You know what’s really annoying? Reading and interpreting. Who wants to do that? Why read a rule, and then have your brain process its meaning, when you can just see it being executed?  I was always a visual learner in school.

Well, the NBA has finally satisfied my needs. Instead of just having its rules written, it now also has a video rule book, so you can also see what a player trying to call timeout actually looks like. Or what it looks like when Shaq flagrantly fouls another player. Groundbreaking stuff here.

Bad thing about this? The more video online, the more likely the Internet is going to fill up. And I won’t be able to write silly little blog posts like this anymore. The price we pay, people.

Things that are a secret: Your brother is gay. You stole a pencil from your classmate in sixth grade and never told her about it. Your girlfriend has been cheating on you since last month when she started taking “drawing classes” on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

Things that aren’t a secret: Football is a dangerous sport. When retirees brains don’t function past 40, it’s kind of a serious thing. As such, the NFL is, in some respects, is trying to limit/curb some of the dangerous on-field play to help quell injuries. This isn’t a new initiative, but this year it gained more steam.

Here are some rule changes enacted yesterday at the NFL owners meeting:

Starting this fall, the NFL is going to outlaw the “wedge” on kickoffs, stop the bunching of players on onside kicks, protect blockers from a helmet-to-helmet hit from the blind side and save receivers from forearm or shoulder hits to the head when they appear to be defenseless.

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Also, defenders who are knocked to the ground no longer can lunge into quarterbacks if the play is still going on. Kansas City safety Bernard Pollard did just that on the hit that ended Tom Brady’s season almost before it began, and Pereira placed such plays in the player safety category.

The article goes into more detail about each of these changes, and they all seem reasonable enough. Limiting hits to the head is not going to see much of a backlash. But, what does this do to the game as a whole? If the wedge is only limited to two blockers now, is this going to set offenses farther back in their opponent’s territory, and thus, perhaps lead to less scoring? Or will defenses be more leery of out and out jacking a guy and offenses will have the advantage?

I think it’s a bit outrageous to say any major changes to the play on the field are going to come from this, but to say nothing will change is wrong, too.

TrueHoop has posted an interesting piece today on traveling in the NBA. Not surprisingly, the article reveals that while a player’s egregious four-step shuffle is technically a violation of league rules, referees are encouraged not to enforce said rule, at least not stringently.

Basketball, though, isn’t the only sport that suffers from lax enforcement of the traveling rule. It seems as though each year, I see more and more players taking more than two steps at any given time on a baseball diamond, and it seems unfair to apply a double standard to basketball and baseball.

Baseball is a leisurely sport. When performed at its most elegant, the game naturally precludes players from having to exert an undue amount of physical activity. This is what makes it great. In baseball’s early days, entire games were completed without so much as a single step from the pitcher, batter, or fielders. However, the advent of “baserunning,” pioneered in the 1980s by figures such as Rickey Henderson, Vince Coleman, and Tim Raines, flew directly contrary to the purist qualities of the game. Today, batters often run more than 40 steps to reach first base.

The travel rule is compromised even within baseball’s developmental rungs. Observe this video of a shortstop catching a fly ball. How many steps does he take? I count nine.

Simply put, baseball is not meant to be a sport of motion. And if the traveling rule is not more strictly enforced, the game will turn into something we no longer recognize.

Remember how it was raining and raining and raining during Game 5 of the World Series and the game clearly should have been delayed/called because of it, but the game kept marching onward because if it didn’t the Phillies would have been World Series champions based on a rainout, but then Bud Selig just waited until the Rays (thankfully) scored and then threw the game into a rain delay and it was eventually called for rain? Me too.

Well, this sort of thing ain’t ever gonna happen again:

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced the sport will enact a rules change stating that postseason games cannot be shortened because of bad weather.

“All postseason games, All-Star games and that, will be full-length affairs, and the rule will be so written,” Selig said Thursday following an owners’ meeting.

Selig said the change also will apply to tiebreaker games that decide division titles and wild-card berths.

“Any game that has significance for the postseason,” he said. “It will be very clear now. Everybody will know exactly.”

All things told, Bud Selig can’t really be blamed for the near catastrophe. There had never been a situation in World Series history where weather affected the game in such a manner; this was an extremely unique circumstance. And now, it’s been righted so nothing like this can ever happen again. Hooray.

Which is a shame really, because press conferences where Bud Selig makes faces like the picture above don’t happen often enough.