Oh god, I enjoyed this and have been arguing in the grays with balk supporters and this is exactly right.

If you think that fart should have been a penalty then you and me definitely are never gonna be pals because that pitcher's fart was not deception in any way, shape or form, the team gained no advantage whatsoever from it, yet the runners got to advance. You might as well rule a batter's sneeze to be an automatic…

Here is another excellent article making a great point about how stupid balks are and how deception is a key part of the game and how stupid it is to outlaw one really specific type of deception.

Here is this very website disagreeing with your claim that balk rules are not unclear.

Nah because a pitcher CAN throw to first. This fart being a balk is mind bogglingly stupid and so is your defending it.

Balks are definitely obscure and stupid.

I end with this: Baseball sucks.

Oh totally. I ignore it. Gladly.

This is actually exactly my point about the obscure baseball rules though, I don’t understand them. And I’ve seen enough baseball that I should. Some of them are just so obscure and stupid. It is probably compounded by the fact that I find baseball horribly boring.

So was the fart a balk? I would say baseball is about equally pedantic to other sports and much, much more boring. Except the baseball weird rules are always MUCH harder to follow like oh, balk, if he steps that way uhhh...yeah...oh if the bunt is FOUL on TWO strikes, then...uhh...it’s different. Oh they’re out if the…

I openly said that I don’t give a shit about baseball, so forgive the imperfection of my analogy. If you think the play (fart) above should be penalized, then you go ahead and be a baseball fan without me.

This is why I don't watch baseball, even being born in a baseball town and being a sports fanatic. So. Freaking. Stupid. Balk? It'd be like if football didn't allow QB pump fakes and they were a 15 yard penalty. Then it allows stupid crap like this where a pedantic umpire can penalize the pitcher for farting.

The best part about Pope Thrower is that they are a State Department official.

It's really, really bullshit to call the actions of a 5 year old boy "toxic masculinity". There are plenty of problems with society, but the boy being mean to the girl is just a little boy being a little boy.

New York Times is CIA spook central, and their credible stuff only gives them more ability to run the bullshit disinformation stuff and puff pieces like this if it serves them.

Bad genes.

Deadspin writing a piece about journalistic ethics 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

God, that photo. The look on his face is just perfectly saying, "Yep. That's what just happened."

I have been on the Pope Thrower bandwagon from the beginning.

Starred for knowing that