The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
From Ty Cobb to Tyler Austin
Brawl is players’ way of protecting their own.
Wednesday night’s Yankees-Red Sox bench-and-bullpen-clearing brawl at Fenway Park was just the latest act in one of baseball’s longest-running plays.
As Billy Joel sang in his 1989 smash hit:
“We didn’t start the fire It was always burning since the world’s been turning.”
Hard-sliding baserunners from Ty Cobb to Chase Utley and hard-throwing pitchers from Walter Johnson to Roger Clemens have always been part of baseball.
Wednesday’s brawl came after a pitch from Red Sox reliever Joe Kelly hit Yankees DH Tyler Austin, who four innings earlier had made a controversial slide — one reminiscent of Hall of Famer Cobb — into shortstop Brock Holt.
“The basepaths belonged to me, the runner,” Cobb once said. “I always went into a bag full speed, feet first. I had sharp spikes on my shoes. If the baseman stood where he had no business to be and got hurt, that was his fault.”
The brawl was viewed over and over on TV and websites, and baseball suddenly seemed a lot more interesting to casual fans.
Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez, who saw many Yankees-Red Sox skirmishes, fired off a series of #YankeesvsRedSox tweets including: “Sliding with the cleats up is a no-no in baseball. That means fight fight fight!”
Chipper Jones, recently elected to the Hall of Fame after a 19-year career with the Braves, echoed the sentiment in a tweet of his own: “U slide in with ur spikes up and catch a piece, ur gonna get thrown at young fella. That’s how baseball works. It polices itself, whether people like it or not. That will never change. Love the spirit in both squads though.”
Major League Baseball has invoked sliding rules to protect players from injury, although some believe the rules go too far.
“I wouldn’t mind a brawl if it started at second base,” former Mets manager Bobby Valentine said. “As a fan, I don’t mind boys being boys. If the guy slides into second and you don’t like it and you want to whack him, c’est la vie.
“But I’m not a proponent of the idea of pitchers’ retaliation. I think it’s stupid,” added Valentine, 67. “When the first guy that ever threw a ball at a hitter, if everyone stood up and told him it was stupid, we wouldn’t have that situation. Eventually, some lawyer
is going to get a hold of this and get some pitcher for premeditated manslaughter.”
No charges, but Kelly faces a six-game suspension for drilling Austin, who was suspended five games for charging the mound. The bad blood may leave a stain.
“I don’t think it’s good for baseball because people can get hurt,” former Yankees player and manager Lou Piniella said. “These players are making a lot of money and these teams have a lot of money invested in these players. From a financial standpoint, brawls aren’t good for the game at all. But from the fans’ standpoint, to see some excitement on the field and see that the teams are competing at their maximum to win, that’s probably a winwin for them.”
Piniella, 74, has experienced firsthand the fire of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. He triggered a memorable brawl between the two teams on May 20, 1976, when he and Boston catcher Carlton Fisk tangled after Piniella tried to dislodge the ball from Fisk’s glove on a tag play. Neither Piniella’s slide nor Fisk’s tag to the head were gentle.
In the all-out melee on the field involving players from both dugouts, Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles threw Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee to the ground, damaging his left shoulder permanently. Lee never threw as hard again.
Piniella said he understands the genesis of most brawls. “You have to protect your own players and that’s what usually happens in those circumstances,” he said. “Somebody gets thrown at, somebody gets slid into very hard and all of a sudden the other team retaliates. But the problem is, injuries occur, and people get fined and suspended. The fines are OK. Suspensions aren’t, though, because that
hurts the teams. Don’t take matters into your own hands. You’ve got to let the baseball executives handle it.”
Torre, who issued the suspensions to Kelly and Austin that are under appeal, acknowledged the game has changed regarding brushbacks. “I got knocked down in every city my first week in the big leagues (1961),” Torre, 77, said in a recent interview. “Those pitchers certainly didn’t have a chance to dislike me yet. But they literally threw at my head to see if I could get out of the way and where I’d stand in the box the next time up.”
But rarely did those knockdown pitches result in dragout brawls. “Even when you were competitive, you didn’t see the anger you sometimes see now,” Torre noted. “Today, unfortunately, every time somebody hits someone, it’s looked on as on purpose.”
Jim Kaat, a contemporary of Torre’s who pitched for 25 years, said rule changes have made today’s players “much more sensitive.”
“When they get a pitch up and in, they react to it because they’re not accustomed to seeing it. Baseball has taken that pitch away and I don’t think enough attention has been paid to that,” Kaat, 79, said. “It’s really affected the swings and the home runs,” Kaat said. “If a pitcher does come inside, he gets warned and you’ll see a hitter overreact . ... But the problem today, especially late in games, is you have these hard-throwing relievers who don’t have much command. With all due respect to Joe Kelly, he’s got an electric arm but by his own admission, he doesn’t have great command. So if he starts thinking about knocking a hitter down, boy, that’s dangerous. He might miss by a foot, and if you’re a hitter, you’ve got to react to that.”