The Other Fifteen

For those of you who missed it, I wrote a piece a few weeks ago detailing why baseball is definitely a contact sport.  Well my point then still stands that, although baseball is violent less often than in other sports, its level of violence is often spectacular and has major consequences.  Well, the baseball gods have a sick way of providing me with more and more evidence.  First, there was the incident of Scott Rolen accidentally getting knocked out by a pitch thrown by his former teammate, Jason Marquis.  Getting hit in the head by a 90+ mph fastball is nothing short of life threatening.  Rolen ended up missing several games with post-concussion syndrome.  He still has sporadic blurred vision from time to time that will hopefully get better.  But you never know.

Then there was a bench-clearing brawl between the Red Sox and Tigers after two days of bean balls between the two teams and their star batters.  Finally, Kevin Youkilis decided he was sick of it, as he does get hit often, though it was his team who kept hitting Miguel Cabrera, so maybe he should take it up with his own pitching staff is he doesn’t want to receive the retaliation.  But either way, he charged the mound and ended up getting body slammed by a 20 year old kid, Rick Porcello.  Punches were exchanged, people piled on, other people had to be held back by their boys, mad drama ensued, etc.  In the end, there were suspensions handed out to Porcello and Youk, though not to the original instigators from the night before, or the Red Sox pitcher who bean Cabrera on he second night.  Seems odd to me, you’d think they would either suspend everyone involved or no one.  But then, the MLB offices try to pretend that this sort of thing “doesn’t belong in baseball,” despite the fact that it has always been a part of the game.  If I made the rules, I wouldn’t suspend anybody.  They’re going to regulate themselves either way.   People are always going to get hit, and occasionally things will boil over and someone will charge the mound, then players will blow off steam, and everthing goes back to normal.  That is the natural order in baseball, and suspending players isn’g going to change that.  Bench-clearing brawls are a part of the game of baseball, and there is nothing that anyone can do about it, so we might as well all just accept it and move on.

But last night, there was a horrific string of incidents that proved in the most repulsive way just how violent a game this is.  Two batters, Ian Kinsler of the Rangers and David Wright of the Mets, took a fastball to the head, while pitcher Hiroki Kuroda took a come-backer to the forehead.  Kinsler was somehow able to stay in the game, though he was furious.  He had already dodged a ball high an in at the chin in an earlier at bat, and was shouting at the catcher and pitcher about why they would need to “send him another message.”  The sick thing about his situation is that he was hit because he hit a home run earlier.  That’s bullshit, and anyone who doesn’t think so needs their head examined.  This wasn’t retaliation for one of their players being hit, it was “revenge” for their pitchers failing to get the guy out or to keep hit hits in the park.  The fact that this incident also involves Red Sox pitchers really makes me wonder what the hell their pitching coach and pitching staff are thinking.  They are essentially assaulting other teams star players as either “retaliation” for them beating the pitchers fairly at a game, or preemptively hitting them for being good and wanting to “get in their heads” as they did with Miguel Cabrera the first time.  Well if someone else isn’t going to say it, then I will: threatening someone’s life because they hit a homer off of you, or because they potentially could, should warrant a serious suspension.  Beaning players is one thing, but going after somebody’s head is another.  And especially if it’s because you’re being a baby about having been beaten fair and square.  Maybe instead of putting guys in the hospital, these pitchers should do their jobs and focus on getting guys out.

The other incidents were even worse though.  David Wright took a fastball to the temple from Matt Cain, which was obviously not intentional.  You could see Cain’s mechanics falter as he delivered the pitch, which he said afterward was to try to correct for his grip slipping.  But either way, Wright got sent to the hospital.  True to the unwritten rules of the game, Johan Santana responded by throwing a ball behind Pablo Sandoval, which earned warnings to both benches.  Sandoval responded by destroying a pitch off the facing of the second deck in left field for a homer.  But then, Santana went all bleeding vagina on us and hit Bengie Molina afterwards.  Again, concentrate on getting the guy out, don’t hit people because you served up a homer.  It’s a pretty crybaby move.  Oddly, Santana didn’t get tossed from the game, which Giants manager Bruce Bochy had no problem pointing out to the umpire.  In the end, Wrights CT scan came back negative.

UPDATE: After his release from the hospital, Wright was placed on the DL.  Mets manager Jerry Manuel said that he may miss the rest of the season, depending on the outcome of further tests.  The latest reports are that he is still suffering from post-concussion syndrome.

In the third incident, Dodgers pitcher Hiroki Kuroda took a ball off the forehead after his pitch was hit by Diamondbacks’ hitter Rusty Ryal.  Kuroda seemed ok when trainers rushed to him, asking jokingly if anyone had caught the ball to get the out after it hit him.  But in the end, he was taken off the field in a stretcher and diagnosed with a concussion.  Kuroda spent the night in the hospital due to the threat of bleeding in the brain in the 12 hours after an impact like that on the head.

So now that we’ve seen so many incidents of spectacular violence in baseball, will people finally realize that this is not only a contact sport, but an extremely violent one at that?