Touch 'Em All: Major League Baseball limits use of pink

Looks as if money trumps mom for Major League Baseball. (Really, though, is anyone surprised by that news? Anyone? Anyone? Bud?)

Players will be using pink bats on Mother's Day to bring attention to breast-cancer research (and, you know, honor mothers). The bats come from Louisville Slugger, under an ironclad agreement with MLB.

Just how ironclad?

Well, as the Baltimore Sun reports, Orioles outfielder Nick Markakis and Twins third baseman Trevor Plouffe, both sons of breast-cancer survivors, wanted to use black bats with pink logos from another company, Minnesota's MaxBats.

MLB, realizing what an emotional and positive gesture it would be, put a stop to that. Louisville Slugger wouldn't like it, see?

The company and the league both hastened to say the other bats could be used if they had no other distinguishing features.

So Louisville Slugger and MLB know what the day is about: advertising - and something about pink and cancer or something.

Not perfect, amazing. When Cardinals rookie Shelby Miller and Red Sox lefty Jon Lester allowed just one hit and faced only 28 batters in complete-game shutouts on the same night, Friday, it was a first, according to Stats LLC. (But their database goes back only to 1921, so Old Hoss Radbourn and Pud Galvin could have done it back in the 1890s.)