Baseball is, as the great George Carlin once famously quipped, "a 19th-century pastoral game." But it is a sport that has managed to withstand the test of time despite changes in society, shifts in norms and in ethos.
It's a sport that has abided for 150-plus years by a series of vague, unwritten rules and commandments:
• Thou shalt not steal a base when greatly ahead or behind.
• Thou shalt not bunt for a hit when greatly ahead.
• Thou shalt not admire a home run.
It used to be that breaking protocol would almost always result in, minimally, a brushback pitch or the offender being plunked with a pitch.
But now it would seem that even America's National Pastime is charging headfirst into the 21st century.
Check out how Major League Baseball has been promoting the 2018 postseason? It's called "Rewrite the Rules."
The ad campaign -- featuring a voiceover and cameo from the Hall of Fame outfielder Ken Griffey Jr., father of Steelers practice squad receiver Trey Griffey -- mocks old-school sensibilities and extols the virtues of bat flips and big personalities:
Don't know how Bob Gibson would react to being shown up but, hey, it's a new world in baseball.
There might not be an "I" in team, but such displays of "me" have been commonplace in the NBA and NFL -- two leagues which have sold showmanship and swagger for a few decades now.
The NHL? Pfft. The coolest thing about hockey has always been the playing surface.
And for those who love it, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Hockey culture is just, well, different than that of its major North American sports league brethren.
For starters, the NHL encompasses a far greater cross-culture of players. It's a league comprised almost entirely of Canadians, Americans, Scandinavians and Eastern Europeans.
From a young age, players are programmed -- some would suggest indoctrinated -- into group think, placing the team ahead of the individual. The most non-conformity you will see on an NHL team is whether a player will wear a black or gray suit, as all teams adhere to strict dress codes traveling to and from all games.
When Alex Ovechkin once dropped his stick after scoring a goal and rubbed his hands over it pretending to keep them warm, he was universally panned from Toronto to Moscow.
What bridges the hockey universe together is its own quirky set of universal unwritten rules:
• Thou shalt not celebrate a goal when greatly ahead or behind.
• Thou shalt not shoot a puck on net after a whistle blows.
• Thou shalt not "spray" a goalie with ice shavings.
We could go on, of course, but -- unlike MLB -- the NHL's unwritten rules still seem to be very much alive and well, thanks. Instead of chin music, violations in the NHL end up with gloves being dropped.
Did you see the Bruins-Capitals season opener last Wednesday?
Did you see Lars Eller break the first commandment when he celebrated the Capitals' seventh goal in a 7-0 win a little too much?
Did you see Brad Marchand defend the Bruins' honor and bloody Eller?
Here's the recap:
"It was unbelievable and you can go through every page in the rulebook and you're not going to find the rule," Penguins radio analyst Phil Bourque was telling me. "That's the great thing about hockey: It's violent and it's belligerent, but also there's a certain line where you can't do something disrespectful.
"Hockey players kind of live their life by the principle on and off the ice. When you cross a certain line, by the time you get to the NHL level, it's understood what those lines are. If you cross that line, you're going to have to pay the price."
Judging by the gash on his forehead, Eller paid the price.
Though Marchand is hardly an angel, he's been suspended six times, he's hardly a fighter either. That was just the seventh fight of his career but it was the first -- and probably last -- in Eller's 10-year career.
Now, it should be noted that the unwritten rules are a variation of "the code," the standard to which enforcers adhere (no sucker punches, must accept a fight at the beginning of a shift, etc).
However, the unwritten rules apply to all players, whether first-line star or fourth-line plug.
In an informal poll of the Penguins' dressing room, they were emphatic that Marchand, the Bruins' uber-pest, was in the right.
"You never want to see a guy celebrate in front of your own team's bench when it's a goal differential like that," Riley Sheahan was telling me. "Emotions get the best of guys."
"There's certain things you can and can't do," Jamie Oleksiak was saying. "Guys usually hold each other responsible for that. There's always a game within a game.
"Guys are prideful in the league and they're going to do what they find is justified."
Even as fighting continues to dwindle from the game, and some in Washington would argue that physicality is heading the same way, the Marchand-Eller fight is further proof that players still want to police the game themselves when some lines are crossed.
Matt Cullen was saying that with the current emphasis on speed and skill over size and intimidation, this is the best version of the NHL that he's seen in his 21 seasons in the league.
Sheahan agrees. "I think the game is starting to clean up, I don't want to say 'respectable,' but clean," he said. "You're getting the big hits and the head hits and the open-ice hits out, being a little more strict, calls, penalties and suspensions and stuff. I think that's important for guys' careers and trying to last a little longer and have a successful life after hockey."
But the NHL is in a bit of a predicament, a generational divide. For years the league has sold itself on pugilism and on-ice frontier justice. However, a new generation of player has developed after the 2004-05 lockout, which ushered in an era where fighting has been almost eradicated from the lower levels.
In 2017-18, there were just .25 fights per game in the NHL, the same number as there were in 1967-68, the first year in existence for the Penguins and the Second Six.
"I think if we take that, if you want to call it 'violence,' out of the game, you're going to lose the fans," said Bourque, who's playing career spanned the mid-80s when fighting spiked as high as 1.31 per game in 1987-88.
"The majority of fans and why they love the game of hockey is because of the violence. But they don't want to see headshots. They don't want to see things that are going to hurt players permanently. But even for the new fans, the young fans, I think they understand, they respect that when two men drops their gloves and go eyeball to eyeball and just clear the air and police the game without the referees always doing it ... let's not put bubble wrap around the NHL because that's not what this game is about. We love that it's violent and nasty and that code should always stay in the game."
But will it? Like it or not, as the Penguins found out with Ryan Reaves, heavyweight enforcers are near extinction.
However, some of the more egregious violations of the unwritten rules will still need to be enforced. And others, like, say, an excessive celebration in a 7-0 blowout, might have to be let go.
Make no mistake, Sheahan was saying, it's only a matter of time before the NHL rewrites it own rules and joins the ranks with the NFL, NBA and MLB.
"When you have YouTube videos and stuff like that, it all helps with the popularity of the league," the 26-year-old was saying. "Some stuff you can sort of have to bite your tongue, and it might be a tough pill to swallow, and you can get through it and laugh at it at the end of the day, but some other stuff is a big no-no and you don't want to see it."