Throwing near player’s head not a very Angelic response

A (bleeped) off A.J. Hinch was right.

Brad Ausmus and the barely above .500 Los Angeles Angels were wrong.

Jake Marisnick — the coolest and most low-key Astro — spent the last 10 days caught in the middle of a ridiculous, outdated cross-country fight.

Baseball can still be so backward in 2019.

Before MLB finally got it right Wednesday afternoon — suspending Angels reliever Noe Ramirez three games and Ausmus for one while fining both —

this is what the grand old game was publicly promoting and telling you:

It’s OK to throw a fastball near the head of a defenseless, unsuspecting hitter in the sixth inning of a 6-2 game that was over in the first, thanks to one team’s not having an available starting pitcher in uniform.

It’s horrible — offensive! galling! Neanderthal-ish! — for a baserunner to attempt to score the go-ahead run in the eighth inning of a tightly contested 10-10 game, even when the catcher is blocking part of home plate while wearing protective gear and the baserunner is forced to make multiple splitsecond decisions while running at full speed.

Astros, Angels and baseball fans across the world are still debating Marisnick’s July 7 dive, which violently knocked Los Angeles’ Jonathan Lucroy out of the game and sent the still-injured catcher to the hospital.

What isn’t debatable: The Angels suddenly throwing an 89 mph fastball toward Marisnick’s

head — after initially offering two off-speed sliders — in the sixth inning Tuesday night was stupid, bush league and childish and has no place in the safetyfirst modern game.

You can’t slide in hard at second base anymore.

You can no longer collide with the catcher at home.

But you can intentionally throw a fastball near a hitter’s head?

OK.

“Our guy got suspended for an unintentional act, and they got a free shot,” Hinch told the media after the Astros fell to 2-4 since the All-Star break. “I feel bad for players nowadays. There’s a lot of gray area in what to do.”

Too much gray area. Those were the words that kept coming up the day after the Angles could have sent Marisnick to the hospital.

If you’re going to send a “message,” you immediately deliver it in the first at-bat.

And if you’re going to throw a baseball at an opponent’s body to honor the valor of old-school retaliation, you normally direct the hard, unforgiving object — which suddenly can change lives

and end careers — at the midsection.

The Angels waited and waited. Then they went after Marisnick where it could really hurt.

“The problem is that they threw at his head. It is ugly for baseball. It is terrible for baseball,” Astros TV broadcaster Geoff Blum said Wednesday during an interview on a local radio station. “If you hit Jake right in the (butt), everybody would have said, ‘OK. They hit him. They hit him in a soft spot. They sent their message. Jake went to first. We’re going to continue to play baseball.’ ”

What continued was a tired 10-day battle that had already eclipsed the All-Star break and the initial 14 innings of a fourgame series.

Dumb. Embarrassing. Horribly misguided.

Let’s hear it for the beauty of baseball’s murkier-than-ever unwritten rules!

“They’re trying to modify the game and modernize it and make it appealing to the masses, so you have younger managers, you have younger players,” said Blum, who spent 14 seasons playing for six MLB teams and was in Anaheim, Calif., to call

the series against the Angels. “Then you have, in the front offices and in the ivory towers in New York, a lot of these oldschool managers who played during an era where you just started drilling everybody. So you’ve got this old era trying to police a new era of baseball, and it just doesn’t make any sense.”

Joe Torre, MLB’s chief baseball officer, acknowledged in an official statement last Thursday that he did not believe Marisnick “intended to injure” Lucroy before their home-plate collision. Yet MLB “concluded that Jake’s actions warrant discipline” and suspended Marisnick for two games.

Notice the hypocrisy? By Wednesday afternoon, MLB was trying to prevent further damage.

“The rule that was at home plate — that Jake Marisnick unintentionally broke by hitting Jonathan Lucroy — is not to protect all players, in my opinion. It is to protect catchers,” Blum said. “And it puts the baserunner in a unique position where he’s got to try and anticipate in a split second where his sliding lane is . ... I don't really believe that catchers give a damn where their sliding area is. They’re trying to react to the baseball and tag a guy and prevent a run.”

Hinch protected his players by forcefully speaking out after Marisnick was hit by a fastball that bounced off his back. Lance McCullers Jr., who can’t even pitch for the Astros this season because of Tommy John surgery, proudly stood up for Marisnick in the dugout and instantly knew just how off target Los Angeles’ action was.

Albert Pujols looked silly slowly wobbling toward the Astros’ dugout. The Angels misfired and were out of touch.

Marisnick emerged from it all appearing the sharpest. Passionate for his team when the moment was right. Calm and cool as the national spotlight kept glaring. Pleading for reason and understanding from both sides.

The sport’s outdated unwritten rules didn’t make it any easier. But baseball finally got it right Wednesday by having Marisnick’s back.

An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.