Excerpt: 'Mike and Mike's Rules for Sports and Life'

April 6, 2010— -- ESPN Radio co-hosts Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic bring their morning radio show to the pages of "Mike and Mike's Rules for Sports and Life."

From the NBA draft to why children should not eat French fries for breakfast, the two host debate the rules to live by in their first book.

Check out an excerpt of the book below, then head to the "GMA" Library for other great reads.

GREENY: What a great game our national pastime is, a sport of skill, athleticism, strategy, explosive action, and great suspense. Every baseball game starts exactly the same, perfect and pristine in those expectant moments before the first pitch, and then it's . . . Play ball! . . . A swing and a miss . . . the diving catch . . . the hard slide, a cloud of dust, and a stolen base . . .

GOLIC: The peanuts, the Cracker Jack, a beer and a hot dog.

GREENY: Wait, wait, wait. . . . What are you doing?

GOLIC: I'm talking about baseball, helping you out.

GREENY: No you're not. You're not helping. You're interrupting. How long have we been doing the show together?

GOLIC: About four years?

GREENY: Ten years, and during those ten years you've been constantly interrupting me, day in and day out. Now we're writing a book about our rules for sports, and what do you do? On the very first page? I can't believe this is happening. What is wrong with you?

GOLIC: Calm down . . . Okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

GREENY: Thank you.

What a great game our national pastime is, a sport of athleticism and strategy, explosive action and great suspense. Every baseball game starts exactly the

GOLIC: Everyone's read that part already, Greeny.

GREENY: There you go again. . . . Look, I've spent a lot of time writing this, and I think they'll like it. It's good, and I should start it from the beginning.

GOLIC: So do that. Just tell everyone about the 2002 All-Star Game and how you came up with the dumbest rule in sports.

GREENY: It's a great rule, Mike.

GOLIC: Here's how it happened: It was the day after the 2002 All-Star Game, the one that was called after 11 innings because both teams ran out of players—no winner, no loser, nothing. Everyone was shaking their heads that morning and asking, What the heck?

But what else could they do? The fans were frustrated—the crowd at the game began chanting "Let them play" just like the fans did in the Houston Astrodome in the second Bad News Bears movie. The way it ended sure was bad news, but what other options were there?

GREENY: I'm disappointed to hear you say that, because I completely agree with you. With every fiber of my being and with every ounce in my soul, I want to tell you that you're wrong. But in this instance I can't. There was simply no other solution.

It's very easy to criticize someone by saying that they should have done something different, but it's much, much harder to come up with exactly what that something should be. The managers of the All-Star Game believe that their goal is to get every player into the game, and they assume that they have nine innings to do it. So if the game goes longer, there will come a time when they simply won't have anyone left. What else can you do? If the NBA All-Star Game goes into overtime, the players might get tired, but who cares; it's not a crisis. Not so in baseball. No All-Star manager wants to inform a team that's in the middle of a division race that its pitching ace is going to miss his next three starts because he's got a stiff arm on account of the All-Star Game running longer than usual.MIKE AND MIKE IN THE MORNING, July 2001

GREENY: So imagine everyone's surprise—except mine—when Major League Baseball announced that, starting in 2003, the All-Star Game would determine home field advantage in the World Series. I was right! And you know what the best part of it is? That you were wrong.

GOLIC: Every sport has rules that are known for the people who were responsible for the rule change. Like the Sean Avery Rule in hockey. In football, you've got the Deacon Jones Rule outlawing head slaps. Now baseball has the Greeny Rule. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with it. I don't. I still think it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. It's like the Mendoza Line—nothing to be proud of.

GREENY: Major League Baseball heeded my advice, so the new format for the All-Star Game will forever be known as the Greeny Rule—kind of like the Pythagorean theorem in geometry, but different. All the credit goes to me because I say it does.

Do you realize how hard it is to get baseball to change anything? Granted, no major professional sport does history better. It's baseball's place in our society. It's a part of our culture. Show me a clip of Willie Mays or Hank Aaron or Joe DiMaggio, and it's impossible not to feel the swell in your chest. But baseball does not do the present well. Take video review. All the other major sports have been using instant replay for years and with great success (for the most part). But baseball? Stuck in the past.

GOLIC: Baseball purists can talk all they want about the charm of the human element of the game, but what's the advantage in having a team lose because of a blown call? They already have cameras in every ballpark.

GREENY: A couple of years ago, we brought Bud Selig on the show, and we went on and on about this with him. Clearly, he was against the use of video replay. "But there are certainly a lot of voices on the other side of it," he said. He was referring to the two of us, obviously. Several weeks later, he reversed course and announced that baseball would start using video review on a limited basis for home run calls only. What changed his mind? We did, of course, and the Mike and Mike Rule was born.

GOLIC: Well, what also helped was the fact that within a single week there were three horrific calls on home runs that were just blatantly wrong. On a Sunday night, Carlos Delgado hit a shot that bounced off the left field foul pole, but the umpires incorrectly ruled it a foul ball. The next day, Geovany Soto of the Cubs hit a home run, but the umps couldn't see if the ball had actually cleared the wall or not. It did, but the ruling on the field was that it had not. Two days after that, they took a home run away from A-Rod. So there it was—three blown calls in four days. But we'd been going off on it for a while, too.

GREENY: For years we've been getting on baseball's case about video replay. In fairness to us, they should put up signage in every major league ballpark that reads, "The Mike and Mike Replay." We should take it a step further and have them put my face in fair territory and your face in foul and start referring to a ball as either "a greeny" or "a golic." From now on, they'll say, "Dustin Pedroia golicked off seven pitches before he greenied one down the left field line for a triple."Official Baseball Rules, Rule 2.00 Definition of terms

GOLIC: Man, that's a lot of words.

GREENY: For you it is, so I'll translate: If you hold the ball securely and touch the runner with it or touch the base, he's out.

GOLIC: See, that isn't always true. Take a collision at the plate, like Pete Rose blowing up Ray Fosse in the All-Star Game. If that is indeed the rule, then Pete Rose and every other runner should be out if the catcher has the ball—"firmly and securely," like the rulebook says—even if he gets blown up as he makes the tag and loses the ball. If the umpire calls the runner safe, then according to the exact words in the rulebook, it's the wrong call.

GREENY: I think in that case, an argument can be made that the runner jarred the ball loose.

GOLIC: It doesn't say that in the rules.NO-HIT JINX

This is different from mere superstition. If you put it on the board, then the pitcher sees it and now he knows that everyone realizes it, and he feels extra pressure.

Timothy

GOLIC: You're right, Tim. Cliff Lee saw the trivia question and thought, "Oh my God! Now everyone knows!" In fact, nobody in the entire stadium realized it before then, and they were all completely stunned. Lee had no choice but to throw an 82-mile-an-hour fastball that Molina smacked for a double.

GREENY: Timothy may not be the best advocate for my side.

TO: mikeandmike@espnradio.com
NO-HIT JINX

It's one of the major unwritten rules of baseball, you never let the words "no-hitter" or "perfect game" leave your mouth. I was lucky enough to see David Wells pitch his perfect game for the Yankees. I didn't even let it cross my mind while the game was going on.

Tyler

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

GOLIC: I hope David Wells sent you a big fruit basket, Tyler, because without you, he would've never thrown a perfect game.

TO: mikeandmike@espnradio.com
NO-HIT JINX

Golic,

You're playing for the Eagles and your kicker is standing over a 50-yard field goal to win the game. They put a trivia question on the board asking who was the last Eagles kicker to make a game-winning field goal of 50+ yards. Your kicker hooks it left and you lose. Would you have a problem with that?

Noah
Chicago

Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic with Andrew Chaikivsky

Copyright © 2010 by Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic

All rights reserved.

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