Rougned Odor & Jonathan Papelbon Fighting MLB's Unwritten Rules Are the Best Thing About Baseball

MLB remains at a crossroads, a sport that is incredibly lucrative for players and owners alike but one that struggles to get in a word culturally during an era of NFL dominance and rabid popularity of the NBA.

Think about it: How often do great baseball moments on-the-field transcend sports and resonate across the spectrum, becoming things that end up on non-sports shows and have your parents texting you or Facebooking about them? And even on sports radio and those gasbag TV shows, baseball rarely makes a dent or becomes The Topic of The Day. But when “Unwritten Rules” are broken and drama erupts, that’s when baseball pops.

Which leads me to a puzzling question: As a pro-Bat Flipper, I’ve long thought that MLB’s “Unwritten Rules” were holding back the sport. Bryce Harper agrees. But two of the sport’s seminal moments in the last nine months may have me re-thinking my position on “Unwritten Rules” – what if the presence of them is so terrible for the sport, it actually helps, because breaking said rules means non-baseball die-hards will talk about baseball?

In a Donald Trump era of any publicity is good publicity, when it takes a mammoth right cross from someone named Rougned Odor – after the Rangers had to wait seven months for payback, the way the mafia or a gang might – to dominate the sports conversion (yes, this was way more interesting then Game 7 of Heat-Raptors) – maybe MLB just needs to let the “Unwritten Rules” live, and allow the street justice to continue?

That’s the tweet that may have caused me to re-think my position. No-hitters are becoming commonplace. The most exciting hitter in baseball doesn’t get an entire at-bat all weekend. The Yankees are a star-less abomination. Someone named Nolan Arenado leads baseball in home runs.

Let the “Unwritten Rules” live? Because they cause controversy, and that’s a good thing?

(The Cubs, though. Can’t forget the Cubs.)