The one thing that many people don’t understand about baseball, for good reason, is the “baseball code;” which leads to players being intentionally hit with 95 mph fastballs and ensuing brawls. It is not written anywhere but it apparently goes something like this, “You throw at my guy, I throw at your guy;” basically, it’s eye for an eye. It’s old-fashioned but I can buy that, two guys are hit, it’s over.
Apparently this wasn’t good enough Monday night in Los Angeles in the game between the Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The sequence of events happened like this:
–Bottom 6th: Dodgers OF Yasiel Puig has a pitch thrown by Diamondbacks P Ian Kennedy glance off his shoulder into his nose.
–Top 7th: Diamondbacks C Miguel Montero is hit in the back by a pitch thrown by Dodgers P Zach Greinke, causing a mini-disturbance that quickly disperses.
–Bottom 7th: Dodgers P Zach Grienke is hit in the upper-left shoulder by Diamondbacks P Ian Kennedy, Kennedy and Arizona manager Kirk Gibson are ejected immediately. Huge brawl breaks out, punches thrown.
–Ejections: LAD- P Ronald Belisario, coach Mark McGwire, OF Yasiel Puig ARI- mgr Kirk Gibson, coach Turner Ward, P Ian Kennedy
In this instance, I don’t think that the players even understood this “code”. Puig-mania has just started in LA; the 22-year old was recently called up and has been a catalyst for the Dodgers. When a player like that is hit in the face by a division rival, one must know that retribution is coming.
The next inning, Montero is hit in the back, no one is hurt and the back is a fairly innocuous place to be hit; it should have all ended then. There was no reason for players to come out of the dugout, everything would have been right in the baseball world. This mini-fight got the testosterone flowing. Then, because of NL rules, Greinke came to the plate. This was a questionable call by LA manager Don Mattingly to let him hit; he had already thrown 7 innings and it at least had to be in the back of his mind that Arizona may try something.
Courtesy: USA Today
Exactly that happened with the pitch going off his shoulder, however, Greinke wasn’t fired up. Neither was anyone on the field. All of the excitement came off the bench of the Dodgers, who jumped up to “protect their player” from nothing. He was going to walk to first base and it would be done. Instead the brawl, which can be found with a quick YouTube search (as seen above), broke out.
This fight was the second brawl for the Dodgers this year, with the other coming against San Diego in April. In that brawl, Greinke broke his collarbone when he went toe to toe with the much bigger Carlos Quentin.
While these brawls may be exciting, in all reality, they are inappropriate for the sport. Baseball players are paid a ridiculous amount to throw and hit a ball, not each other. And more than any other sport, baseball is marketed as a family place; you can bring kids. The video board always has fun stuff happening between innings. The mascots are constantly seen in the stands, and tickets are fairly inexpensive compared to other events. All of that goes out the window when fights start. I imagine that at field level, curse words can be heard quite clearly.
They may appeal to the casual fan but they aren’t like crashes in NASCAR or sparring in hockey. Fights don’t happen regularly enough to be counted on in baseball. It’s rare.
The fights hurt the sport; parents don’t want to bring their kids to an event like that. They take away from the intricacies that many people enjoy; not to mention, players can be injured (Greinke was hurt in April). In 2010, Jason LaRue suffered a career-ending concussion from Johnny Cueto’s spike when the Reds and Cardinals duked it out. Not to mention all of the nicks and bruises that the players will fight through. It’s unnecessary.
It calls for the end of this whole code. Stop hitting each other on purpose, all it does is put a runner on base. That can only hurt your team and, as we have seen, it puts a teammate of yours in jeopardy. Games are won with bats and gloves, not fists.
