[greymule]

how many shortstops have had to retire early because some idiot kicked out their kneecaps?

I can't think of any offhand. And except for the Rose/Fosse incident, I can't think of a truly damaging crash or takeout slide, either. But maybe I'm wrong. And I don't know what happened during the Cobb era.

In terms of phantom tags, professional baserunners, as opposed to kids, know the difference. What pro is going to be suckered by a fake tag? Further, purely phantom tags solely for the reason of messing up the runner—such as after a foul ball—will be remembered and punished just like dirty slides and other violations of the unwritten rules of the game.

This may bother some people, but I have always felt that at higher levels of play, a fake tag is not unsportsmanlike when it accomplishes a strategic purpose. Example: R1 stealing 2B, pitch gets by the catcher. F6, whether by covering 2B or reaching as if for the ball, gets R1 to slide into 2B and thus reduce his chance of making 3B. If I'm the runner, I wouldn't think anything of F6 faking a tag. Even if I fall for it, I simply slide. Shame on me for not looking at the ball or watching the coach.

Kids, of course, are another story. When I played in the 1960s, takeout slides were legal in high school (so was crashing the catcher), and it was right that they were legal. Everybody wore metal spikes, too. (How many players did I see injured by metal spikes? Zero.) But the situation has changed—kids no longer spend their summers on the sandlot. Today, it is better that such slides are not legal.