"Get off my mound!"

Although I'm not an avid baseball fan, and can only base a judgment off the little that I actually do know about the sport, the story of Alex Rodriguez crossing Dallas Braden's pitching mound was enough to spark my interest, just as the media wanted it to.
During last Sunday's game between the New York Yankees and the Oakland A's, A-Rod made a big boo-boo by cutting across the pitcher's mound from third base to first after a sixth-inning foul ball. This drew a reaction from A's pitcher, Dallas Braden, who got on A-Rod about his actions. It is an unspoken rule in major league baseball that a player doesn't cross over the pitcher's mound because it is the pitcher's territory.
'A-Rod gets big mound of criticism.' This was the perfect name for the article that a San Francisco Chronicle writer posted. A-Rod claimed to know nothing about this so-called rule, and that his reasoning was that he was tired. "I was tired. It's really not that big of a deal. I've done that maybe a few dozen times. It's the shortest route. I thought it was pretty funny," he had stated.
Others would disagree. For someone who has been in the game of baseball for as long as Rodriguez has been, he should know that that's something you just don't do. Many people are commending Braden for his courage to stand up to A-Rod. "Get off my mound!"
The problem is that the disagreement that was probably as simple as "boys being boys" has continued to cause a lot of trouble. Braden said that he wasn't trying to cause any controversy; it ended just as soon as it started in his opinion. He wasn't trying to call anyone out or shed light on someone's attitude. He was only trying to get the respect he deserved. Of course, the media will take just about anything and run as far as they can with it.
Was it a careless move by A-Rod? In my opinion, yes. Did Braden over-react? Maybe just a little. But you can't say that if Joe Nathan was at the mound, A-Rod would have just waltzed his way across as he did last Sunday. This just shows a little bit of a poor attitude from A-Rod, who, by what I an in-experienced baseball fan have been reading, is not a very well-liked player.
There are rules made my the leagues, but the players make their own rules as well, and A-Rod most definitely broke one.