The Hidden Rule and the Myth of Clarity

I'm going to give you a sentence, and I want you to consider whether you think it is true or false. It's about a rule in baseball that you may not be aware of. Ready?

If a player catches a baseball with their hat, the batter automatically gets three bases.

This means that if an outfielder accidentally drops his glove and removes his hat to make a catch, rather than making an out, the batter would get a triple. Even though he "caught it" in his hat.

Is it true or false?

Now here is an even better question: how would you know? When you read that statement, you likely had an immediate reaction to it. It either felt true or it felt false to you. And many people stop there. But let's say you wanted to know if it was true or false beyond how it made you feel. That would require curiosity and a bit of work. You'd have to determine where to look for this information and who you could trust to make sense of it reliably.

We read "facts" like these all the time. And for many of us, we form complete worldviews and political opinions on article headings alone. It's the quickest (and easiest) way for us to feel informed without getting bogged down in our own research. But just because it's become common doesn't mean it's a valid way to form an opinion. AI has added another element to this conversation, as we now have videos, music, and all sorts of things that look real but are in fact not.

Let's return to our question. The answer to the validity of the statement above is that it is, in fact, true. 

But if you research it for yourself, you'll find that this is a bit of a tricky one to nail down. Here's how the rulebook states it:

5.06(b)(4) Each runner including the batter-runner may, without liability to be put out, advance:

(B) Three bases, if a fielder deliberately touches a fair ball with his cap, mask or any part of his uniform detached from its proper place on his person. The ball is in play and the batter may advance to home base at his peril;

According to the official MLB rulebook, the claim is technically true.

But what if I told you the rule has NEVER been applied as stated above? At least nothing that we can document. Does it change anything if I told you we have no actual examples of the rule being used in this way? Ironically, the closest thing we have to this rule being in effect happened this past season with my beloved Yankees. The centerfielder, Trent Grisham, didn't catch a ball with his hat, but he did take off his hat to help him control the ball. You can watch the play yourself.

According to the rulebook, the batter should have been awarded third base on this play. But he wasn't. Does a rule exist if it doesn't get applied when it should?

So the claim is true, but it's a bit more nuanced when we actually try to make sense of it. Which reminds me of a lot of other things. Life is not filled with black-and-white categories that lead us to certainty in our thinking, despite how desperately fundamentalists want to argue otherwise.

This seems like a good time to remind you that the Bible is many things, but it is most certainly not clear. Making that claim is probably one of the most laughable, commonly accepted things I regularly hear Christians make.

If you think the Bible is so clear on a topic you're passionate about, you either haven't studied it deeply, or don't know much church history, or are painfully myopic concerning Christians around the world from different traditions than your own. This kind of simplistic thinking is what has allowed Christian Nationalism to pass as Christianity in the United States.

Life is far more like an obscure baseball rule that is technically true but that can't really be explained in simple terms. Which means we need curiosity (and poor eyesight), other people to speak into us, and a heaping dose of humility about our own beliefs. We also need the ability to see beyond our own echo chambers.

So the next time you read something that sounds far-fetched (which will likely be today), I invite you to take a few extra steps to explore it before making your conclusions.

Photo by Antoine Schibler on Unsplash