Watch Out for In Your Ear

There’s just something about bench-clearing brawls in baseball that I can’t get enough of. I don’t know if it’s the team comradery, the bullpen streaking across the outfield, or how batters conveniently wait until someone’s got a hold of them before they make any real attempt to go after the pitcher, but I like when a mob of baseballers meets halfway between the pitcher’s mound and home plate. Just makes me smile.

I don’t want anyone getting hurt, mind you. Not that anyone really gets hurt in a baseball fight anyway. Most of the time its just a few big swings that connect with little outside of an errant stadium bug, maybe a good tackle, followed by some bad Greco-Roman wrestling. Outside of the initial fracas, I’m sure most players are chatting up in the crowd, how’s the kids, nice play the other night.

The best mound-charging brawl I’ve seen has to be with Nolan Ryan and Robin Ventura. Ventura didn’t take too kindly to getting plunked by a 97 mph fastball, and ran out to the mound to have a chat about it. The next thing he knew, Ventura was in a headlock, getting rapped on the top of his head by Ryan. Right before the mob reached the mound to break them up, Ryan got in one final punch: a wicked sweeping fist right into Ventura’s face. Its not often a pitcher gets in a good lick like that. Ryan gave pitchers across the league hope. It was beautiful.

This all came up as I was watching the Nationals – Mets game tonight on ESPN, with ex-Sox great Pedro Martinez on the hill. It looked like Pedro had lost a little bit of that zip on his fastball, but there was no shortage of that Martinez attitude he carried with him all those years.

Pedro always did the beanball the right way. He only went after you if he had a good reason, like retaliation. Plus he hit batters correctly. When Pedro aims for you, he gets you in the back and in the ass; none of these head shots that run so rampant in baseball these days.

Tonight, Petey was claiming the inside corner of the plate against the Nationals, making sure their batters didn’t dig in too deep every at-bat. A few of them flew out of the way of the inside pitches, while others simply had no where to go. When all was said and done, Petey had plunked three Nationals batters, a new career high.

This kinda confused me, though. Three plunked batters is his career high? You mean to tell me he’s never pegged three batters in one game before? All those series against the Yankees, not one outing with three beanballs? I’m shocked.

Nick Johnson and Jose Guillen were Pedro’s targets for tonight, with Guillen getting the honor twice. The second time around is when the fun began. Guillen got crazed on his elbow, took a second to think about it, then decided to go after Pedro. Of course, by that time, even the umpire had an arm around him. Guillen made sure he gave Pedro plenty of evil eye, though, even going as far as to stare down the barrel of hit bat. Classic stand-off.

I think it should be mandatory for the crazy guys of baseball, the hotheads who regularly pop their top, to get plunked once a week in a game. Those moments when they get some chin music and you can just see the water beginning to boil is awesome. You know its just a matter of time until a pitch gets a little too close, much less hit them, and they’re going ballistic. Think Selig would go for that?

Yeah, probably not. Thankfully, there’s still pitchers like Pedro around to make sure we get our brawl fix every now and then.