This Major League Baseball postseason has been intensely action packed and emotional; that much is for sure.

In the American League, the Kansas City Royals beat out the Houston Astros in a decisive game 5 to move on to the championship series against the Toronto Blue Jays, who beat out the Texas Rangers in five games, as well. At the time of publication, Kansas City leads the series 2-1.

On the National League side of things, the Cubs (a team who hasn’t won a World Series title in over 100 years) shocked baseball fans by beating out the MLB-best Cardinals in four games. The Cubs moved onto the championship series against the Mets.

Speaking of the Mets, they played the Los Angeles Dodgers in the division series. There was a lot of controversy surrounding game two of that series.

Dodgers player Chase Utley ‘slid’ into second base, knocking over Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada and effectively breaking his leg.

The true injury report states that Tejada suffered a fracture of his right fibula and his status is currently day-to-day, but there is no hope of him returning for the remainder of the Mets’ involvement in the postseason. (The Mets ended up beating the Dodgers, and are now in the NLCS against the Cubs. At the time of publication, the Mets lead the series 2-0.)

In Utley’s ‘slide’ (the true term would probably be better described as a ‘tackle’) he came down on his knees, chest up and didn’t even touch the base.

In fact, a study found that Utley would have gone well into the outfield if he hadn’t rammed into Tejada.

Utley claims that he was simply “trying to break up the double play” and that he had no intention to injure Tejada at all.

I buy that.

Emotions are running high, it’s the postseason and you have two Cy Young contenders on your team that you don’t want to let down.

However, that in no way excuses what happened on that field.

If a base runner slides so hard that he breaks another player’s leg, he should be out until the other player is fully recovered.

If a base runner is clearly out of the baseline, goes straight for the shortstop, and never even touches the base, it’s fairly obvious that this slide was reckless. Perhaps not intentional, but reckless.

Maybe Utley didn’t mean to injure Tejada. Regardless, it put another player at risk. This cannot go on in Major League Baseball.

It’s like what the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland A’s experienced in early 2015.

Oakland’s Brett Lawrie infamously slid hard into second base, injuring Kansas City’s shortstop Alcides Escobar.

The play resulted in a very emotional series, filled with Lawrie getting hit by pitcher Yordano Ventura and several other retaliations by pitchers on both ends.

Baseball has never been totally safe. It’s a sport—there are bound to be injuries. However, retaliations and reckless slides need to be stopped. Until there is a hard and fast rule that has clear consequences for the accused party, this will continue.

If you attempt to break up a double play, that’s baseball. If you tackle and break another player’s leg, that’s reckless, and you should be suspended until the other player is well enough to play again.