It seems like every year there’s another incident in major league baseball that spurs renewed media and public interest in the game’s unwritten rules. In 2018, there was Ronald Acuña Jr. being injured by a José Ureña beanball; in 2019, there was Brad Keller throwing at Tim Anderson after a bat flip (and Anderson’s ensuing suspension). As the 2020 season began, I wondered whether a strange, truncated year under the shadow of a pandemic would allow for the annual unwritten rules controversy to arise. Two weeks ago, I got my answer in the dustup around Fernando Tatis Jr.’s 3-0 grand slam.

The Tatis incident seemed to draw more online attention than past unwritten rules controversies — a glance at Google Trends would appear to confirm that feeling. It also seemed to draw essentially universal disdain. Usually, there will be at least a few public holdouts against unwritten rules violations like bat flips, often citing “respect” — for “the game,” or for the pitcher victimized by the home run — as a reason why baseball should continue to hold onto its unspoken traditions. But in the case of Tatis, the violation perceived by Chris Woodward and Ian Gibaut was so patently ridiculous that almost no one joined them in saying it was wrong. Former and current players, media commentators — all were pretty much united in support for Tatis and scorn for the people trying to make him apologize. MLB itself handed down suspensions to Woodward and Gibaut for Gibaut throwing behind Manny Machado in response, making this particular unwritten rules scandal feel like it could be a turning point in the yearly discourse merry-go-round.

Watching everything unfold, though, I found myself wondering about the history of these incidents — not the unwritten rules themselves, but the public fascination with them. When did baseball writers start trying to document the unwritten rules, to name them as such? What kinds of violations of these rules have historically sparked interest, and how can the controversies of the past illuminate our present discussions?

As I dug into the newspaper archives, I found that the ways in which the unwritten rules of baseball were discussed shifted in interesting ways over time. So this history will be divided into three parts. What follows is a survey of the earliest days of baseball’s unwritten rules — from the late 19th century into the first decade of the 20th.

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