While the suspension of a 12-year old Little League baller was rightfully overturned by a judge, it highlights that, yet again, the “unwritten rules of baseball” should be shot out of a cannon, with the pieces that remain being re-loaded into said cannon, and then shot out of the cannon again.

Banana Ball may very well be a fad, and its popularity wanes a bit and they’ll settle into their real, consistent audience. But that current (and rising) popularity expresses a clear belief from baseball fans and would-be baseball fans that the MLB has too many old men grumping at players to stop having so much fucking fun out there.

Yes, I have seen the criticisms from Too Online people who look at Banana Ball like a relic of 2010-era memes. And sure, maybe it is a bit, because these guys are largely millennials who are Not As Online.

But what’s clear is that they’re earnest about their love of the game, love of performing, and unwillingness to do anything other than the most entertaining thing they can think of in the present moment while playing a game. And people like that.

We are talking about an MLB that gets mad because a professional baseball player hit a grand slam in a blowout, because the count was 3-0 and he got served up a fat grapefruit in the zone that he rightly sent into fucking orbit.

We are talking about an MLB that whines and whines and whines because an excellent baseball player enjoys that he returned a pitcher’s weakass curve ball into deep center (3:27).

We are talking about constant arguments over whether or not a 90+ mph fastball thrown directly at a human body is justified for hitting a ball too well, too many times. (See: ANY baseball thread on Reddit.)

The game of baseball is pain. You hope to avoid pain for the majority of the regular season, avoid it for the majority of the playoffs, and feel a single ounce of joy hoisting up a banner. But the inherent nature of baseball — indeed, all sports — is that your team is infinitely more likely to end their season in some pain than not. That is why we love sports. That is why we hate sports.

The obvious, immediate salve to the sting of getting blown up by an incredible, boisterous player celebrating their bomb is to play baseball better.

Don’t load the bases and get down 3-0 against one of the top players in the league when your team is already shitting the bed. If you’re in that situation, and you drop your curve middle-low in the zone, you deserve to have that ball delivered promptly to the cheap seats, spat on in disgust, hearing the lamentations of your fans as the batter calls his mother to Facetime her around the bases.

Tear up the unwritten rules in your head. They are full of old words that weak men told you when you were a child. It is to shield you from the pain of sports. The pain is why you play. It is why you watch. It is why you buy merch. It is why you think doing the same exact thing you do every time you attend a game will somehow help the team spiritually.

It is a cliche to hear talk of hall of famers across all sports that they “hated losing maybe even more than they loved winning,” because the pain of a loss is what makes sports so enticing. Stakes. Drama. An explosion of relief — not joy, that only happens one time a season — next to wallowing despair. The thrill of victory, the agony of defeat — a cliched phrase that exists for a reason.

The very next time Marco Rocco hits a bomb, I hope he twirls that bat like a drum major.