Writing about the unwritten rules

Baseball has ground rules and Joba Rules and a list of unwritten rules, longer than Oakland pitcher Dallas Braden's arm, that just got longer.

While Alex Rodriguez, commentators and bloggers still were wrangling over whether there in fact is an implied but accepted regulation about a baserunner taking a timeout shortcut across the pitcher's mound, the author of a 2008 book, "The Baseball Codes," was considering yet another tacit concept:

Young players shall give deference to veteran superstars.

The author of "The Baseball Codes," Jason Turbow, declared on his blog that baseball "is a game of hierarchy, from locker assignments to seating charts on team transportation to what a guy can get away with on the field.

"And when a star's path crosses that of a lesser player, Darwinism almost inevitably wins out: The big fish eats the little one."

At the root of this discussion, of course, was Thursday's kerfuffle in Oakland after Rodriguez - the Yankees' perpetual Man in the News - had progressed halfway between second and third base on a long foul ball by teammate Robinson Cano.

As the game's various cast members retreated toward their previous marks for a second take, Rodriguez took a path back to first base that was directly over the mound. That offended Braden, and he informed Rodriguez that he should steer clear of his workplace.

After the game, Rodriguez said he was mystified by any suggestion that he violated any accepted protocol and made a snarky remark about how Braden, 26, a soft-throwing lefthander in his fourth season, is merely "a guy that has a handful of wins in his career" - the little fish in the drama, in other words.

Braden nevertheless made it clear he would not tolerate "disrespect like that" and said, "It's got to be handled."

Whether some edict indeed had been violated likely won't amount to anything more than a possible boost in sales for Turbow's book, which has been cited in past reviews as the first written record of baseball's unwritten laws. In it, Turbow dealt with such common law as hitters refusing to swing at 3-and-0 pitches when their teams are safely ahead. But there were earlier recorded compilations of various aspects of baseball "rules" and etiquette.

In 1986, the Baseball Digest published a list of rules that were closer to baseball cliches, 30 bedrock principles such as "play for a tie at home, go for a victory on the road"; "never give an intentional walk if first base is occupied; "never mention a no-hitter while it's in progress."

There have been further expansions on "playing the game the right way," the sort of things not to be found in a rulebook but nevertheless widely accepted: "Don't stand at the plate and preen over having hit a home run, unless you want the pitcher to stick the ball in your ear in your next at-bat," and so on.

Unwritten rules, of course, are unwritten, so the argument about whether Rodriguez actually was guilty of baserunning malpractice wasn't as obvious as the immediate context included in reports of the dust-up: That is, that Rodriguez has been guilty of niggling behavior in the past.

He distracted Toronto's Howie Clark from catching a pop-up with what was called a bush-league shout of "Ha!" in 2007; he slapped the ball out of Boston pitcher Bronson Arroyo's glove on his own dribbler during the 2004 American League Championship Series.

Actually, the unwritten rule in this case is that rules don't apply to young players and veteran superstars alike. Darwin knew his stuff.