“He hit a guy in the mouth, number one,” Redmond said. “After he hit Reed in the hand, he looks in our dugout, throws his hands up in the air like, ‘Hey, why are you guys mad?’ You just knocked out our best player, hit him in the mouth, and then you just hit another guy in the hand. What are we supposed to do? What type of reaction do you think we’re going to give you?”
“It’s up around my face, as well,” Johnson said. “I think that’s why you started getting some chirping a little bit from our dugout. He was up around everybody’s hands and face the whole night. I think that’s why the frustration really set in at that point. “When you’re trying to pitch a guy in and you have a tendency to miss up a lot, it’s just a bad combination. There were just a lot of balls up around guys’ faces tonight. One of them gets our big boy.”
I could not help but consider the irony of beanball wars on the anniversary of 9/11. Apparently, we have not learned very much about the evils of violence in this country. One of the reasons why I focus solely on baseball is not that other sports don’t have their moments of grace, poetry and excitement, but because many of them glorify violence in a way that no civil society should condone. Yet, what happened between the Marlins and Brewers is very complicated; discerning intent and legislating the conflicting emotions that happen on a ballfield are difficult tasks. But Major League Baseball needs to take some action; even if that action becomes a work in progress, it is better than sitting idly by until something terrible happens.
If you listen to many Brewers’ fans, as well as other normally level-headed people, the Miami Marlins should have come out of the dugout to give Mike Fiers a pat on the back, and maybe a lollipop and a sticker, for beaning Giancarlo Stanton in the face and then hitting Reed Johnson with his next pitch. Let me be clear about this – Mike Fiers did not intend to hit Giancarlo Stanton or Reed Johnson. But he chose to repeatedly throw baseballs up and in all night. To expect Stanton’s teammates to ignore this turn of events is beyond naïve – these guys are competitive athletes who have been brought up to abide by “the unwritten rules” of baseball. I think that under the circumstances, the Marlins’ reaction was actually quite restrained. They did not leave their bench when Stanton was hit and they did not leave their bench when Johnson was hit – in the heat of the moment, they could have been forgiven had they done so. They only became inscensed when Fiers – who at that moment had no idea how serious the injury to Stanton might be – took offense at a few guys yelling at him from the opposing dugout. Mr. Sensitive defined himself in that moment; while his remorse about hitting Stanton was almost certainly genuine, 15 minutes later it was all about Mike Fiers.
Look, I am not in favor of beanballs, subsequent retaliation or bench-clearing brawls. This stuff has to stop. Umpire Jeff Kellogg, whom I have a great deal of respect for, lost control of this situation after Johnson was hit. He should have immediately ejected Fiers from the game at that point – it would have been a reasonable thing to do, and it would have cooled down the emotions. The Marlins ultimately hit Carlos Gomez because they were the only team to suffer any repercussions from Fiers’ recklessness. Intent did not matter here. This is the problem that Brewers’ fans, and others, seem to have missed. Baseball teams are not going to sit idly by while you hit their best players as a result of a strategy that prioritizes pitching up and in. If you bean batters in the face because of recklessness, it does not hurt less, or have less destructive results, than if you intended to do it.
Sometimes, I think this point is lost, even on Pirate fans. The Pirates emphasize pitching inside, and while they do not intend to hit anyone, it somes with the territory. If you remember the awful doubleheader in Baltimore in late April, Brandon Cumpton, who makes a living by pitching inside, sent a few Orioles sprawling in the dirt before finally hitting Manny Machado – who was playing his first game back from a serious injury suffered in 2013 – in the helmet. The Pirates escaped that situation without harm; I don’t know why, as Buck Showalter is not known to be a cool cucumber, by any means. If the Orioles had decked a Pirate hitter under those circumstances, they would have been within their rights under the codes of the game, and fair play, as long as they did so without throwing at someone’s head.
Under most circumstances, teams manage to send these messages to each other within the boundaries of the game, and common sense. Sometimes, things go awry, as they did in the Paul Goldschmidt/Andrew McCutchen situation. The Diamondbacks took offense to the unintentional beaning of Goldschmidt, and retaliated by purposefully hitting McCutchen. The Diamondbacks were at fault because they should have realized that the first incident was unintentional, but had they wanted to prove a point about the Pirates’ pitching tendencies, they could have thrown an inside pitch in the dirt, or at somebody’s butt. The fact that they tried to actually hurt a star player was lost on Major League Baseball; by turning a blind eye, MLB continues to sanction these incidents.
What was lost amidst the unfortunate situation in Milwaukee was the egregious behavior of Philadelphia pitcher Luis Garcia, who intentionally threw a 96mph fastball at the head of Andrew McCutchen the same night, perhaps because the fragile Phillies were put out by McCutchen’s display of emotion after hitting a double earlier in the game. If we use this situation as a hypothetical in order to determine what the proper response should be – with the goal not revenge but a de-escalation of violence – the umpires should have immediately tossed Garcia from the game. Then they should have warned both benches about retaliation. In this manner, the hypothetical aggrieved party feels that justice was done, and is less likely to try to take matters into their own hands.
Fiers should have been suspended a few games for nearly inciting a riot, and Luis Garcia should never throw another pitch in Organized Baseball. He can return to the Atlantic League from whence he came, or resume his lifelong dream of becoming a barber, where he will be likely to do less damage with a pair of sharp scizzors in his hand then he will with a baseball.
