The “17-inch rule” in baseball refers to the width of home plate, which is exactly 17 inches wide. It’s often used as a metaphor for public safety standards, accountability and consistency — particularly in coaching, leadership and organizational culture.
For those of you who don’t follow baseball, here’s what it’s about.
The Origin of the Lesson
The concept was popularized in a well-known talk by John Scolinos, a legendary baseball coach. During his famous speech, he held up a home plate and asked his audience of coaches, “How wide is home plate in Little League?”
The answer, of course, was 17 inches. “How about in high school?” 17 inches. “In college? In the minor leagues? In the major leagues?” Still 17 inches.
Then Scolinos asked, “What do you do with a pitcher who can’t throw strikes over that 17 inches?”
The answer was simple and brutally honest: You don’t make home plate wider to accommodate the player. You hold them to the standard. If you widen the plate to 18 or 19 inches, you’re lowering expectations and enabling failure.
The Deeper Message
The 17-inch rule is about setting clear standards and sticking to them. In baseball, if a pitcher can’t hit the strike zone, you don’t move the zone — you coach him to improve. In life or work, if someone can’t meet expectations, you don’t lower the bar. Instead, you offer support and training and whatever assistance is needed to help the person clear the bar. But the standard remains.
This metaphor hits especially hard in the fire service and the broader public safety world, where adherence to standards can literally be a matter of life and death. Especially in a two-in, two-out scenario, you don’t want your partner to be the guy who only passed training because someone widened the plate.
Setting Policy or Standards
When applying this idea, it’s crucial to follow some important guidelines:
- Define the standard clearly (like the 17 inches).
- Communicate the standard consistently to everyone.
- Hold everyone accountable to the same standard.
- Support improvement, but don’t compromise the standard just to avoid discomfort.
Let’s be real: there are already enough gray areas in public safety professions. Don’t blur the bright lines even further by changing the rules just because someone can’t keep up.
Why It Matters
Lowering standards may feel compassionate in the short term, but over time, it erodes discipline, growth and trust. If you bend to pressure (internal or external) to do this, you’re basically telling the rest of your team that effort doesn’t matter, that the rules are flexible depending on who you are or how loud you complain.
Consistent standards, like having a 17-inch home plate, help build accountability and excellence. They say, “We know this is hard, but we believe you can meet this expectation — and we’re here to help you do it.”
A Personal Goal Example: Fitness
Let’s say you set a personal goal to run three times a week and lose 10 pounds over the next two months. How might you apply the 17-inch rule as you work toward achieving this?
Applying the 17-inch Rule
- Standard: Run three times per week, no excuses.
- Support: Schedule runs, prepare gear in advance and set reminders.
- Accountability: If you miss a day, you don’t lower the goal to two times per week. Instead, you recognize the slip, reset and stay on track.
If you follow this plan — regardless of whether you actually hit your ultimate weight loss target — what you’re saying is: “I set this standard for my health. I may struggle, but I won’t redefine the goal to make myself feel better in the short term.” Doing this will help you develop discipline and self-respect by sticking to your original goal. Even if you fall short sometimes, you’re still operating by a meaningful benchmark.
Let’s face it, you’re not training for the Olympics. You just want to keep your turnout gear from getting any tighter. But you still need to hold the line.
Setting Standards That Matter
Also, don’t move the plate when things get hard. In high school, college and major league baseball, the distance from pitcher’s mound to home plate is 60.5 feet. A 17-inch plate looks a whole lot larger from 30 feet (half the distance to the mound) so shortening the distance from pitcher to batter is functionally equivalent to making the plate bigger.
If you’re finding some of your people are having difficulty meeting certain standards, offer support, not excuses. Build trust, consistency, and excellence. And yes, sometimes you’ll have to deal with the grumbling and resistance. That’s okay. The standard remains, regardless of the bellyaching.
In firefighting and law enforcement, we spend a lot of time talking about values, tradition and integrity. But all that talk is meaningless if we’re not willing to draw a hard line when it matters. The plate stays at 17 inches. The distance from pitcher to home stays consistent as well. These things are standards for a reason.
Policy Implications in Public Safety
A few months ago, I wrote about the importance of policies, both public and personal. Effective policies — and effective training to reinforce them — can make or break an agency. One way or another, agencies and agency leaders will always end up paying for policies.
You can pay now by dedicating the necessary in-house resources to research and develop effective, up-to-date policies that protect your agency, your personnel and your community. Alternatively, you can pay later — through costly lawsuits, increased liability, the erosion of public trust or tragic outcomes that no one wants to see.
Want to gamble on outdated SOPs or vaguely written policies? Be my guest. Just make sure your department attorney and your public information officer are on speed dial.
You can also outsource development and management services to someone with the knowledge, experience and resources to produce effective policies and keep them current as laws and community expectations change.
Whether you build them internally or buy them externally, your policies are your 17-inch plate. Write them clearly. Teach them thoroughly. Enforce them consistently.
Don’t Let It Slide
Every time you let something slide — a late arrival, a sloppy report, a shortcut on the drill ground — you widen the plate. And you send the message that standards are negotiable (or at worst, optional). If you apply the standards inconsistently, what you’re really telling your team is that the rules only apply to some people. And that’s a great way to tank your firehouse morale.
As leaders, our job isn’t to be popular. It’s to be clear. Our people deserve consistency more than comfort. They deserve a workplace where expectations are high, but fair.
I’ll say it again: Don’t widen the plate.
Hold the line. Set the standard. Teach, coach, and support your team. But never move the plate to make things easier. Because the moment you do that, you’re not helping. You’re hurting.
And when the real test comes — on the fireground, during a critical incident or in the public eye — you’ll be glad you held firm. Public safety standards save lives. And 17 inches is all you need.
