Dalton Rushing made a slide in the fifth inning at PNC Park on June 9, 2026 that Major League Baseball would now treat as illegal, even though it looked like the kind of move older players once called perfect baseball. The Los Angeles Dodgers catcher was part of a play against the Pittsburgh Pirates that ended with Pittsburgh shortstop Jared Triolo throwing to first to finish the double play over Rushing.
That is why the Dalton Rushing slide is drawing attention now. The Dodgers won the game, but the moment stood out because the slide’s literal purpose was to take out the shortstop, a tactic that would have fit cleanly in a different era and would have been textbook in the 1980s.
Major League Baseball’s modern standard is different. Rule 6.01(j), the so-called Chase Utley slide rule, requires a runner to make a bona fide slide by getting to the ground before reaching the base, making an effort to reach the bag with a hand or foot, trying to stay on the base at the end of the slide except at home plate, and not changing path to create contact with a fielder. described what Rushing did as a play that is perfectly executed in old baseball and illegal by today’s rules.
The change traces back to the 2015 NLDS, when Chase Utley’s hard slide into Mets shortstop Rubén Tejada helped force the league to clarify the rule about a decade later. Since then, the league has tried to draw a harder line between a legitimate attempt to break up a double play and a slide that goes after the fielder himself.
What is not clear from the game account is whether Rushing was penalized on the field or whether the league took any further action after the play. But the clip lands in a place modern baseball keeps revisiting: a move that once drew nods for grit now sits close to the line MLB has spent years trying to enforce.
