Baseball's slide rule isn't changing anytime soon, and players need to accept it

Baseball's new sliding rules are not changing. Deep down, players know this. Already, teams have been told this. And though no one in the commissioner's office or the union's headquarters cares to publicly acknowledge it, sources told Yahoo Sports all parties are in agreement: None of the three controversies that came of the rule during the season's first week are worthy of discussion to amend the new edict.

And this is exactly how it should be. Not because Major League Baseball is some Mount Sinai-like entity from which the laws of the world descend but because this rule, specifically, is a good one – well-intentioned, well-crafted and, as the violations thus far have shown, well-executed.

Let's start with an important point: Rule 6.01 – better known as the Utley Rule, after Chase Utley's leg-breaking slide last year of Ruben Tejada – exists ostensibly for the safety of players. This is a noble pursuit. Baseball is not a full-contact sport, and irresponsible collisions at second base posed enough of a danger that baseball chose greater health over the rush derived from a tackle at second base. Let the troglodytes bellow about how this is just another sign of the wussification of sports. The rest of us can relax comfortably on the right side of history.

Four components comprise the rule. The runner must begin his slide before reaching the base. He must be close enough to the base to reach it. He must stay on the base all the way through his slide. And he can't change his path to knock over a fielder. It is not complicated. It lays out the rules of the slide in great detail, which is better than MLB can say for its still-fully-unclear plate-blocking rule.

Next came the difficult part. Of all the stubborn people in baseball, players are by far the most obstinate. They do everything they can to skirt rules, especially new ones with which they don't necessarily agree. The slide that started the beef with the Utley Rule illustrated that perfectly.

In the past, Jose Bautista's sneaky little ankle grab on Logan Forsythe wouldn't have been simply a baseball play; it would've been a brilliant bit of subterfuge that even the most eagle-eyed umpire wouldn't have called. Unfortunately for Bautista, instant replay now exists, and not only did it catch him interfering with Forsythe, it showed he slid past the second-base bag, too, making it a double rules violation. The other two Utley cases, with Colby Rasmus and Nick Markakis, offered the same off-the-bag explanation.

Instead of changing the rule, perhaps runners can, you know, slide so they stay on the bag. This is not too much to ask, and accordingly, the penalty is harsh. If a player is called out at second on the Utley Rule, the runner going to first is, too, even if a double play wasn't a possibility. This is intentional, another reason to follow the new law.

Here's the thing: So long as a runner follows all four components of the rule, he is still allowed to execute a takeout slide. Baseball hasn't banned contact. It just wants the contact to be less dangerous, less egregious, less prevalent, and for those intentions to play out correctly, it needs the buy-in of players.

There was bound to be a learning curve, especially with the takeout slide wired into the DNA of ballplayers. Utley embodied that last year – the game sacred, hard-nosed the only way to play. That attitude exists in baseball, though it's far rarer than it once was, and when it manifests itself with people like Blue Jays manager John Gibbons suggesting his team will "come out and wear dresses" in the aftermath of the Bautista slide, well, it doesn't even merit a response.

Bautista tried to be reasonable with reporters: "Common sense has to come into this. I feel like I slid directly at the bag. I could have done much worse and chose not to. Astros manager A.J. Hinch conceded the Rasmus play "was interpreted right" but thinks "the rule needs clarification because I think it's wrong."

No change is necessary. The third component about going past the bag will force players to start their slides earlier, which in theory gives fielders on the second-base bag a better chance to move out of the way. And … that's the goal. If a rule works as intended, and those subject to the rule increasingly abide, it's a good rule.

And this is. Three incidents do not a bad rule make, and the protestations otherwise soon will vanish like the caterwauling about replay or the bellyaching about hitters needing to stay in the batter's box. Players love to complain, and the Utley Rule is the complaint du jour. Soon enough, like everything else, they'll adjust to it, appreciate it and baseball will be better for it.