Fame and the undisputed king of the game's “rubber-arm” lodge. Nobody's coming within a country mile of that all-time mark. A big-league hurler could win 20 games in a season for 20 years in a row and...oops...he'd still find himself 111 shy of Cy. (Young book-ended that feat with the career-losses record as well (316) – and thus became the answer to a head-scratching baseball trivia question.

As a kid growing up with baseball in my blood and a brain swirling with numbers and stats, I assumed - perhaps naively – that “Joltin' Joe” DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak mark would be broken. More than 80 years later, it remains the high-water mark. Conversely, I thought Lou Gehrig's ironman streak of 2,130 consecutive games would stand the test of time – it did, until that Ripken fellow in Baltimore eclipsed it.

Rules are different, however. Rules are not made to be broken. Rules are the principles by which sport in a civilized society – and society itself – operates, unless you're a narcissistic presidential candidate with the habits and hairstyle of a deranged orangutan. Rules are ultra-paramount in sport. Take away hockey's highsticking rule and you'd see more blood than in a Quentin Tarantino film. Take away boxing's “low blow” and you could fill a choir with newly-converted sopranos. Reinstate the spitball into baseball, and catchers everywhere would have a moist mess on their hands. Literally.

Yet there is one baseball rule that gets broken every day and by virtually every player, coach and manager. Disobedience is rampant, and not only are the rule-breakers never punished, they're never caught. They defy and disobey the rule with a sort of unwritten impunity. The illegal practice is far too widespread. Rigid enforcement and suspensions would wipe out the rosters of every team. We speak of Major League Baseball Rule 4.06, the most fractured, least-honoured, oft-overlooked law in the MLB rule book.

Rule 4.06 states: “Players in uniform shall not address or mingle with spectators, nor sit in the stands before, during, or after a game. No manager, coach or player shall address any spectator before or during a game. Players of opposing teams shall not fraternize at any time while in uniform.”

Haha! Rule 4.06 gets battered and broken before and after each game, whether it's signing an autograph or tossing a ball into the stands. Opposing players, usually a baserunner and an infielder, break the rule each time they talk on the field, even if they're just comparing the amount of zeros in their new contract extensions. Granted, today's athletes operate in a far less restrictive environment. Free agency generated an increase in player movement and salaries. Time once was when opposing players never spoke to one another. Today they dine together while one's in town to play the other. (It happens more than you think.)

Gone also from today's game are fierce competitors such as St. Louis pitcher Bob Gibson, another hall of famer who viewed fraternizing along the same lines as betrayal. At the 1965 All-Star Game , Milwaukee Braves catcher Joe Torre caught former Cardinals teammate Gibson in the ninth inning. In the clubhouse afterwards, as Torre complimented his old batterymate, Gibson ignored him, got dressed ,and abruptly left. Mind you, Gibson was known to be notoriously brusque even with his own players. When Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver went to the mound for a conference one time, Gibson sent him away, saying "Gimme the (censored) ball. The only (censored) thing you know about pitching is that it's hard to hit."

According to the Wall Street Journal, the no-fraternizing Rule 4.06 was intended “to contain the threat of corruption and collusion” in baseball , a sport once marred by gambling. Most people think the game's gambling woes began when Chicago White Sox players conspired to fix the 1919 World Series. Think again, although the problems largely ended with the suspension of the eight “Black Sox” players the following year. Yet prior to 1919, innumerable games were manipulated and compromised by White Sox players in the service of themselves, shady gamblers, or friends on opposing teams.

Back in the day when Rule 4.06 was taken seriously, an umpire was assigned before every game to sit in the stands during batting practice and report on opposing players fraternizing. Fast forward to today and you have opposing players kibitzing on the field during a game. Sometimes between pitches. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind someone catching up with an old teammate, just not while he's at work, and especially not when his work currently sits at “sub-par level.”

Take for instance this curious scene from the middle of the sixth inning at a recent Toronto Blue Jays home game versus the Houston Astros: With Houston rallying in a tie game, Blue Jays gregarious first baseman Vladimir Guererro Jr. could be seen on TV smiling and joking and playfully slapping his glove against the ample rear end of Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez. Yordan had just walked to load the bases with none out. So why, at such a pivotal point in the game, would both superstars be seen grinning and chatting amicably? What kind of message does that ill-timed show of camaraderie send to the Blue Jay faithful? Give Vladimir credit. The high-wattage smile had turned into a frown sometime during Houston's decisive four-run frame.

I'm a huge Guererro Jr. fan; it's hard not to cheer for someone who's blessed with such sublime skills. He's an upper-level player who brings a refreshing “joie de vie” to the ballpark. But does he bring maybe too much “joie?” I realize young Vladdy's part of a more sensitive, gentler generation, one in which “Love thy neighbour” now extends even to the field of play. But for $19.9 million a season (just under $123,000 per game or $13,555 per inning), would it be so bad if fun-loving Vladdy, and others of his carefree ilk, summoned up some old-fashioned animosity for the opposition. Who knows? A dose of despicable contempt might just be the tonic needed to lift the Jays' lagging fortunes. That approach wouldn't be popular with the “everyone gets a medal for trying” crowd, but so what? Big-league ballplayers earn a king's ransom. Ignoring an opponent while on the job shows the people that at the very least he's serious about that job – which by the way, at the major-league level, is about one thing: winning.

Love thy neighbour, hate thy opponent. That's not the Bible's recommendation, but then again Moses couldn't hit a curve ball, and far as I know he was never in a pennant race.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com