Word out of the Major League Baseball winter meetings is that the league plans to ban home plate collisions, not next season, but sooner rather than later.
It’s probably a good idea. And it’s also a bummer. And it’s probably unenforceable.
Some of the game’s greatest, scariest and worst moments have come when a guy barreling toward the plate tries to blow up the catcher, who is usually a sitting duck, waiting for the ball to come home.
In fact, the Baseball Outsider blog at the Mankato Free Press recalls some good ones in the history of your Minnesota Twins: “Kirby Puckett plowing over Terry Steinbach (Steinbach held onto the ball). Dan Gladden putting Greg Olson upside down in Game One of the 1991 World Series (Olson held onto the ball). Torii Hunter blowing up the White Sox’ Jamie Burke in 2004 (Burke did not get the out).”
But today’s sports clip takes us back to the 1970 All-Star Game when Pete Rose hammered Ray Fosse. It separated Fosse’s shoulder, which never quite healed, and he could never really regain his form. Rose, as always, was unapologetic.
And his run won the game for the National League.
Thanks to digital First Media, which has compiled a bunch of collisions here, here’s Rose’s roughshod run in all its glory:
