It may be time to rewrite unwritten rules

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I asked Lou Piniella if he had a copy of baseball's unwritten rules in his desk.

Piniella leaned back in his chair and looked across the manager's office with that beatific smile of his.

"Don't ever manage to embarrass your opponent," he said slowly. "Those are my unwritten rules."

Last Monday in Kansas City, Charles Gipson, perhaps the fastest of the Mariners, stood on second base as Carlos Guillen singled to right field.

Dave Myers, the third-base coach, had to quickly assess the situation. Deciding whether Gipson could score was the easiest part of it.

It was the eighth inning, the Mariners were ahead by nine runs.

"I knew Gipson could score," Myers said, "but he'd have to slide to be safe."

Myers held him at third. Not only didn't he want to embarrass the Royals with another run, but he didn't want to risk injury to Gipson with a slide.

"But had the right fielder bobbled the ball, then I would have sent Gipson," Myers said. "Then it would have been their fault that he scored."

Baseball's unwritten rules.

They aren't so much rules, but a code by which to live, a guide to macho co-existence. How to survive 162 games in which you can play the same team eight or nine times with your pride and hormones intact.

When you're comfortably ahead - whatever that means - you don't swing at a 3-0 pitch, you don't bunt, squeeze, steal a base or show emotion hitting a home run.

You can, of course, cork your bat or steal signs as long as you don't get caught. Somehow those things aren't in the unwritten rules.

You can, and should, hit somebody with a pitch in retaliation, but that's a different chapter of the unwritten rules.

A week ago, the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Bob Brenly, was outraged when San Diego catcher Ben Davis broke up a perfect game in the eighth inning with a bunt single.

Brenly called Davis "chicken." Davis had kept Arizona pitcher Curt Schilling from possibly making baseball history - it could have been the 15th perfect game - with something as cheap and conniving as a bunt single.

It didn't matter that the Padres hadn't found any other way to get on base. Or that they were behind only 2-0 and that both teams were fighting for first place in the National League West.

It was, as Mariner announcer Ron Fairly would say, "about honor."

It wasn't paramount, according to Fairly, that by dropping a bunt over Schilling's head Davis had brought the tying run to the plate. A walk, a home run and suddenly Schilling would have lost not only his place in history, but the game.

What mattered was that Davis didn't take his best cut against Schilling's best pitch. He acted like less than a man.

Fairly, as you know, is old-school baseball. He played in the major leagues for years. He was playing first base for the Los Angeles Dodgers the day that Sandy Koufax pitched a perfect game against the Chicago Cubs, beating them 1-0.

"How many of them tried to bunt?" asked Fairly, knowing the answer. "None. How many Dodgers tried to bunt to break up Don Larsen's perfect game in the World Series? None."

Fairly said he never thought about positioning himself defensively for a bunt once the sixth inning of Koufax's epic game had come and gone.

"If there had been a hit early in the game, it doesn't matter what the batter does," he said. "But when a pitcher has a chance to do something few ever have, then you owe it to him to swing the bat.

"As Don Drysdale said, `You might beat me (with a cheap hit), but you're not going to enjoy it as much as you think you will.' "

You can bet in a similar situation, especially with someone like Ichiro at bat, that Piniella would have done anything to score a couple of runs and tie the score.

He said as much this week.

And yet Piniella also understands the "embarrassment" issue. He basically shuts down the running game when his team gets far enough ahead.

What's far enough?

Is it five runs in the sixth, or six runs in the fifth?

Offered Lee Elia, the venerable Mariner coach, "Tommy Lasorda used to say, `You always play for one more run than a grand slam.' "

In Pete Rose's 44-game hitting streak, he was accused of violating the rules when he bunted to get a hit in his final at-bat with the Reds ahead 7-2 in game 33, and then was the accuser in game 44 as Atlanta's Gene Garber got him out with a sissy changeup. Rose, who later embarrassed baseball in all sorts of ways, said Garber owed the streak, its history and Rose a fastball.

"He pitched me like it was the seventh game of the World Series," Rose said.

And Garber shouldn't have?

Baseball people will cite the unwritten rules as part of a sportsmanship that exists in baseball, the kind of ethic golfers show when they call penalties on themselves. I don't think so.

The Arizona Diamondbacks peppered Davis with obscenities from their dugout after his eighth-inning bunt. He'd broken the code, he was somehow less of a man because he tried to do what he could within the rules - the real rules - to help his team win.

I asked Fairly if the honor of swinging away in the case of a perfect game was more important than the attempt to win what is a team game.

"Yes," he answered, putting down the book that never was. And shouldn't be.

Blaine Newnham can be reached at 206-464-2364 or bnewnham@seattletimes.com.