We know too much more today about brain trauma than five or 10 years ago, too much to — sorry for this — put our heads in the sand to honor “The players were so much tougher in the old days” crowd.
Catchers are tough enough. They have to squat in full equipment to do their jobs. They have to absorb the various pains involved with catching fastballs, blocking all varieties of pitches, taking foul tips all over their bodies.
It seems ludicrous, therefore, the player at greatest risk physically throughout a game and throughout a season should also be a target for human cannonballs. A runner cannot target a first baseman in this way, for example. Why then should he be allowed to obliterate a catcher and why also put the runner at more than normal jeopardy by trying to bowl over a player in full pads?
Here is how we know a rule is dumb — if it didn’t exist and we suggested today that we wanted to add it, we would be laughed out of the room. Imagine, if home-plate collisions didn’t exist and we said let’s have a play in which the catcher can block the entire plate and, to score, the runner can try to dislodge the ball by wiping out the catcher.
There is this general complaint players make too much money. I disagree with that. But they are the main assets of any team. Keeping them healthy and earning that money is vital to the success of a team and a sport. When Buster Posey missed most of the 2011 campaign after his leg was broken in a gruesome home-plate smashup with Scott Cousins, well, for whom was that a positive? No single run in a season is worth that. Again, especially, when we know so much more about concussions. Joe Mauer, for example, is going to play first base this year because the normal rigors of the job led to concussions.
The NFL — a sport built around brutality — is, at the least, faking enlightenment. If that sport can attempt to protect defenseless wide receivers than MLB should be protecting defenseless catchers.
And so it has. MLB and the Players Association on Monday announced the implementation of Rule 7.13. The main idea of the rule will be this — no longer can a runner coming full speed hunt a catcher for a collision, seek him out for destruction. And no longer can a catcher block the entirety of the plate. The catcher must leave room for a runner to slide and a runner must take that room.
Will there still be bang-bang plays that put both in harm’s way? Of course. Will umpires at times make the wrong interpretation? Yes, again, of course. This is not about perfection. This is about protection, or at least protection to the level that a rule can provide.
There will be difficulties along the way. The rule is, in fact, in place for just a year, to be revisited next offseason to either eliminate or try to further perfect. And there is no way it is going to be eliminated. Imagine the liability of knowing more about concussions and leaving a particular class of player more in harm’s way to incur one.
Catchers are tough guys — we don’t need the home-plate collision any longer to accentuate that.