MLB Beanball Wars
Being a Chicago White Sox fan, the Art of the Hit Batsmen is a topic near and dear to my heart. There are those who will tell you it is a dangerous and outdated practice that Major League Baseball desperately needs to eliminate. Others - Sox manager Ozzie Guillen perhaps foremost among them - would argue that it's an intimate part of the game, allowing players to police themselves and maintain order and respect between teams.
If you're not sure what I'm talking about, this is your opportunity to learn something about the history of baseball. It's an old and simple tradition: you hit our guy, we hit your guy. Certainly there are nuances beyond that - sometimes the situation doesn't allow for immediate retaliation, dependent upon score or inning; when there is a clearly unintentional beanball it's not necessarily beholden upon a team to retaliate; etc. - but the basic rule holds today as it did in 1900: you hit our guy, we hit your guy.
I've heard former players say that after their pitcher hit someone, the first batter in the next inning would go to the plate expecting to take one in the rib cage... or the kidney... or perhaps right on the keister; point being they knew they would be beaned. Earlier in this 2006 season, Guillen took a rookie relief pitcher to task in the dugout for not appropriately retaliating.
But the tradition has been muddled by the man: Major League Baseball, under the guise of "cleaning up the game" has given the umpires the power to warn and/or eject pitchers, managers, and anyone else involved in what is perceived to be a beanball war. Notice my language - given umpires the power - because therein lies the problem: there's no particular rule regarding retaliatory beanings, it's essentially whatever the ump feels should be done.
The results are predictably disastrous. Some umpires throw out pitchers without a warning, as soon as they're perceived to have hit somebody intentionally. Others judiciously warn both benches as soon as any player has been hit. Occasionally you'll see a game where the ump waits too long and a brawl erupts.
Then there are umpires who embrace the beanball tradition: if a player is hit, they will give the other team a chance to retaliate before warning both pitchers and benches to ensure things won't spiral out of control. The upshot of this is there's no telling what will happen when somebody gets beaned.
The good news is, there's an easy solution; and the infrastructure is already in place. The warning/ejection system could work, it just needs to be consistent. Specifically: under no circumstances should a pitcher/team be warned or ejected after only one batter being hit. As soon as there is a retaliatory beanball, warn both teams. After that, deliberate beanings garner an ejection for the pitcher and whoever else the umpire thinks deserves the heave-ho.
Clearly there's still some room for interpretation, as there always will be in any sports scenario where officials are asked to legislate the intentions of athletes. Simply put, there is no way to objectively determine whether a pitcher absolutely intended to hit someone. Still, with this quick fix pitchers would at least know where they stand, and wouldn't have to worry about being ejected without warning.
On the flipside, umpires would retain control over the game without erasing a tradition as old as baseball or robbing the players of their autonomy and ability to stand up for each other.
It's not perfect, but it would be a hell of an upgrade.
If you're not sure what I'm talking about, this is your opportunity to learn something about the history of baseball. It's an old and simple tradition: you hit our guy, we hit your guy. Certainly there are nuances beyond that - sometimes the situation doesn't allow for immediate retaliation, dependent upon score or inning; when there is a clearly unintentional beanball it's not necessarily beholden upon a team to retaliate; etc. - but the basic rule holds today as it did in 1900: you hit our guy, we hit your guy.
I've heard former players say that after their pitcher hit someone, the first batter in the next inning would go to the plate expecting to take one in the rib cage... or the kidney... or perhaps right on the keister; point being they knew they would be beaned. Earlier in this 2006 season, Guillen took a rookie relief pitcher to task in the dugout for not appropriately retaliating.
But the tradition has been muddled by the man: Major League Baseball, under the guise of "cleaning up the game" has given the umpires the power to warn and/or eject pitchers, managers, and anyone else involved in what is perceived to be a beanball war. Notice my language - given umpires the power - because therein lies the problem: there's no particular rule regarding retaliatory beanings, it's essentially whatever the ump feels should be done.
The results are predictably disastrous. Some umpires throw out pitchers without a warning, as soon as they're perceived to have hit somebody intentionally. Others judiciously warn both benches as soon as any player has been hit. Occasionally you'll see a game where the ump waits too long and a brawl erupts.
Then there are umpires who embrace the beanball tradition: if a player is hit, they will give the other team a chance to retaliate before warning both pitchers and benches to ensure things won't spiral out of control. The upshot of this is there's no telling what will happen when somebody gets beaned.
The good news is, there's an easy solution; and the infrastructure is already in place. The warning/ejection system could work, it just needs to be consistent. Specifically: under no circumstances should a pitcher/team be warned or ejected after only one batter being hit. As soon as there is a retaliatory beanball, warn both teams. After that, deliberate beanings garner an ejection for the pitcher and whoever else the umpire thinks deserves the heave-ho.
Clearly there's still some room for interpretation, as there always will be in any sports scenario where officials are asked to legislate the intentions of athletes. Simply put, there is no way to objectively determine whether a pitcher absolutely intended to hit someone. Still, with this quick fix pitchers would at least know where they stand, and wouldn't have to worry about being ejected without warning.
On the flipside, umpires would retain control over the game without erasing a tradition as old as baseball or robbing the players of their autonomy and ability to stand up for each other.
It's not perfect, but it would be a hell of an upgrade.
posted by Kolsky @ 7:46 AM
2 Comments:
At 11:00 AM,
OGWiseman said…
Kolsky, Kolsky, Kolsky,
I must take issue with your new system. You say it is meant to eliminate Official discretion, but that discretion is exactly what we need to keep games under control. Under your system, let me paint a little scenario. The pitcher on the opposing team hits one of our guys in the back. He takes it off the shoulder blades, no injury, no big deal. Under your system, my team now gets a retaliatory shot. I send my pitcher up there and instruct him to plant a fastball in the opposing star's head. He knocks the guy out of the game. Are you now saying that both teams should get an equal warning with no ejections?
The fact is that the system you want to use is flawed in that a bean is a bean no matter the damage done. This clearly rewards the pitcher and manager willing to be more brutal with their one chance. This is not behavior MLB should endorse.
Also, the system you propose encourages an even more problematic concept: Next Day Retaliation. Consider a continuation of my previous scenario. A month later, in the next series, the manager hasn't forgotten the head-hit on the star. He sends his pitcher out there with instructions to hurt someone, knowing that nothing will happen the first time someone is beaned. The other manager now can, and must, retaliate and escalate.
The real solution is better training for the officials, and a consensus among them over what ought to be done in a variety of cases. I mean, this is all these clowns do for a living. They should be able to stay on top of these situations without too much simplification of the rules. Also, let's keep in mind that the Umps are ALWAYS watching while the pitcher is pitching. It's not like basketball or football, where the ref might miss something.
Now, I agree with you that Blue has been terrible with the beanball question this year. But we don't need a different system of rules, we need some Blue with their head somewhere other than their ass.
At 10:36 PM,
Kolsky said…
See, OG, if you knew baseball you would know this: you never hit a guy in the head on purpose. Never. Never ever ever ever. And you're right that the particular scenario of beanballs to the dome calls for different rules, but I defy you to find other realistic scenarios where similar problems exist. Obviously you can't take discretion out of it - as I said, not even Tim McClelland can read a pitcher's mind, and whether any beanball was deliberate is always a matter of opinion on the umpire's part. But you can pretty much tell, especially if you're an MLB ump.
As far as next-day retaliation, you better believe that shit is already out there, and I think that standardizing the punishment system so as to allow one retaliation would actually reduce that. I'm not sure that will quite do it for you, but I stand by my assertions.
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