Don't Underestimate 'Oblivious'
There's a lot of rules.
Day 204 Of The 2004 MLB Season, &
Days 136, 174 and 208 of the 2025 MLB Season
In baseball, it is illegal to take certain chemicals that are deemed "performance enhancing,” like human growth hormone. It is also illegal for a pitcher to fail to step directly toward a base before throwing to that base. Both are rules that aim to keep players from getting unfair advantages, with penalties for violators, etc.
Andy Pettitte broke both of these rules—the first one he violated a couple times, the second one he violated constantly for his entire career—but we obviously don’t judge them the same way. One violation has probably cost him a bunch of Hall of Fame votes; the other violation was a key part of his skill set, something he was lauded for, and thus probably gained him a bunch of Hall of Fame votes.
It’s also illegal for a runner to, during a tag attempt, “use his hands or arms to commit an obviously malicious or unsportsmanlike act—such as… intentionally slapping at the ball—to commit an intentional act of interference unrelated to running the bases.” Alex Rodriguez violated that one, in the 2004 ALCS.
Breaking that rule is a lot closer to deceiving a baserunner than it is to using PEDs. But, unlike Andy Pettitte’s pickoff move, Alex Rodriguez’ “slap” at Bronson Arroyo’s glove was not only never used as proof of his moxie, but it actually launched the villain arc that followed him until his retirement. The Red Sox players went nuts over it, taunting him and calling him names. When, years later, Eric Neel wrote a piece for ESPN headlined “Why Do We Hate This Guy?”, he said: “The undisputed iconic heart of the perception is the left-handed slap he made at the ball in Bronson Arroyo’s glove.” The great former Yankee blogger Alex Belth was quoted in that piece: “That play defines him in a lot of people’s minds. It’s become this monster, this thing that feeds on itself and will never die.”
If you can believe it, I’ve spent two decades pondering the response to that play, which seemed disproportionate to how we react to other on-field “rules” being “broken.” Usually, such things are treated as part of regular play, not moral lapses. Unlike steroids (or electronics-aided sign-stealing), it’s the umpire’s job to catch these broken rules, not the player’s job not to do them. How was there that much space in such a small play for everybody to pack so much ARod hate into?
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Working on the infield fly rule piece last week helped me finally develop a theory for the inconsistency.
When a player does something on the field that’s outside the norms, and/or beyond the rules—doing just a few small sign stealings, dropping a line drive on purpose to start a double play, pretending to get hit by a pitch that didn’t hit you, pushing a baserunner’s hand off the base with your glove, using a borderline amount of sticky stuff as a pitcher, lying to the umpire about whether you caught a ball that went into the stands as you tumbled over the rail, leaving the on-deck circle to stand closer to the plate, tossing your bat in a fielder’s path on a bunt, intentionally nicking the catcher’s glove with your swing, throwing your glove at a batted ball, having an outfielder’s glove that’s larger than the legal limit, etc—we can label it four ways:
It was cheating (and we despise you)
It was bush league (and we criticize you)
It was smart (and we love you)
It was oblivious (and we forgive you)
Each label can be put on an axis: Not bush, a little bush, outrageously bush. Not smart, a little smart, a lot smart. A play exists somewhere on all of these axes at the same time, which is tough, because four-axis graphs are basically illegible to most of us.
And then there are two factors that make it even harder:
1. There’s not a strong correlation between the first three axes. A play can be cheating and smart or cheating and not smart or cheating but not bush and not smart or not cheating but bush and not smart and so on and so forth, which makes for some very scattered and subjective plotting. And
2. We underestimate and undercredit obliviousness, assigning a lot of intent to things that might be entirely explained by the player not actually knowing the rules.
And, as we learned last week, they very often don’t know the rules.
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I will give you two examples from this season:
The Blaze Alexander example (Day 174)
