Counterpoint: Yes you do.

“IT’S WHEN YOU SHIT ON A HOOKER WITH A MIDWESTERN ACCENT. Goddammit, Steve, sometimes you are dumber than a sack of hammers.”

That is so terrible that it’s looped around to being awesome.

The perps will, of course, wind up being his teammates.

As mentioned yesterday, the balk rule is... a bit unclear. But I think there’s two phases to it, or at least that’s how I’ve come to understand it:

He can lift his foot up, I believe, so long as there is no motion — either by the foot or his body — towards the plate. But I fully expect an umpire to jump on him for that at some point.

“The stretch” refers to your positioning w/r/t the rubber. I was asking about his delivery mechanics.

I assume he’s got a relatively normal set/throw with runners on base, right?

But are they scrappy? If you’re scrappy, your scrappiness will come through in the end via scrappy victories that you scrape out with dirt and spittle and just wanting it more than the next guy. What’s the scrappy quotient here?

“Mr. Bates, how do you explain your actions on the field?”

“BRAH! THAT DOUCHE WAS BEING A LITTLE BITCH! I PUNKED HIS ASS, BRAH!!!”

This is about 12 pages too long, as all that really needed to be said was “I watched the movie WARGAMES and applied its lesson to the NBA.”

“tl;dr. WUT U MAD BRO????”

Also — the answer to “Can you make the final out in a loss by hitting a ground rule double?” is... of course.... “yes”, if you fail to touch first base on your way to second.

Well, I can see that.... but this was the play MLB used to illustrate the rule. So he must have been safe but for the laces.

I think you’re thinking of last year, when the entire rotation decided to blow out their arms simultaneously in spring training.

Possible alternative theory: Arizona’s pitching has not been terrific?

I think if you look closely, his foot gets in before the glove tags him, but the glove laces hit him before his foot got in. Specifically, you can see his foot snapping back the laces (which is contact with the glove under the old rules), but the glove doesn’t come down until the foot has hit the bag.

Someone beat you to it, but yes — it’s from the pitch. My bad! You can still hit a ground rule triple though. And you can be awarded a HR from interference, theoretically.

The balk rule is easy to explain: “If, in the judgment of the umpire, the pitcher is givin’ the business to the runner and you know your momma said he shou’int, the umpire shall award a base to the runner.”

Or interference. I wasn’t sure about the from-the-pitch interpretation, so thanks for clearing that up. The way the language of the rules read, it doesn’t specify that, I think. (Or I missed it, which is very possible.)