Absolutely they can... doesn't make it less stupid.

Well that is an opinion and a subjective one at that. And I doubt honestly they care what we think anyway.

Peace

As we are "consumers" of MLB, they are certainly concerned. Who do you think pays their salaries?

I do not think if a player has a friendship bracelet or not is going to make people in droves start or stop going to games or watching on TV. So I am sure they are not concerned with the public on this very specific issue if they have a rule or not.

Peace

And I am just as sure that if the viewing public perceives MLB to be as stupid in other, more important areas as they are in this specific instance, ratings (and thus advertising dollars) will decline.

Personally, I boycotted my favorite team's telecast last Thursday because of this very issue. (The fact that they played on the West Coast & it was past my bedtime anyway had nothing to do with it!)

Considering that I have not heard one person outside of this forum even discuss this situation, I doubt seriously it is that big of a deal. It is a bigger deal to us because we umpire and deal with certain rules. To the rest of the public, they probably did not even know this happen and baseball anyway does a bad job marketing their sport anyway and this is not going to change as a result of someone wearing or not wearing a bracelet.

Peace

"If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves." -- Emily Dickinson

I doubt it was a directive from the front office or it would have taken place earlier in the game. This incident took place in the second inning, a full inning after Dickey had already pitched with the bracelets on!

This was something that was done by the umpire crew at that specific game. I just wish they'd spend as much time scrutinizing the outs calls they've been making when the player doesn't even have the ball!

This situation reminds me of the umpires that said they would carry magic markers to blacken out the label of a glove to cover up the white so it wouldn't be an "illegal" glove. Overkill to the max.