Dem Innernashnul Ruse

 On Friday night, The Braves beat the Orioles in 10 innings by the score of 7-6.

Then, on Sunday, the two clubs played another tight game. The Braves won it in 11 innings 3-2.

When the last out of the ninth inning of Friday's game was recorded–and the game headed into extra innings–I said to the ones watching with me "you know what that means?"

Dem innernashnul ruse.

Before you come to the conclusion that my fingers were off-key when typing that last line...some background.

During COVID, Major League Baseball took some measures to protect players. One of those was meant to speed up the game and limit exposure risk. They adopted the rule of adding a designated runner–or ghost runner–to second base when a game went into extra innings. The goal was to limit some of the super-long extra inning games of the past by placing a runner on base in scoring position, thus making a score easier.

Post-COVID, MLB kept the rule in place to help limit the length of games. By definition, the ghost runner is usually the batter who made the out to end the previous inning.

At home, we refer to this as "international rules" (with an East Tennessee brogue) dating to the days when the Concord Choppers roamed the diamond.

In tournament play, if a game went into extra innings, the umpires would often declare "we're going to international rules." Or, in the case of one of our umps, he'd say "dem innernashnul ruse" (barely hitting that last "L" in rules so it sounded like he was saying "ruse").

No one ever explained why the umpires used this phrase. So indeed, it was a bit of a ruse.

So, when the aforementioned Friday Braves game went to the 10th inning, my daughter Holly asked the question, "Why did they call it international rules?" And, the idea for today's post was born!

Doing a little internet sleuthing, I came across this detail. This tournament tiebreaker rule comes from the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) and was later adopted by youth organizations, such as USSSA, to manage tournament play. If you have a finite number of hours to finish a tournament during a weekend, you have to limit extra innings to keep things moving.

Otherwise, you have late night Sunday championship games with folks heading back to work and school on Monday. That's a scenario no one wants to face.

There is a lengthy discussion thread about the practice on umpire-empire.com.

To me, as a "word person," and a former youth baseball coach, it's interesting that the term became a given in our world. No one explained "designated runner" or "ghost runner." It was just "international rules" and you were just supposed to know what that meant. There was no glossary of terms or an owner's manual or tournament dictionary.

You learned on the fly.

And for the record, even though the Choppers enjoyed success and won more than their share of games overall,  they didn't fare well under "international rules." In fact, I don't ever remember them winning one of these games. I want to say their "international rules" record was 0-3.

Really, that's on me as a coach. We never prepared for that scenario. It would have been easy enough to simulate extra innings and give our pitchers and batters a feel for what they might encounter in a close game in tournament play. But, alas, we didn't do that. 

So the 0-3 record under "international rules" stands. It is really a footnote to our history.

Just a fluke, really, and not a commentary. But, on a late night Friday, it was fun to explore the term and open up a few pleasant memories.

JG