Baseball’s unwritten rules: bad, good, ridiculous No swinging on a 3-0 count with your team far ahead.

Baseball is rich with legends, traditions, superstitions and unwritten rules. Sometimes they all get mixed together.

And sometimes they get people all hot and bothered.

Last Monday, budding San Diego Padres superstar Fernando Tatis Jr. hit a grand slam, swinging at a 3-0 pitch, with the Padres leading Texas 10-3 in the eighth inning. He said later that he missed the take sign.

“He’s young, a free spirit,” Padres manager Jayce Tingler told reporters after the game. “It’s a learning opportunity, and that’s it. He’ll grow from it.”

Tatis, who’s one of the game’s most exciting young players, said he didn’t know he’d violated some kind of code.

“I know a lot of unwritten rules,” he said. “I was kind of lost on this. Probably next time, I’ll take a pitch.”

The incident got baseball fans talking about the game’s unwritten rules and the players’ honor code. Here’s my take on three of the unwritten rules, one good, one bad and one ridiculous:

Maybe I’ve seen too many crazy comebacks inside Coors Field to believe a lead is safe, but this rule is bad. Tatis did absolutely nothing wrong.

“Keep swinging 3-0 if you want to, no matter what the game situation is,” Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer wrote on Twitter. “The only thing you did wrong was apologize. Stop that.”

“If you don’t like giving up 3-0 grand slams, pitch better,” tweeted Tampa Bay pitcher Colin Poche. that he is, indeed, throwing a no-no. Inevitably and immediately I will get shouted down on Twitter with fans accusing me of jinxing the no-no. It’s ridiculous.

I understand why the players in the dugout don’t mention the no-hitter and essentially ignore the pitcher who’s working on his magic game. But the players are part of the team, I’m not.

And unless I have powers of which I’m unaware, I have no influence on the game’s outcome.

When the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw no-hit the Rockies in 2014, legendary broadcaster Vin Scully repeatedly mentioned that Kershaw was working on a no-hitter.

“It’s insulting the listeners to make them think they’re silly and superstitious enough to believe my telling them that a nohitter is going will affect the game,” Scully told the Los Angeles Times way back in 1960.

Case closed.