Purpose-Pitch Revenge Needs to Stop

A baseball, I'll remind you, is a lethal weapon. It's a rock-hard, tightly-wrapped object with a cork center that has killed one player and ruined the careers of others. In 1920, Ray Chapman was hit in the head by a pitch and died 12 hours later in a New York City hospital. More recently, in 1967, a promising young hitter named Tony Conigliaro was struck in the temple by a pitch that caused serious damage to his left retina and, eventually, led to his premature retirement because his eyesight was permanently blurred.

Call those rare occasions, if you insist. I'd say it's historical evidence that we're long overdue for another tragedy, especially if the sleepy lords of Major League Baseball continue to poo-poo the potential consequences of purpose-pitch retaliation. Yes, I realize that Milwaukee slugger Prince Fielder was hit on his very beefy leg Tuesday night by Dodgers reliever Guillermo Mota, which came in response to Manny Ramirez being plunked by Brewers reliever Chris Smith. But what made this episode so surreal -- and frightening -- was the sight of the 275-pound Fielder barreling through the underbelly of Dodger Stadium and trying to bust his way into the home clubhouse, where Prince wanted to crown Mota in front of 24 teammates who I'm fairly certain would have turned the scene into bloody-Octagon-meets-Evander Holyfield's ear.



Instantly, television networks scraping for August content had heavy-rotation, wall-to-wall footage of an enraged, profanity-spewing Fielder being restrained by teammates and police. "This is bull(bleep)!" he screamed as Brewers players Bill Hall and Casey McGehee dragged him back to the visitors clubhouse. But this was no entertainment triumph for the sport, not when the score was 17-4 and the Dodgers were merely one out from maintaining a large divisional lead. In truth, it was the latest and most emotional example of how petty grudges and back-alley revenge reduce baseball to a juvenile exercise that easily could turn ugly and cause a serious injury. Like everything else within the commissioner's domain, starting with steroids, such incidents haven't sounded the alarm clock of Bud Selig, who manages to make his daily frozen-custard stop in Wisconsin but can't address the troubling issues of his game. Maybe he should listen to Ken Macha, who manages the Brewers, Selig's hometown ballclub.

"It's the part of the game I don't like," Macha said. "We were kind of getting our butts kicked pretty good. I thought it was pretty obvious (Mota) hit Prince, and then he walked straight off the mound. And Prince is standing at home plate looking at him. We're not trying to hit anybody, OK? We're losing by 13 runs. We're trying to get 24 outs. We're not trying to hit anybody. That type of mentality should be taken care of.

"Prince has been hit a lot. He doesn't like when somebody does it on purpose, and I don't blame him. This type of mentality puts everybody in jeopardy. Giving a guy a $500 fine and two-game suspension isn't enough. This type of stuff should be cleaned up."

But Selig's men have shown no interest in a cleanup, preferring to let a little-boy, tit-for-tat mindset run rampant. There are more dumb people playing baseball than any other sport, likely because many players sign out of high school, grow up in frat-house environments in the minor leagues and don't have much in the way of meaningful education. That leads to the I've-got-your-back mentality that was the impetus for hitting Fielder. See, back in last year's National League Championship Series, the Dodgers fumed when pitcher Chad Billingsley didn't retaliate after Philadelphia's Brett Myers hit Ramirez. So this year, they're vowing to be a tougher and more unified team, as if plunking the best player on the Milwaukee Brewers in a 17-4 game in early August makes a team more manly.

This is how these guys think, America. If the rest of the world operated this way, we'd all be living an Animal House existence.

"It's just part of the game," Dodgers catcher Russell Martin explained. "Our premier hitter gets hit, and he gets protection. It's been part of the game since I first started playing. I understand (Fielder) is frustrated, but you don't take care of that after the game. It's the kind of thing where if you want to argue and yell at someone, you do it during the game.

"We don't want the same situation as last year in the playoffs, when Philly threw at Manny and we didn't really retaliate. We don't want to be known as a team that doesn't have each other's backs. It's about keeping the team unified and pulling the wagon all together."

Wow, try explaining that to your 8-year-old son the next time a purpose-pitch brawl breaks out. When Frank Robinson was MLB's top cop earlier this decade and doling out double-digit-game suspensions and whopping fines, the Selig administration was sending the right message. But under Bob Watson, the penalties are much softer. Predictably, his focus today is more on Fielder than the events that provoked him. Macha, who spent an hour on the phone Wednesday with Watson and umpiring boss Mike Port, was afraid that news coverage of Fielder's tirade will lead to much stronger penalties than what Mota receives.

"What I watched on television, I think it's totally misrepresented -- some of the terminology they used. They used words that made it sound like he was going to kill somebody," Macha said. "You're focused on the wrong thing. If their pitcher doesn't intentionally hit him, none of this happens. That's what I mean by the misrepresentation -- they're portraying Prince as the bad guy, and he's not the bad guy. So let's get the proper focus, OK? It's 17-4, and it's a totally inappropriate action. People pitch inside for two reasons: No. 1, to get the outside part of the plate, and No. 2, to injure someone. Our guy (Smith) was trying to get the outside part of the plate (against Ramirez). Their guy was trying to injure someone."

Said Mota rather laughably, recalling his days as Fielder's teammate: "I was thinking we were good friends. We played together last year. ... I have to pitch inside and if somebody gets hit because I was pitching inside, that's baseball."

This is not to pardon Fielder for trying to Brahma-bull his way into the Dodgers clubhouse. We will be watching these video lowlights for years, making us wonder about his mental equilibrium and whether he should go back to eating red meat after a year as an alleged vegetarian. Millions of people have watched the tape, but there was Prince, trying to lessen the length of his suspension by claiming amnesia. "I don't remember that. I'm just trying to play baseball," said Fielder, one of baseball's top sluggers and winner of the Home Run Derby last month. "I think he was just trying to come inside and it got away from him. He was trying to hit his spot. I wish he hit his spot, but it just missed. All that other stuff is out of my control."

Just to make sure he was in control, the Dodgers tightened security at Chavez Ravine. When Fielder took batting practice Wednesday evening, nine guards -- again, nine -- stood watch outside the visitors clubhouse. Throughout the night, there were no fewer than eight outside the Milwaukee clubhouse and five outside the home clubhouse. Some Dodgers players couldn't help but laugh at Fresh Prince. "Some people have different manners at their homes," said Andre Ethier, smiling. "Some people don't have to knock. Some people just let themselves in. Who knows? Maybe that's the type of environment they seem to have over there."

"He got hit and he didn't like it. But for him to be acting like that is not professional," Dodgers first base coach Mariano Duncan said. "Something has to be done about that incident, with Prince trying to charge into our clubhouse and try to fight. That could have been very ugly. So it's up to the commissioner's office to decide."

More importantly, it's incumbent upon Selig to read up on Chapman and Conigliaro. Neither was the victim of a purpose pitch, but it's amazing that today's ballplayers don't understand the life risk if a baseball thrown at 100 mph from 60 feet, six inches away strikes a man in the face, eye or skull. Sure, players wear helmets. But the face is exposed and the skull is vulnerable. Chapman's fate came from a baseball that intentionally was darkened and "dirtied up" by pitcher Carl Mays, as was the practice then. In late afternoon at the Polo Grounds in New York, he presumably couldn't see the pitch and never tried to get out of the way. Conigliaro was only 22, the youngest player at the time to reach 100 home runs in his career. His batting helmet didn't have a protective earflap.

Both tragedies led to reform. Pitchers stopped dirtying up the ball. Helmets were manufactured with earflaps.

I'd like to see Selig dabble in reform. I'd like him to tell managers and pitchers to stop throwing at batters with a lethal weapon.

But he's too busy listening to sports-talk radio on his way to the frozen-custard stand.