Image courtesy of Masslive.com. Kevin Youkilis, left, of the Boston Red Sox is about to throw Detroit Tigers pitcher Rick Porcello to the ground after getting beaned by a pitch Tuesday night.
Last week, Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder was hit, or "beaned", by Los Angeles Dodgers relief pitcher Guillermo Mota. Fielder didn't take exception at the time of the hit, but tried to enter the Dodgers locker room after the game and let off a profanity-laced tirade (video below along with a follow-up interview with LA sports anchor Jim Hill):
Both videos courtesy of KCAL 9 / KCBS 2 via YouTube.
What Fielder did was stupid on multiple levels. No one tries to enter the opposing teams' locker room to pick a fight. That would be the baseball equivalent to a schoolyard bully saying, "Meet me at 3:00 on the playground." Nothing good can come of it. In the second video, Fielder totally dodges Hill's questioning and makes it sound like it was no big deal and nothing happened. He also used canned answers that didn't seem very relevant to the interview. This doesn't help Fielder's image and if he does another interview like this, he'll need a better PR agent. As I wrote in a post last year, retaliatory and brushback pitches are part of baseball. Last year, a manager admitted he orders pitchers to hit opposing batters as a form of retaliation.
Fast forward to Tuesday night, Fenway Park. After a game on Monday that had lots of players getting beaned, the Boston Red Sox Kevin Youkilis finally had enough after another beaning.
I generally like Youkilis, he's a well rounded baseball player with lots of talent. For whatever reason, he is the batter that opposing pitchers usually choose to hit in regards to retaliatory pitches (he has more hit by pitches than any other Red Sox batter this year.) On one hand, had Porcello not tried to hit Victor Martinez, the batter before Youkilis, the brawl may have been avoided. On the other hand, I do not condone charging the mound, much less throwing your helmet. Youkilis will surely be suspended multiple games, which does not help the Red Sox in their current state of affairs.
What's most disturbing is hearing the fans at Fenway cheer on the brawl. I don't go to baseball games to see a brawl. For that, there's wrestling, boxing, and hockey. Beaning is becoming a problem in baseball, especially if managers are ordering hits. While the "eye for an eye" principle is understandable, it doesn't justify drilling someone with a 90+ mph fastball.
UPDATE (8/13/09): MLB.com claimed a copyright violation to the YouTube video of Youkilis charging the mound I linked to. The best place to view the footage at this point is here. Also, MLB announced that both Youk and Porcello received 5-game suspensions for the brawl.
Beaning is much less a problem today than it has been in baseball's past, mostly due to MLBs punishment of players who partake. I mean, just remember back to the Nolan Ryan/Robin Ventura incident. Then, when we learn of the specific suspension Youk gets, look back and compare to the paltry suspensions handed out then. In baseball, its the only method of retaliation. Loosing a game means nothing to a baseball player anymore. A great team loses "only" 50 games a season. If they play 10 years, plus little league, high school, and college, then they've probably lost well over 500 games in their lives. It means nothing. The only retaliation is hitting someone, either the offending player, or the teams most valuable player, to send a message. As a Christian, I disagree with the message it tries to send. As a human and a participant in sports, I can say that the thought has crossed my mind more often than I'd like to admit. From a Christian perspective, we should expect nothing less from unsaved humanity because we know of their tendency toward sin. Besides, when is the last time something horrendous happened from a mid-game fight? Generally, guys push and shove and are friends again as soon as the testosterone clears.
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