The big news out of the Winter Meetings on Wednesday was the MLB Rules Committee banning home plate collisions. The new decree, which is still being tweaked, received mostly praise. One person that wasn't pleased however, was former MLB player Pete Rose, who was involved in one of the most famous home plate collisions of all-time to close out the 1970 All-Star Game.
"What are they going to do next, you can't break up a double play?" Rose said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press after MLB announced its plan Wednesday.
"You're not allowed to pitch inside. The hitters wear more armor than the Humvees in Afghanistan. Now you're not allowed to try to be safe at home plate?" Rose said. "What's the game coming to? Evidently the guys making all these rules never played the game of baseball."
It's funny Rose says that, because several of the people that lobbied for the rule were former MLB catchers working as managers – including Bruce Bochy and Mike Matheny, among others. I wonder what Ray Fosse, the catcher Rose obliterated 43 years ago, thinks of these comments and the new rule. After all, Fosse (23 at the time of the hit) played just three more seasons on a full-time basis after that collision before settling into a part-time role for the rest of his career.
