Ronald Acuña Jr's Home-Run Flair Reignites Baseball Debate
Acuña's arms-out trot past Wheeler, plus Chisholm's steals and a cap dispute, revive baseball's old fight over unwritten rules and who enforces them.
Ronald Acuña Jr hit a third-inning home run off Zack Wheeler on Saturday night, then took his time going round the bases, arms spread like wings, stepping past third the way a point guard might slalom past a defender. Wheeler and Phillies manager Don Mattingly did not care for it.
The gesture set off the latest round of an old argument in baseball: what a player is allowed to do after doing something good.
A week earlier, in a 16-1 Yankees win over the Red Sox, Jazz Chisholm stole two bases that meant nothing to the score. The custom, more than 150 years old, holds that a team already conceding a blowout does not run up the bases further once the other side has stopped contesting them. Chisholm ran anyway. Red Sox radio announcer Will Flemming said on air that a Yankees hitter ought to be thrown at in response.
A third episode came over the weekend in a Colorado-St Louis series, and this time the dispute was not between the two teams at all. Umpire Doug Eddings stopped play to order Cardinals rookie Hancel Rincon to adjust his cap, ruling the way the rookie wore it out of line.
None of them changed a result. All three ended up as arguments about who gets to decide how the game should look.
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