Buster Posey’s injury highlights Major League Baseball’s home-plate rules – MLB News
Since the Buster Posey-Scott Cousins collision at home plate resulted in Posey missing the entire season, there has been a lot of hue and cry for Major League Baseball to change the home-plate rules to protect catchers from serious injury.
It really is a shame that Posey won’t be around to play for the San Francisco Giants because this seriously hinders their chance at a second consecutive World Series, but the question arises, is it only over Posey that the rules should be changed? Baseball’s
recent history has seen many players get injured because of similar and at times worse collisions, so why didn’t any one protest and demand a change of rules then? Are the other Major Leaguers not any more important than Posey? Or does it take a young star
with a World Series ring to possibly change the centuries old rules of baseball?
If there’s one thing everyone has agreed to, even the folks from San Francisco, it’s that Scott Cousin’s play wasn’t dirty or abusive of his rights as a base runner. Just like Cousins, what Posey did is what would be expected from anyone else on the home
plate. Both players put their teams in the forefront and sacrificed their bodies in an attempt to win the game. Posey in a statement has acknowledged that they play was fair, so if he doesn’t have a problem with the whole situation, why does everyone else?
Posey’s injury is definitely collateral damage but that is expected in a game that is played with a hard ball. Almost every catcher in the Major League has or will have a collision on the home plate with a base runner but does that mean that every time there
will be an uproar for a rule change? If the officials at MLB were to comply with the Giants request a rule change then they would have to do the same for every catcher who gets injured at the plate. If that were so, in a couple of year baseball would turn
into a catcher’s game, not what it has remained to be since centuries.
Bobby Wilson had a collision with Mark Teixeira last year which resulted in Wilson suffering from a concussion and a left ankle sprain. There was some debate back then, but nothing comparable to what is being made out of the Posey issue. After Teixeira’s
collision, manager Joe Girardi who was a catcher himself commented, "This isn't a family reunion softball game." That is as true as it can get.
There will be times when the game won’t be pretty, and some fan favourites will get hurt but that in no way justifies changing historical rules that bigger and better stars have obeyed while suffering a few injuries of their own.
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