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Ron Roenicke and the Unwritten Rules
With Brewers manager Ron Roenicke in the news recently for inserting Carlos Gomez as a pinch-runner while holding a 5-0, eighth-inning lead over the Cubs, it seems an appropriate time to run the bulk...
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Cubs Skipper Quade Serving as One-Man Code Army
Mike Quade: Needing a copy of the Brewers' and Dodgers' unwritten rulebooks. One thing we’ve learned for certain so far this young season: Cubs manager Mike Quade is a fan of the unwritten rules. He...
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Whiteside Shows that Plate Collisions Work Both Ways
Lost amid the recent talk about the propriety of crashing into the catcher is the fact that the catcher is hardly defenseless behind the plate. On late-breaking plays, of course—like the one in which...
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Not Among Friends: The Fine Art of Ignoring Hostile Crowds. Or: Nyjer Morgan,...
Forget lefty-on-lefty matchups; there’s one battle a baseball player simply can not win: going nose to nose with any segment of the crowd, particularly on the road. One of the first things a player...
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Hey Jered Weaver, this is Where Message Pitches are Meant to be Delivered
Ryan Braun: not happy with the way things played out. As far as retaliation goes, it was awkward, it was ugly and if it wasn’t embarrassing to more than one party, then by all rights it should have...
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Big League Chew: Morgan Pulls Out All the Stops (Among Other Things) to Get...
This is what happens when baseball’s premier red-ass butts heads with one of the game’s loosest cannons. As if there wasn’t enough tension built in to St. Louis’ desperate chase of the Brewers in the...
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We Must Be in the Front Row: Not First Time for Ticket Mixup at Busch
The view shared by members of the Brewers' traveling party? Between the name-calling and the occasional hit batter and the Beast Mode, this Brewers-Cardinals NLCS has not been short on tempestuous fun....
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Brewers Denied Target Practice: Wright Pre-Emptively Pulled
David Wright gets riled in the dugout. Because such thing exists as a pre-emptive strike, it goes to follow that its opposite must be pre-emptive strike avoidance. It’s a term not frequently utilized,...
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Stop, Drop and Roll: Chapman’s Tumble Has Folks Talking
The evolution of self-congratulation in baseball has been long and storied. Reggie Jackson lingering in the batter’s box. Barry Bonds’s twirls and Sammy Sosa’s bunny hops en route to first base....
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To Bunt or Not to Bunt, That is the Question—Even if it Doesn’t Make Much Sense
We may have found a new unwritten rule in Busch Stadium on Sunday. Either that, or Kyle Lohse is completely off his rocker. Lohse allowed six singles to the first seven batters he faced in the fourth...
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Rodney’s Bathroom Breather Hardly Breaks New Ground
Rays reliever Fernando Rodney got stuck in the visitors’ dugout bathroom at Oakland’s O.co Coliseum on Sunday, and was trapped for about 15 minutes until a rescue crew could open the door. He emerged...
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The Fine Line Between Pimping and Confusion, Pittsburgh Edition
Perception is everything. In the fifth inning in Milwaukee on Wednesday, Andrew McCutchen hit a home run to left. He didn’t get it all—it just cleared the fence—and he managed to lose it in the lights...
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Carlos Gomez was Very Angry at Paul Maholm. Brian McCann was Very Angry at...
When it comes to matters of messaging, it’s all in the timing. On a ball field, that means an offended team waits for the appropriate moment to respond to the player who rubbed them the wrong way. This...
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Go-Go Gone-Gone: Gomez Pimps, Explodes Over Tongue Lashing
Pimping is a ballplayer’s prerogative. But if one chooses to style in the batter’s box after hitting a long fly ball, one must be prepared should the opposition cry foul. (One must also make sure the...
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On the Impracticality of Hitting Opponents Out of Anger, Arizona Diamondbacks...
This is what it looks like when a plan doesn’t work out. The Arizona Diamondbacks, angry with the Brewers for a variety of reasons, and with Ryan Braun for some very specific other reasons, finished a...
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Takeout Order: One Second Baseman, With a Side of Sour Grapes
Carlos Gomez has taken heat in this space for everything from pimping to excessive pimping to his inability to handle criticism. Yesterday Gomez again managed to clear the bases over something he did …...
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Intent is One Thing, Results are Another: Garza Doubles Down on McCutchen, is...
Under the Respect is Earned section of the Code, Milwaukee’s Matt Garza picked some bad timing to drill guys during Saturday’s game against Pittsburgh. Of course, it was only bad timing if he did it...
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Stick With Me, Baby, And I’ll Stick With You
Two trains of thought here. One is that foreign substances—particularly of the tacky (as opposed to viscous) variety—are commonplace among the ranks of pitchers, used to increase grip on the baseball....
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Shout it From the Rooftops, Shout it From the Mountain, Just Don’t Shout it...
There was a lot of shouting at Carlos Gomez in Milwaukee on Wednesday. Some of it was from Madison Bumgarner. Most was from Gomez himself. It started when Gomez fouled off a pitch he felt he should...
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What the Hell is Wrong With Craig Counsell?
At one end of baseball’s unwritten-rules spectrum, angry pitchers try to justify their desire to throw baseballs at hitters. At the other end, celebration-minded batters ignore the Code entirely...
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