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Warren, I agree with your position and believe in fidelity to the game and its rules. Unfortunately, loyalty to one's assn. and the duty to err on the side of the integrity of the game are sometimes mutually exclusive. What then???
Is it presumptious to think that any of us has a responsibility to protect the purity of the game??? I used to think that the game I love was being prostituted, being turned into a whore, and that I, having put her on such a pedestal, had to defend her from all the mediocrity and expediency of the world. The game is bigger than any of us, and all of us...and will survive by maintaining contact with the old game, while absorbing the new. (I still don't think they play real baseball in the American League!)
I sometimes forget that to most folks, the baseball field is just a part of the real world, and not some insulated artificial environment where every thing that is done and said doesn't leave the field. And in a culture that views rules with distaste, sports officials (and baseball umpires in particular) will never get the respect they deserve.
JMO, Pat, Rogue Valley
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