the sweater brigade

More Thoughts on Buster Posey

We now have more information on the severity of Buster Posey’s injury: fractured left fibula and severely sprained ligaments in his ankle. Posey’s injury will require surgery, and while the team is hesitant to say Posey will miss the remainder of the 2011 season, he will be out for 6-8 weeks, at the very minimum.

Buster Posey is broken. He has youth on his side, but this is not good.

I want to reiterate what I said earlier: I don’t think Scott Cousins did anything dirty or wrong, at least not according to the rulebook. It was a clean, hard-nosed play, and if roles were reversed, I would expect Posey or any other Giants player to plow right through the opposing catcher. That’s baseball; that’s how the game is played.

But does it have to be?

This morning on KNBR, Duane Kuiper, former Major League second baseman for the Cleveland Indians and the San Francisco Giants, gave a great example of how previous baseball rules were changed in an effort to protect middle infielders:

Listen, this is a very sensitive issue for me because I got blown up at second base at least three times a week. And in those days, there weren’t a lot of rules: You could go out of the baseline, you could come in standing up. I mean, you could literally almost throw a punch going into second. And they changed the rules. And they made it a lot safer now for middle infielders. Why? Because they want to keep the players on the field. And I think Major League Baseball should take a very serious look at this, because the game has changed. Anybody who says “Well ya’ know, it’s old school,” well that’s a bunch of crap.

Every time I see the video of Pete Rose demolishing Ray Fosse in the 1970 All-Star Game, I think about how Fosse was never the same after that. When I have nightmares of Carlos Santana’s knee hyperextending after a crash at home plate last year, I wake up screaming about moving him to first base. Even in 2006 when Prince Fielder collided with then Giants catcher Todd Greene and separated his shoulder, I knew it was hard baseball but it still didn’t feel right.

Maybe it just didn’t hit home until now.

Believe it or not, baseball is not a contact sport. So why is the area around home plate a combat zone? First base is a force out, and you can’t crash into second or third, so why is home plate the complete opposite of how the rest of the game is played?

It’s not very often, if ever, that I agree or will quote Tim McCarver, but despite my earlier hyperbolic statements, I think it may be time for Major League Baseball to at least take a look at the McCarver Rule.