Play at the Plate

Well it's been over a week since Scott Cousins rolled Buster Posey, breaking Posey's leg and tearing 3 ligaments in his ankle. Buster is gonna miss the rest of this season and could be back by opening day of next season. This particular play has caused some good debate, was the play clean or dirty? Most baseball people think it was clean, others mainly Giant personel, Giants homers, and some former catchers, feel it was unnecessary. I (being a Giants fan) am in the minority of thinking it was dirty. I think what Cousins did was brutal, Buster was giving him a third of the plate and he instead decided to railroad him shoulder first like a freaking LB in football, Buster was defenseless trying to field the throw, Cousins had 100 percent control of what happened and decided to kill Buster. My main beef however isn't with Cousins, it's to do with these people who claim you can't change the rule b/c a) it's a hard-nosed baseball play that it's taught, and b) Cousins was just trying to keep his job.

I'm gonna tackle the first arguement first. This is not a part of baseball, it's part of pro baseball, when I was a junior in high school I got ran over twice, and both times the player that hit me was immediatly ejected, for not sliding into home plate. That was 12 years ago, long before Cousins was a pro, and I would guess his high school rules were the same as mine. This it's taught to kill the catcher idea is so bogus, if you don't slide foot first into home in Little League, High School and College your automatically out and booted from the game. In college you have to slide feet first all the time unless your going back to a base. I'll stand by this all year, Cousins had plenty of plate to hit and took a shot at a superstar to make a name for himself, also just b/c that's the way it's always been done isn't an arguement either, if they change a speed limit or add a stop sign to a road you can't say well it's always been 65 here not 55, it don't work.

Now onto Cousins needing to save his job, BULLSHIT. Running over the catcher isn't a way to make the team, if he takes the back half of the plate the Marlins still win, and he still keeps his job. Killing the catcher had nothing to do with him maybe going to triple AAA, or staying in the bigs. It was a cheap shot, and I'm with Giants GM Brian Sabean, we have long memories and we'll be sure that Cousins doesn't forget what he did. For anyone wanting to argue take another look at this and tell me he didn't have a path to the plate. http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=15201655