Unwritten rules are an old, ineffective way to enforce sportsmanship

Posted Jan. 26, 2022

By Jonas Hobson-Reeves

Staff Reporter

Unwritten rules are an old, ineffective way to enforce sportsmanship in athletics, and while some are very good, they should be added to their respective sports as actual rules.

Unwritten rules have never been written down in any official rulebook. For the most part, they are unspoken and are supposed to be common sense to encourage sportsmanship with players. Most of these rules, however, are outdated, holding players back, and while they don’t technically have to follow them, they risk being the face of public ridicule for just playing their game the way it was meant to be played. For example, San Diego Padres shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. supposedly broke one of these unwritten rules by swinging on a 3-0 count while his team was up 10-3. All he did was hit the ball when the pitcher threw a weak one right down the middle. There is nothing wrong with that. It isn't his fault that the other team wasn't having a great night. He was ridiculed and disciplined by others in the league.

His team's manager had something to say about it.

“He’s young, a free spirit and focused and all those things,” Padres Manager Jayce Tingler said. “That’s the last thing that we’ll ever take away. It’s a learning opportunity, and that’s it. He’ll grow from it. …Just so you know, a lot of our guys have [a] green light at 3-0. But in this game in particular, we had a little bit of a comfortable lead. We’re not trying to run up the score or anything like that.”