As of The November 30th board meeting, there will be no sliding into bases. This rule was adopted by the board in the interest of player safety.
If you have issues with this or any other rule please either comment on this blog or make your concerns known to a board member.
FYI,
A squad of Winter Haven players went down to Lake Wales and contested a double header with a team from Nalcrest. Some of you may have played on the Nalcrest Field before where the fences are at a maximum of 280 ft and right field is as short as 220ft. Winter Haven took the opener 28-11 mainly due to a 14 run last inning. The game was highlighted by a Roger Edwards homer. The second game was taken by Nalcrest, I think the final was 11-8. It seems that in the second game all Winter Haven could do was hit deep fly balls. I think we were all trying to emulate Roger Edwards.
In any case, it was a fun day of playing ball. Our hosts even set up a barbeque and everyone had burgers and dogs after the game. Very nice and a lot of fun.
I think we're going too far in trying to protect players from their own decisions.
ReplyDeleteThe pitching screen protects pitchers from a ball hit by someone else. It is not the pitchers choice to get hit by a batted ball (nor is it the batters in most cases). Also we have the extra base at first to hopefully allow more room so that the 'sometimes not the quickest' feet don't get tangled and cause an injury outside the realm of player choice.
But the 'no sliding' rule only protects a player from himself and his own decision to slide or not. In fact there are many times when it's safer to slide.
Let's remember that we're not talking about aggressive sliding here. We're not talking about the sliding player taking out a defensive player. That's a different issue. We're talking here about a player just trying to beat a throw without over-running a base.
It seems to me that if you can't slide, then you also have allow over-running the base. Else the offensive player is penalized for running full tilt. If you allow over-running then the risk of collision is greater and then we're talking out of the individual's control.
If you do like they do in Nalcrest then you get players hitting a ball that for a slow player would be a single but a fast runner can make it into a double and so tries to take second but over-runs the base and gets tagged out on his over-run. That's not fair either. The player hit a ball in a gap and made it safely to second but now the defense gets him out on an over-run because he couldn't slide and stop effectively? Doesn't make sense.
We want to avoid collisions, certainly. That's why there's an extra first base and an extra home plate. Fine. But a slide into second or third only puts the slider at risk. That's a risk assumed by the slider and seldom causes anyone else injury.
Sliding avoids collisions let's not rule it out because of a rare injury.
Ron
I agree with Ron wholeheartedly. Sliding IS SAFER and prevents injury IF YOU KNOW HOW TO DO IT SAFELY and the option should be left to the individual player.
ReplyDeleteKen O
Ditto. I agree with Ken and Ron, it's my choice and I feel safer sliding rather than trying to stop on a dime. It's in the blood!
DeleteGreg Denny
When I injured my ankle I went hard into third standing up. I feel that if I would have went into 3rd sliding I would not have been injured.
DeleteStevan Hill