You Mean The Speed-Up Rules Began THIS Weekend?

Hopefully you caught wind of Major League Baseball's new directive to enforce rules that speed up the game, if from no other source, from Jim Leyland's awesome rant. But apparently the Red Sox didn't get the memo. Correction: they read it, they just didn't read it.

Hey, c'mon, manager Terry Francona was busy!

"I should have [Friday]," Francona said when asked if he had told his team about the memo. "I got busy doing things, the first day of the series. We need to talk about the memo so everybody understands what is being asked of us. If something happens and the players don't know ... I need to do that."

Because of this, hitting coach Dave Magadan was ejected Friday for arguing that J.D. Drew should have been given more time to apply rosin to his bat. Although I can understand the umpire's perspective on this. Puttng rosin on one's bat is something special and private between you and The Lord God.

The rules have always been there, the umpires are just being asked to be more of a phalanx of dicks about them. And how much time will it save? A few minutes? The people who think baseball is slow will continue to think that. I say just let Jim Leyland smoke his Marlboros and let J.D. Drew rosin up his wood.

Drew Unaware Of MLB Directive [Hartford Courant]