Baseball rules

Baseball is back. And not a minute too soon for the millions of fans of the Grand Old Game. Now mornings can begin as they were meant to begin, with coffee, toast (a bagel if you prefer) and box scores in the morning paper.

Triumph Books has brought out two volumes by two veteran sportswriters that make fine companions to the return of the national pastime.

“The Code” is a behind-the-scenes look that will help even veteran baseball viewers better understand the games they’re watching, particularly those close pitches, hard slides at second, charging the mound, and catcher/runner collisions at home plate that sometimes lead to bench-clearing brawls. (OK, they’re usually more shoving and shouting sessions than real brawls — players today make too much money to suffer a season-ending injury in a brawl — but occasionally someone does get his lights punched out). And “Yogi” is a pleasant trip through the life of one of the game’s best players and most recognizable and revered characters, Yogi Berra.

Baseball may seen like a fairly civilized business compared to the gladiator sport that football is, or to the bar fight on skates that hockey often turns into before the final buzzer. But baseball today is played by big, strong (baseball players, like athletes in just about every other sport, have discovered the weight room and its benefits), tough, testosterone-besotted competitors. They enforce a code of conduct even as, increasingly, umpires try to stop them from doing so.

People who’ve never played baseball may be surprised to learn how big a role fear and intimidation play in the game. Most of this is due to the fact that the center of the game is a ball the approximate density of a rock that is thrown at speeds approaching 100 miles per hour near, and occasionally at, various of the batter’s body parts.

No words can describe the pain of being hit with a 95-mph fastball, especially if it hits bone rather than meat. This kind of jolt can injure as well as hurt. In a few tragic instances, it has killed (only one major leaguer has died as a result of being hit by a pitch).

Baseball is our oldest game and the game most encrusted with tradition and honored rules of conduct, many of which aren’t written down anywhere, certainly not in the official baseball rule book. The taunting and sometimes outrageous hot-dogging that goes on in football just isn’t tolerated in baseball.

The player who stands at home plate too long admiring the ark of his home run, flips his bat contemptuously after going yard or takes too long to get around the bases after a home run is considered to be “showing up” the other team. He’s an almost sure candidate to be dumped by the pitcher the next time he’s at bat. Or perhaps in a future game if the offender doesn’t bat again in the same game after his offense, or if the game situation at the next at bat doesn’t allow for it. When it comes to code infractions baseball players have long memories, and they balance accounts.

Pitchers are also accountable under the code. Batters like to dig in close to the plate so they can reach and hammer pitches over the outer part of the plate while still being able to turn on inside pitches. To “keep them honest” pitchers will back batters up with close pitches, some of which wind up hitting batters. Some teams take offense when their players are dumped at the plate. And it’s the job of the pitcher on the dumpee’s team to balance accounts by dumping one of the other team’s players.

If he does this too obviously he can be in trouble with the umpire, even ejected from they game. If he doesn’t do this he is surely in trouble with his own manager and teammates. Like in other games, in baseball you cover your teammates’ backs or you will answer to them.

There are explicit sub-sections of the baseball code that govern when and how runners can slide hard into second to break up a double play, and govern the ever-dangerous plays at the plate. There are rules on how and when the catcher can block the plate, how and when the runner can bowl over the catcher, and when he is obliged to slide past the catcher. Infractions of any of these rules require a pay-back.

There are other less prominent but still enforced codes having to do with things such as running up the score, bunting for a hit late in a game when the pitcher has a no-hitter going, and stealing or swinging out of your socks late in a blow-out. All of these items are subsumed under showing respect for the game and for the other team. Why young men making millions of dollars a year for playing a boys’ game should be so exquisitely concerned about being “shown up” or embarrassed Mr. Bernstein notes as a conundrum, but makes no attempt to explain. He probably couldn’t. The code in baseball is one of those things more easily described than explained.

Yogi, on the other hand, is no enigma. He’s one of those one-name people who almost everyone, even those who don’t follow baseball, recognizes at once. He was born to poor Italian immigrant parents in the “Dago Hill” section of St. Louis (later changed to “The Hill” to satisfy political correctness).

He survived the Great Depression and a loving but no-nonsense father who considered baseball a frivolous pastime to go on to become one of the best catchers and most feared clutch hitters the game has ever seen. He coached and managed (the Yankees and the Mets) into his seventies, and retired finally as one of the most popular men to every wear Yankee pinstripes. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Mr. DeVito doesn’t break any new ground in his book, but he covers well, with about the right amount of detail and the right number of anecdotes, the basics of the well-lived life (which thankfully, goes on — at 82, Yogi is still with us) of an iconic American character. He separates Berra the cartoon creation of sports writers from Berra the baseball player, husband, father, savvy businessman, and good friend to many.

Young Americans, even young baseball fans, think of Mr. Berra, who last played in 1963, as a somewhat odd-looking, old pitchman for various products on TV, and the author of various mangled but funny sayings such as, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” or, “Baseball is 90 percent mental, and the other half is physical.” But baseball fans over 60 remember Yogi as an outstanding catcher and about the last man opposing pitchers wanted to see at the plate when the game was on the line.

Most of Yogi’s 358 life-time homers seemed to come when it really mattered. His malapropisms were more than offset by his clutch hits, his deft calling of games, his toughness on plays at the plate, and his crackling, on-the mark throws to nab larcenous base runners. Laugh all you want at the Yogisms; this guy was a ball player.

Yogi’s story is also baseball’s and America’s story, from the Depression years when young “Lawdie” Berra was playing sandlot ball with his pal-for-life, Joe Garagiola, to the post-everything years of drugs and steroids and preposterous player salaries. Yogi’s career crosses paths with the game’s greats. He was teammates with such as Joe DiMaggio, Phil Rizzuto, Whitey Ford, and Mickey Mantle. His personal coach who helped him hone his catching skills was Hall of Fame Yankee catcher Bill Dickey, teammate of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. In 1985, his final year managing the Yankees, Yogi’s team included Don Mattingly, Dave Winfield, Lou Piniella, and Ken Griffey Sr.

That’s a lot of baseball, American and Berra history. Mr. DeVito captures much of this. And Yogi Berra, to paraphrase one of Yogi’s famous fractured sayings, was the guy who made it all necessary.

Larry Thornberry is a writer living in Tampa.