As I noted a few weeks ago, the introduction of widespread instant replay into major league baseball threatened to do serious damage to how the game is played and enjoyed. That damage arrives in ways that replay’s proponents simply failed—or refused—to countenance.

Baseball is a game of rules both written and unwritten. And even written rules have been shaped and influenced (as all written rules are) by the real world that they’re intended to govern. For example: most baseball fans probably haven’t spent much time pondering, “what is a catch?” At least, they surely did not stop and consider it at the level of detail long set forth in Major League Baseball’s official rules: