Chase Utley gets to play tonight after appealing the suspension over his controversial slide

Major League Baseball ruled that Chase Utley is eligible to play in Queens tonight when his Los Angeles Dodgers face the New York Mets in Game 3 of the National League Division Series.
Utley had been suspended for two games due to his illegal slide in Saturday night's matchup that the league said interfered with Mets' shortstop Rubén Tejada's ability to turn a double play. Tejada left the game and was later diagnosed with a broken right fibula.
The veteran, who has said he didn't intend to hurt Tejada when he broke up a potential double play, promptly appealed the suspension. On Monday, the league agreed to move the appeal to a later date, given the narrow time frame with which the players union had to assemble an argument, BuzzFeed News reports. Part of Utley's case for arguing the suspension will be the fact that the league has no precedent for suspending people under the interference rule chief baseball officer Joe Torre cited Sunday.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
So the Dodgers are free to play Utley, who came in Saturday as a pinch hitter. The atmosphere at CitiField is bound to be a hostile one for him and his team, and he may risk getting hurt. It's tradition in baseball for pitchers to throw at opposing players in retaliation for previous slights. And even if the umpires successfully prevent physical confrontation by threatening both benches with ejection, expect deafening boos for Utley.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.
-
Florida erases rainbow crosswalk at Pulse nightclub
Speed Read The colorful crosswalk was outside the former LGBTQ nightclub where 49 people were killed in a 2016 shooting
-
Trump says Smithsonian too focused on slavery's ills
Speed Read The president would prefer the museum to highlight 'success,' 'brightness' and 'the future'
-
Trump to host Kennedy Honors for Kiss, Stallone
Speed Read Actor Sylvester Stallone and the glam-rock band Kiss were among those named as this year's inductees
-
White House seeks to bend Smithsonian to Trump's view
Speed Read The Smithsonian Institution's 21 museums are under review to ensure their content aligns with the president's interpretation of American history
-
Charlamagne Tha God irks Trump with Epstein talk
Speed Read The radio host said the Jeffrey Epstein scandal could help 'traditional conservatives' take back the Republican Party
-
CBS cancels Colbert's 'Late Show'
Speed Read 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' is ending next year
-
A long weekend in Zürich
The Week Recommends The vibrant Swiss city is far more than just a banking hub
-
Shakespeare not an absent spouse, study proposes
speed read A letter fragment suggests that the Shakespeares lived together all along, says scholar Matthew Steggle