- Simone, are you a big Air Bud fan?
- Yes. (laughs)
- Why are you so, you look very afraid.
- 'Cause I lied, I've never seen it.
But I wanted to play with you in this space.
- Premise of that movie is the dog can play sports
and they have to let him because there's no rule that says
a dog can't play sports.
The funny thing about that is there are so many rules
in actual sports that came to be
because players tried to do things
and they pointed to the rule book and said,
there's no rule that says I can't do it.
And, baseball is a really good one of them.
- They got feisty baseball players, notoriously feisty.
- Especially back in the 1800s,
when baseball was made.
We broke into a museum,
much like the plot of National Treasure, the movie.
And got this rule book,
which is officially the National League Baseball
rule book from 1876.
- They printed it out
on their eight and a half by 11 paper.
On their old crank printers. - Yup, that's right.
And we managed to get a copy of it.
- I'm so proud of you.
- I wanna share with you some of the ridiculous rules
that baseball was built on and then later changed
because of all of these feisty baseball players.
- Please paint a beautiful picture for me.
Are they wearing funny pantaloons, first of all?
- [Host] Of course wearing funny pantaloons.
They all have Hannibal mustaches,
- [Simone] With the grease.
- [Host] And they're all named like Spanky and Willy
and have ridiculous names.
(laughing)
Back in the late 1800s,
one of the rules was, the batter, had the right
to call where the ball was going to go.
- What? - Yes.
So in this original rule book,
in rule five, section five, it actually says,
first of all, they were called the batsman back then.
They weren't batters.
(laughing) They were batsman.
The batsman, on taking his position,
must call for either a high ball, a low ball,
or a fair ball, and the umpire shall notify
the pitcher to deliver the ball as required.
- Just give me your nastiest curve.
Gimme the curve man.
- Right, yeah, you could just go out there
and say I'm kinda feeling,
I'm not really feelin' it today, I want a nice low one,
and you would have to turn to the umpire
and say I'd like a low one.
- Wow, so the communication between the pitcher
and the catcher was irrelevant at that point?
- Essentially, yeah. - Yeah. (laughs)
- 'Cause the batter--
- 'Cause like I'm gonna throw high and fast.
Okay - Okay.
- Throw high and fast.
- Well, that's what he asked for, so, sure.
That sounds good to me.
They didn't have like all this replay,
re-watch system that we had.
So there's also another rule in this,
it's Rule seven, section five.
I think you're gonna really like this one.
Should the umpire be unable to see whether a catch
has been fairly made or not.
He shall be at liberty to appeal to the bystanders
and to render his decision according to the fairest
testimony at command.
Which, first of all, I love the way this is written.
It's very like 1800s.
Render his decision
according to the fairest testimony at command.
- Yes Sir, I have a fair testimony, will you hear me out?
- If they didn't see it they could turn to the guy
in the crowd and be like hey, did you.
- Did you catch that?
- Did you happen to catch that?
- Can you see what that guy did?
- So yeah, these guys would just turn
to someone in the crowd
and say like hey, help me out here,
which you absolutely can't do today.
- I love it though.
- Yeah.
- Crowd participation and keeps people engaged
and keeps them paying attention to the action.
- It keeps the umpire on their toes,
'cause I imagine it must not feel very good
to have to turn to a Joe Schmo
who's just sitting there and eating his hotdog
and being like hey listen, did you happen to see that?
'Cause I was.
- [Simone] Ah, shit.
- I looked away at a bird for two seconds and I missed it.
But my favorite rule, that we found in this old rule book,
it's actually Rule 5.10a in the current rule book.
No substitutions may be made while the ball is in play.
Which makes sense right? (laughing)
You can't just send another guy out into the outfield,
when the ball is in the air.
That would be ridiculous.
But Simone, there was no rule that says
you couldn't do that.
They Air-Budded this rule.
In 1891, there's an actual story of guy doing this
and they had to make a rule that said,
"Hey, you can't do it"
His name was Michael Joseph, The King, Kelley.
Yeah, gross right?
His nickname was $10,000 Kelly,
because that was like a lot of money back then.
- [Simone] 10K Kelly.
- [Host] Oh, I'm 10K Kelly.
- [Simone] Takin' the field.
- 10 grand Kelly, wow!
What a lot of money that is!
He was a player manager
and there was a long, high foul ball
that he realized no one on his team could catch.
He was on the bench at the time
in the middle of the play, with the ball being in the air,
he goes Kelly in to catch, 'cause that was his name.
So he runs onto the field from the dug out,
screaming Kelly, Kelly in to catch!
Kelly in to catch!
And, goes and makes the catch and makes the out.
And the umpires are like,
you can't do that. (laughs)
You can't just substitute,
not just another player, yourself, into the game
in the middle of a play.
And he was like well, there's no rule that says I can't.
- Do you think he knew this for sure?
Or was he just like gambling on a prayer there?
Like, you know it's probably not in the book.
- I think--
- I'm goin' in boys.
- Probably there was a big element
of 'I'm just gonna see if I can get away with this
and immediately the umpires were like
no, you can't do this
and he said, there's no rule that says that I can't.
- [Simone] And then they asked the crowd
and the crowd was like I don't know guys.
- [Host] We don't know.
- There's no rule that says he can't do it.
- Yeah, I'm looking at the rule book right now.
They let him do it and then that winter, in between seasons,
they were like, we have to write a rule.
- They were like (beeps) this guy.
- (beeps) this guy.
- So at what point if ever,
did baseball actually become a sport?
- That's a really great question.
'Cause really, as it is right now,
it's not a sport, right?
Like they're just making up
a lot of these rules on the fly.
- They're giving the other team exactly what they want.
Important decisions are being made by Joe Schmos
who are drunk in the crowd.
- [Simone] When you think about it,
like they tell you exactly where to go.
It's like a board game.
- I also feel like a lot of this stuff just got changed
because games would suck
and they would be like, that took too long,
we can't do this. We have to change this rule.
- [Simone] They tried to ask the audience
what the call was, and there was no audience,
because they were so bored that they left.
- I think you're probably right.
Leaving a baseball game is the most interesting thing
that you can do during a baseball game.
So, I think maybe they were on to something.
But they really needed to change the rules
to get people back in.
- Yeah.
- I understand that. - Yeah.
- Yeah.