PUT IT ALL ON RED

I’m not a big sports guy, but I wonder where the rules to baseball came from. They’re so arbitrary. My only guess is that a bunch of mean older kids were messing with some scrawny younger boy by changing the rules as they went along. “If we tag you while we’re holding the ball, then you’re out and you have to wait a long time to play again,” they would shout, hiding their snickers. Then he would just hit it harder so that they wouldn’t have time to tag him. But they would stand further out and when they caught it on the fly they’d say “well, that also means you’re out and you have to go to the back of the line again.” Then he learned how to aim the ball where none of them were standing. The cycle continued as the game evolved into its current form and eventually that kid practiced and practiced until the older boys had to give up changing the rules because whatever they came up with, he would adapt almost immediately and make them look foolish. That younger boy’s name? Babe Ruth. But that’s just my guess.