* RK Review: The Unwritten Rules of Baseball

The Etiquette, Conventional Wisdom, and Axiomatic Codes of Our National Pastime, by Paul Dickson (Collins, 2009)

It’s Passover time, so forgive me a comment relating to the traditions of the holiday:

There’s a song we sing at the Seder called “Dayenu.” It means, basically, “it would have been enough.” If God had done A and not B, it would have been enough; if he had bone B instead of C, it would have been enough, etc.

So, borrowing on that: If Paul Dickson had just published the third edition of his baseball Dictionary, it would have been enough. But he didn’t. He also wrote The Unwritten Rules, a most entertaining little book on all those little things the ballplayers, sportswriters, and broadcasters pay lip service to.

Unlike the formidable Dictionary — and this is by no means a knock against it — Rules is a “read,” as opposed to a resource. It’s light and small and easy get through, since it follows a narrative, to a degree.

Included here are those issues that every true aficionado  should know regarding players, umpires, fans, and the ever-mystifying “Book” on the game. Batters should never “peek” to see where the catcher is setting up; catchers should keep “framing” — holding a ball for an extra second as they try to extract a favorable call from the umpire; umpires shouldn’t aggressively confront argumentative players, etc.

The second part of the book consist “Axioms, principl;es, Adages, Rules of Thumb, Instructions, and Seemingly Immutable Laws That Define the National Pastime,” a long of describing what is, in a way, another dictionary combined with a quote source. Dickson is a lover of language, as is evidence by the number of non-baseball titles on the subject, and it shows here.

Tagged as: Paul Dickson, Rules of baseball