Baseball etiquette, and what we need to see more of in society

Richard Jack Rail  "George Will interestingly contends that the most valuable rules in baseball are unwritten and relate to manners.  Will's leading example is Alex Bregman carrying his bat down to first base on his home run trot during the World Series, Juan Soto copying that on his subsequent homer, and both managers apologizing after the game for the breaches of etiquette.  It's often called showboating or showing up the other team's pitcher." . . .

. . . "The best way to combat unintentional showboating is the way Bregman did it — honestly and straight on. It isn't so much that there's bad in the best of us and good in the worst of us, as that Manichean, black-and-white thinking has made it too easy to accuse and not easy enough to take responsibility and accept blame without career death.  Baseball has provided an outstanding example of the way out of this imbroglio.  It involves more straightforward honesty and manliness than we're accustomed to seeing in public figures — men being men, owning their mistakes forthrightly with sincere expressions of regret.  Because those traits shine through in the way Bregman handled it at the postgame interview, the incident can be put behind us, and we feel good where we might have felt disgruntled.

"Nicely done, Bregman and Hinch and Martínez."