Annotation 2

TouchEmAllBaseball. “Top 10 Unwritten Rules In Baseball.” YouTube, YouTube, 19 Feb. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmV90dgn1wQ&t=881s.

former professional baseball player and now a professional coach Matt Antonelli made a youtube video titled “top 10 unwritten rules in baseball” this video is actually made as a part two to another video of his with the same title two years ago, this “part two” video was made February 19, 2021. Matt’s whole video explains many unwritten rules in baseball today and gives a few examples of the rules being broken and his opinion on each rule. One of the rules he speaks on is a rule on not swinging the bat when your team is up and the pitch count is 3-0 meaning 3 balls and 0 strikes. Matt explains how he thinks the rule is “silly” because players should not have to try to get out to protect the pitcher’s “feelings”, matt actually says “ if you don’t want me to swing 3-0 don’t go 3-0 throw a strike”. Matt brings up a moment where a player name Fernando Tatis jr hit a grand slam on a 3-0 count and his team was already up by 7 going into the 8th inning and how it sparked controversy with a lot of baseball players and baseball fans because people felt like he was disrespectful. Another rule he spoke about was a rule on how a player is not allowed to pimp a home run which means to celebrate a home run by throwing or flipping a bat or showboating in any way. Matt first talks about how the younger generation is trying to end this unwritten rule because in baseball today players actually pimp home runs often, matt also talks about how back when he played and was growing up players would take their jog around the bases to avoid getting pitchers mad. Matt then explains how he never liked the rule because he felt like it was not fair that he was not allowed to get excited about his accomplishment but a pitcher could strike him out and get excited and showboat towards him. Matt goes on to say he likes players being able to celebrate their home runs and how he believes it is good for the sport. The third and final rule I will bring up from the video is a rule on how a player should bunt during a no-hitter. Matt brings up how he witnessed this happen in triple-A (minor league baseball) and how the player got screamed at by everyone saying you do not do that. He then goes on to say “ if a guy got a no-hitter in the ninth inning and it’s 7-0 I’m not gonna try to bunt” but then he explains if it is a close game he feels like you should be able to bunt because that is in effort to win whereas when you are down by a lot it is just to mess up the no-hitter which would be deemed disrespectful if you did not get a real hit by swinging, so basically his opinion was that it is not allowed when losing by a lot late in the game. Matt discussed other rules but these were the 3 he mainly spent time discussing. Matts whole video just explains rules and his opinion but the conclusion was basically that these rules are used to form a sort of gentleman agreement in baseball and create mutual respect between players.

In my opinion, matt made a great video explaining the unwritten rules of baseball and giving them explanations that showed me the importance of unwritten rules in baseball even though he does not really outright say why they are needed.

Matt Antonelli is a great source because he fits every category, he was a former pro player in the MLB, he is a coach in college and he makes videos on youtube every day about the sport. The purpose of his videos is just to give an inside look at the sport. He is credible because not only is he a player but he is a coach, he is an analyst and a fan of baseball.

The genre of this source is a youtube video and is a good source because it connects to my research question.

The key quote I got from the video was “unwritten rule is just kind of common courtesy in baseball” this quote was key to me because it allowed me to come up with the conclusion to his video being that these rules whether you like them or not are there for players to have common ground and have mutual respect/understanding of each other.

Annotation 3 

Kilgore, Adam. “Baseball’s unwritten rules may be softening, but they haven’t gone away.” Washington Post, 22 Aug. 2020. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A633253629/ITOF?u=cuny_nytc&sid=ITOF&xid=a1ab2707.

This source is a news article from the Washington Post from August 22, 2020, throughout this article Kilgore mostly focuses on the Fernando Tatis jr dilemma where he swung on 3-0 and hit a grand slam while already being up 10-3, and some of the statements from multiple people on both sides of the argument. Kilgore hints at his main idea being that the unwritten rules or as he said “codes” are changing when he writes 

The avalanche of opinion and discussion, which included a wave of 30- and 40-something managers and current players chiming in on social media, revealed the degree to which baseball’s codes are evolving and perhaps fraying

Kilgore continued to speak about statements made by coaches and players that backed up the idea that these rules were evolving into something new. Kilgore brings up tony la Russa who has been a manager for many years and is considered to be one of the people who strictly believes in these older unwritten rules, Kilgore writes about a lot of quotes from la Russa who mostly says how these rules are there to create sportsmanship between players and how tatis was wrong for swinging. Kilgore then goes on to speak about how he believes tatis was not wrong for swinging and explains a few reasons why. one reason he mentions is how MLB contracts warrant players getting certain stats to get more money  Kilgore says 

 Tatis is a superstar making the league minimum whose salary in two years will be decided, through arbitration, by his performance. Taking a pitch rather than swinging away would have meant prioritizing Nicasio’s and Gibaut’s feelings over his own financial incentives.

This basically meant that tatis was not aiming to be unsportsmanlike or break any rule but simply just do his job and what he needed to do to earn a better contract. The next reason Kilgore gave was that big comebacks have become common in baseball, he mentions how just three days later the blue jays made a 7 run comeback on the Phillies which was exactly the lead Tatis’s padres had in their game prior to his grand slam. To conclude his article Kilgore writes about eric Hosmer another player and says how Hosmer wants to protect the older rules but not uphold them which goes back to his point on how the rules are evolving.

In my opinion, this was another great source because it helps better understand what the importance of unwritten rules is and it gave me a view from the older side of baseball who heavily believed in these rules.

Adam Kilgore is a writer for the Washington Post who covers national sports and has been a renowned writer for many years including winning a Pulitzer Prize with a team in 2007. His style of writing was one where the reader could have read the article in reverse and still came to the same conclusion. His purpose is just to create a message from his writing to readers that allow you to understand him and the topic of unwritten rules. I believe this source is credible because adam has been writing for years and is well acclaimed.

The genre of this source is a newspaper article. This genre is a good source because newspapers tend to have strong arguments and counters in their articles.

The key quote from this article is “The enforcement of baseball’s unwritten rules helps explain their staying power. Baseball is the only sport that has no unsportsmanlike conduct penalty or some analog thereof. In place of that, the sport polices itself through injurious practices”. The importance of this is it again answers my question on what is the importance of unwritten rules because it explains exactly what they are in the sport for without any bias towards either side.