Baseball is a game of outs—or put another way, it’s about getting the other team off your lawn. So we should not be surprised when grumpy old baseball folks scream about unwritten rules being broken. It happened this week, when White Sox designated hitter Yermín Mercedes smacked a home run on a 3-0 pitch when his team was beating the Twins 15–4 in the ninth inning. The sporting thing, we are told, would be for Mercedes to … um, stop trying.
Fine. Take that thought a step further.
Let teams give up.
Yeah, give up. Concede.