After spending a few dozen games in Major League Baseball's minor league system, the unwritten rules started to make sense to me. I needed to respect the history and etiquette and "the way things are done." I was indoctrinated like every other professional ballplayer.

As a former major leaguer turned assistant Little League coach, I wasn't sure what to explain to my son when his teammate took a pitch in the back, shook it off and jogged toward first before getting an apology from the pitcher. She then promptly ran to the mound, shook the pitcher's hand and went back to first.

My brain exploded.

It didn't go quite that way this week, when a later-than-required slide by the Orioles' Manny Machado on a potential double-play ball injured Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia and both got tangled in a ceaseless retaliatory war, though neither publicly called for reinforcements. In fact, there were apologies, even compliments, going back and forth in the media. Pedroia went as far as to apologize to Machado in the middle of a game after a pitch by Matt Barnes, meant for another location, ended up near Machado's ear flap.

But the players whose actions often initiate the domino effect of retaliation know well that the ripple effect is out of their hands, even if they seek a pardon. State law supersedes municipal law in baseball. You can be sorry, but justice is not served by an apology.

By high-A ball, I learned that charging the mound was a real option. By Double-A, when I was playing for the Orlando Cubs, a situation unfolded in which our eight-hole hitter blew the game open with a home run. Our first-round pitcher was on deck, and there was one batter on the opposing team, the Greenville Braves, who had gotten hits off him all game. But that batter had also been hit in the leg in his last at-bat. Our manager realized the Braves would be out for our pitcher and had me pinch hit instead. I warned my teammates that I would charge the mound if he threw at me. Many didn't believe me, given my calm nature, but that was exactly what happened.

Players came to my defense, and my teammate and first-base coach Richie Grayum went after the pitcher. I got a $35 fine and a letter from the league that was strangely complimentary. But I gained respect from my teammates. It was important for my bond with them. It sounds simplistic, but for a moment, it mattered.

Baseball is a perpetual battle over real estate. Pitchers are constantly seeking the best location to work, skimming the boundaries of an invisible and subjective territory we call the strike zone. It's a dispute over borders, as both hitter and pitcher fight for every inch, chasing an amorphous and annexable space that exists through the eyes of an umpire.

Meanwhile, every batter who walks up to the plate has a different zone. Jose Altuve to Aaron Judge, Mark Trumbo to Jarrod Dyson, it's a moving target without standardization. It's a strike only if it's called as one. When you try to hit someone intentionally, it's weighed heavily by a tribunal. You can appeal if you think you have a case, but justice will be served, even if the justice you sought was for your team's honor.

Although the strike zone has always been ghostly in nature, the real ghosts come from the game's history. Generations pass on the rules of engagement. I learned from Garry Maddox, Maddox from Joe Morgan, and so on. Mentoring is critical in baseball, and when it comes to rejecting all forms of intimidation, there are quite a few chapters on it.

Manny Machado narrowly avoided taking a Matt Barnes fastball in the head on Sunday. Scott TaetschCal Sport Media/AP Images

Unwritten rules govern the game for better or for worse. These rules are as malleable and subject to interpretation as the strike zone. They are also governed by ghosts, their desires silently understood and executed with plausible deniability. And make no mistake, the art of execution without culpability is a craft. Deny, deny, deny.

The next time I played the Greenville Braves, the team I charged the mound against, they hit me in the back with the first pitch of the game. I walked to first and told the first baseman that I wanted to move on, so we could just play baseball again. I offered my olive branch. He seemed to accept, but neither of us had any say in what came next. My pitcher declared that he would get the opposing pitcher back, so he threw at him. Then the opposing pitcher threw back at him. My pitcher threw the bat at the pitcher, the managers got into a fight on the field and in between doubleheader games while exchanging lineup cards. It kept going well after I had accepted getting hit.

In some way, it's what makes baseball timeless. It has a long memory and a steadfast respect for history. But that also means grudges last.

If the game addresses this final frontier to limit the damage done via retaliation, the voice of the game's past will say it's getting more unrecognizable. It's an opinion that deserves an ear thanks to its contributions to the game.

Yet we must also look forward. Even though I doubt a pitcher will apologize, nor will a hitter go to the mound to shake his hand and accept it, we might be able to learn about solving disputes from the next generation of ballplayers. Or at least, we can think longer and harder about what we want to pass on to them. An eye does not have to be for an eye, especially if we still want to see a future.