[greymule]

I think you have made a valid observation, Dan. Somehow there has arisen a general societal assumption that in the normal state of affairs, everything is fine, and that when someone suffers something unfortunate, somebody must be at fault for having caused the suffering, and things have to be made right. The somebody at fault is never the sufferer himself but usually a deep-pockets company like McDonalds, which today has to spend millions defending itself against charges that it is at fault because people have become fat.

So if you believe the second baseman when he says the ball was foul, and you get tagged out as you walk back to first and look like a fool, you've suffered, and something unfair must have happened. Therefore, you're protected, and the other guy, the fielder, is penalized.

I played my last baseball game in 1972. There were no rules against fake tags (so why weren't they an issue?), and "verbal" interference or obstruction was limited to something blatantly obvious like calling "time" during a play, like a basketball player blowing a whistle from the bench. Decoying in whatever way you could was part of the game, though it seldom worked. Don't think I'm for tossing such rules in school or softball, however. The days are long gone when every kid in the neighborhood played baseball all day in the summer and developed instincts for the game. The strict rules governing behavior are needed, though I think Fed goes a bit too far (e.g., tobacco-like substances).

In a parallel vein, when I played school ball, taunting the opposition was permitted, within boundaries, unlike today's total prohibition. That was probably because taunting had been a part of baseball for so long, so everybody was accustomed to it. There was plenty of razzing in MLB, too, much more than today.

In college there was a lot of heckling from the fans, softer noise from the players. In American Legion both sides heard a torrent of abuse throughout the game, mostly from fans. I'm not saying I approve of that—I think the Fed prohibition of taunting is good—but the attitude then was "if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen." Everybody had been to MLB games and heard the leather-lungs in the stands, and we saw how the players ignored them. (Ty Cobb, however, once ran into the stands to attack a heckler—a guy in wheelchair.)

In terms of other changes in society, do you remember when many schools had riflery teams? I remember when a kid did his science project on guns. Everybody thought that was pretty cool—in 1959.