Womack: 10 unwritten rules of baseball history

From SABR member Graham Womack at Baseball Past and Present on July 24, 2015:

For perhaps as long as baseball has been around, it’s had unspoken customs and rules that have helped dictate on-field action. These rules have not necessarily been systematically cataloged, though multiple books exist on the subject. With the help of newspapers.com, it’s getting easier to find more of baseball’s unwritten rules, or at least what sportswriters perceived them to be for much of the game’s history,  even long-ago.

Some of the following 10 unwritten rules of baseball history persist to this day. Others seem gloriously arcane. I’ll post them all without comment.

1. From the Topeka Daily Capital of September 25, 1891:

The ballplayer is as ticklish about his age as the maiden– of discretion– who has passed through many summers and hard winters, and that is perhaps the reason that there is an unwritten rule banishing beards from the baseball field.

Read the full article here: http://baseballpastandpresent.com/2015/07/24/10-unwritten-rules-baseball-history/



Originally published: July 24, 2015. Last Updated: July 24, 2015.