Questionable tactics

Aggressiveness or Malice

Aggressiveness and playing dirty are two different things. Coming in with cleats up...dirty. Coming in trying to slide 'through' a player to reach the plate/base....aggressive.
There is going to be contact in this game, and some injuries will ocurr. It is when a player inflicts this injury in a purposeful manner to cause injury that it goes from aggressiveness to malicious intent.
Our second baseman had her ankle broken by a girl who jumped in the air, took aim at her ankle and did a jump-slide into her. That was pure malice. She was safe, but the umpire ejected that runner from the game. That is their job, to police those players who take the aggressiveness too far.

 

it was said earlier that basically there is no retribution to someone actually crossing the boundary of ethical play. Oh contrare there is.... Karma will come around. The girls do know who has been ugly on the field. I have caught many a games and my pitcher has caused the batter to take a dirt bath or to shake the cobwebs out of their head due to plunking.... I have played fastpitch since I knew how to throw the ball. I grew up playing in Michigan and went to college in Indiana. All my coaches had different ideas of play but the one thing that was common was to be aggressive.

I was a very aggressive base runner as well as fielder. NO ONE was getting to my plate! I blocked my plate with all I had. That is the job and mind set of a catcher. I played up the line to make sure NO ONE got to my plate! Plus I had competent back up if for some unforeseen reason I missed the ball. If you play up the line.. there is actually a second line of defense if something goes wrong.

Now as a base runner, I made things happen on the base. I was good at turning a single into a triple by intimidation in my running. I ran hard and knew how to slide and slide to where being missed on the tag. It is all part of being aggressive. Intimidation is an aggressive tactic. I never went out on the field to purposely hurt anyone.

There have been several good points made but it all comes down to whether or not the play was done with malice or not. 9 times out of 10 if it was done out of malice.. the umps will do their jobs.