For the Thousands in Attendance, For the Millions Watching at Home…

As a fan of combat sports, from MMA to the WWE, Josh Deitch tips his hat to the quality brawls of 2008.

Is it wrong that as I watched the highlight from Sunday’s scuffle between the Royals and White Sox unfold, the immortal voice of WWE announcer Jim Ross ran through my head?

(Pyrotechnics shake the stadium. Heavy metal music blares as the camera pans through thousands of screaming fans.)
JR: Good evening folks, welcome to beautiful Kauffman Stadium. Along with Jerry “The King” Lawler, I’m Jim Ross, and–
(Sound of shattering glass followed by shrill guitar chords…)
JR: My God! My God! That’s A.J. Pierzynski’s music. Business just picked up…

To paraphrase Good Ol’ JR, this season has provided us with some serious slobberknockers. Over the past few years, good baseball fights seemed to have gone the way of the dodo. Gone were the days of Chan Ho Park trying to deliver a flying spin kick, Ray Knight shoulder tackling Tom Niedenfuer, and Pedro Martinez courageously defending himself from the diabolical 302-year-old Don Zimmer. Do I condone fighting in baseball? No, especially when it erupts into something as dangerous as what happened in the minor leagues last week. However, in a game where Bob Gibson routinely threw at batters’ unprotected heads to prove a point and Nolan Ryan once said that his best pitch was his second knock down pitch, hitters need to be able to defend themselves…and a homerun the next time around the order doesn’t always cut it. Although, Robin Ventura discovered that charging the mound doesn’t necessarily always lead to undeniable victory. When he stormed a 40+ year-old Nolan Ryan, Ryan promptly put the third baseman in headlock and dropped ten straight punches onto Ventura’s forehead. (On a side note, will Ventura ever outlive that moment? Robin Ventura played the game well for fifteen years. He was a two-time All-Star, had a .267 career BA, and almost hit 300 homeruns. But, he’s always going to be “the guy that Nolan Ryan put in a headlock” or “the guy that gruesomely broke his leg sliding into third base”.)

For whatever reason, be it money, fame, or just an unwillingness to get suspended, modern players seem unwilling to mix it up. Too often, players that charge the mound are simply going through the motions. We’re supposed to believe that a hitter has become so incensed at receiving a fastball up and in that he is willing to do physical harm to another human being. At the same time, the aggrieved batter tends to trot half speed to the mound, all the while waiting for the catcher—the slowest player on most major league teams—to intercept him. Then both benches clear, players jostle, jaw, and posture, and eventually most play peacemaker. In the world of sports where football players routinely knock out their teammates in training camp, power forwards occasionally hip check point guards into the press box, and hockey players throw bombs until they hit the ice and referees jump on them; these baseball “brawls” can become tiresome displays of faux bravado (See: Jason Varitek using his glove to push Alex Rodriguez in the face).

However, this season has provided us with some doozies at the major league level. Early in the season, the Tampa Bay Rays gang beat Coco Crisp in a way I would more expect to see on the Sopranos than on NESN, while the Boston Red Sox half-heartedly jogged to the aid of their teammate. Boston followed that up with Manny Ramirez punching teammate Kevin Youkilis in the dugout. This past Saturday, Miguel Olivo goon punched A.J. Pierzinsky. Honestly, who outside of Chicago didn’t cheer when they saw that? Then, just yesterday, Prince Fielder—that’s right, the Prince Fielder that weighs just under three bills—attacked pitcher Manny Parra, reminding us all of the exploits of Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson. This has been a season so full of entertaining encounters that I’m highly anticipating the next blow up. My fingers are crossed that, just like in Naked Gun, it will include Leslie Nielsen, Reggie Jackson, and a convoluted plot against the Queen of England engineered by Ricardo Montalban.

Ultimately, as long as things remain contained to the ball field, and no instruments that can be construed as weapons (i.e. bats and thrown balls) enter the fray, fights should be enjoyed. Sometimes, a good bench clearing fracas can galvanize a team and propel it to the playoffs. Sometimes, such a mêlée can so deplete a team with suspensions that it may never fully recover (see: White Sox, Chicago 2008). But almost always, a brawl is entertaining and mildly comical. Thus, I present the immortal words of Harry Doyle:

My God! Good news fans, the Indians are showing signs of life for the first time in weeks. As a matter of fact they appear to be beating the crap out of each other. It looks like Willie Hayes is trying to hit Rick Vaughn, and why not, everyone else in the league does. Hayes swings and misses. I don’t know Monte, it looks like Vaughn is carrying his left a little low. This could hurt him in the later rounds.