The Only Unwritten Rule of Baseball That Matters
On the night of May 17, at Target Field in Minneapolis, something terrible happened. It divided clubhouses, spawned a wrenching national conversation, resulted in fines and suspensions, and pitted a Hall of Fame manager against his own rookie outfielder, who had been one of the feel-good stories of this young MLB season—until that fateful night. All it took was a single pitch.
Trailing the Chicago White Sox 15–4 in the ninth inning, the Minnesota Twins waved the surrender flag by bringing in a position player, the catcher Willians Astudillo, a.k.a. “La Tortuga,” to spare the Twins’ bullpen and get the game’s final three outs. He got the first two without incident, and then, after throwing three straight balls to the White Sox slugger Yermín Mercedes, he lobbed a 46-mph beach ball right over the plate, which Mercedes blasted over the center-field fence. Home run. Sox up 16–4.
Outrage ensued.
“Big mistake,” Mercedes’s own manager, Tony La Russa, said after the game, all but apologizing to the Twins. “The fact that he’s a rookie, and excited, helps explain why he just was clueless. But now he’s got a clue.”
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If you’re feeling a bit clueless right now about what exactly Mercedes did that was so outrageous, let’s pause here for a brief reading from baseball’s unwritten rule book: –This is because, according to the unwritten rule book, fun should be to baseball what dancing is to . And accordingly,
