NEW RULES

Major League Baseball Cracks Down on Hazing

No more forcing rookies to dress up as women.

Major League Baseball is set to ban hazing rituals that involve making rookie players dress up as women, a longstanding tradition in the league. A new policy set to be ratified Tuesday prohibits “requiring, coercing, or encouraging” players from “dressing up as women or wearing costumes that may be offensive to individuals based on their race, sex, nationality, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or other characteristic,” the Associated Press reported. MLB Vice President Paul Misfud said the rules came about partly “in light of social media, which in our view sort of unfortunately publicized a lot of the dressing up of the players... those kind of things which in our view were insensitive and potentially offensive to a number of groups.” “There’s lots of pictures of baseball players dressed up as Disney princesses,” he said. The league reportedly examined several college anti-hazing policies to come up with the new rules, which also ban players from forcing rookies to “consume alcoholic beverages or any other kind of drug, or requiring the ingestion of an undesirable or unwanted substance [food, drink, concoction],” the report said.