Baseball moves toward upending tradition on slides – Los Angeles Times

Joe Torre walked wearily into an interview bunker at Dodger Stadium late Saturday night. He already had gotten an earful from two executives from the New York Mets, the team that had just lost its shortstop to a broken leg, and now he had to explain why the umpires had sanctioned the play.

The Dodgers said Chase Utley had taken out Ruben Tejada with a slide. The Mets said Utley had taken out Tejada with a tackle. That debate would rage late into the night and well into Sunday.

So would this one: Are middle infielders so vulnerable to a slide that they require a protective protocol?

That issue already has been decided by Major League Baseball, even if Tejada’s injury deprived the league of a chance to make a splashy announcement.

“I don’t know if I’m supposed to say this,” Torre said toward the end of that interview at Dodger Stadium. But he let it slip anyway: In the Arizona Fall League, where baseball likes to test new rules, players will be required to slide directly into the base, not veer toward the fielder in an attempt to break up a double play.

Perhaps Utley gets his two-game suspension overturned or reduced on appeal, given the compelling argument of his representatives that many similar plays have not resulted in similar discipline. In a Fox TV interview Sunday night, Torre essentially said precedent was not his top priority.

“We’re trying to have rules that are going to keep these players on the field,” Torre said.

That’s the point, and it was not received with universal warmth throughout the league Sunday. “Everybody wants to put everybody in a bubble,” Chicago Cubs Manager Joe Maddon said.

Asked St. Louis Cardinals infielder Matt Carpenter: “Are we going to wear shoulder pads when we play?”