This is hardly in the realm of “man bites dog” news, but there seems to have been a breakout of testosterone poisoning among professional athletes.
In the last week of the baseball season noted tough guy Jonathan Papelbon (whose arm is so delicate he can’t pitch more than one inning per game) assaulted Nationals teammate and presumptive 2015 MVP Bryce Harper because Harper wasn’t working hard enough. I’m sure Papelbon putting a choke-hold on Harper will be all the incentive Harper needs to apply himself next year and improve upon his league-leading 1.109 OPS and 9.9 WAR.
In the one-game National League Wild Card play-in game the benches cleared when Pirates pitcher Tony Watson deliberately hit Cub’s ace Jake Arrieta in retaliation for Arieta hitting two Pirates players by accident. Because in the single most important game of the season the Pirates put on a base runner in order to punish the Cubs for allowing them to have two base runners. Anyone watching the game could have told the Pirates they weren’t going to score by hitting the ball.
I’ve gone into it before about how the unwritten rules of beanballs are absurd. First of all, throwing deliberately at a batter is inexcusable; a baseball is a weapon, and an extremely dangerous one. People have died from beanballs (admittedly Ray Chapman was a while ago, but helmets have lowered the probability of death significantly) and others have suffered career ending injuries. Nothing justifies hurling a weapon at an opponent.
Secondly, what purpose is served? Some talking heads on ESPN dismissed Arrieta getting hit because he was hit on the “fleshy part of the hip” and so damage was unlikely. But if injury is unlikely, then why do it? Watson said he was just protecting his teammates, but is an 80 MPH fastball to the fleshy part of the hip going to keep Arrieta from throwing inside? I doubt it. So why do it? Why risk injuring him if you aren’t trying to injure him?
The whole mentality behind deliberately throwing at the opposing batters is that you’ll intimidate them at the plate; but the response is always to retaliate to show there is no intimidation. When my opponent throws at me, I won’t be intimidated; but when I throw at my opponent, he WILL be intimidated. It makes no sense.
Of course if rampaging hormones are a fact of life in baseball, then football has testosterone on steroids (to coin a phrase). The Miami Dolphins fired their coach and replaced him with Dan Campbell, who said the Dolphins were losing because they weren’t tough, they needed to play more like primates (I suppose they were 1-3 because they played like marsupials), and then ordered them to do an Oklahoma drill, some barbaric ritual that does nothing but increase the likelihood that someone will injure themselves or a teammate.
All this on a team that is just coming out from the shadow of “Bullygate” which was based on the premise that 300 pound linemen needed to be humiliated in order to be tough. I recall Steve Young’s response to the initial reports of the bullying by Richie Incognito: to paraphrase, he said, “I played on the San Francisco 49ers; we were a pretty good football team; we won a Super Bowl; we never had crap like this going on in our locker room.”
The problem with the Dolphins isn’t that they aren’t tough enough. These are all very large men who have spent the past 15-20 years playing football. They are plenty tough. The problem is the team spent $114 million on Ndamukong Suh but they still have one of the worst defenses in the NFL. Do YOU want to tell Suh he isn’t tough enough? The front office also gave a big contract to Ryan Tannehill, who isn’t exactly Tom Brady (or even Greg Brady). But the point is that the Dolphins aren’t losing because they aren’t tough, they are losing because they aren’t that talented.
Sports gurus, like coaches and talking heads, always love to point to intangibles. The Nationals didn’t make the playoffs? It must be that Matt Williams didn’t develop team “chemistry.” But you never read a story about a sporting event where the home team was outscored 3 tangible runs to 2 but were given the win because they got two intangible runs for showing a lot of heart. Baseball players should stop trying to be macho and throwing at opposing batters. Football players should stop focusing on toughness and start trying to play smarter. Both should dial down the testosterone.
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