End the beanball wars

There is one argument that I hate more than any other, and that is justifying some policy just because of “tradition.”  The name of the football team in Washington is obviously racist, yet the owner and thousands (millions?) of fans refuse to change it because of tradition.  Homophobes hide behind religion to mask their bigotry, all the while saying they support “traditional” families.  The argument is basically that just because were done a certain way yesterday, they should be done the same way today despite all of the ways the world has changed since yesterday.

Baseball, the sport steeped in the greatest amount of tradition, is the one most susceptible to accepting tradition as an excuse for idiocy. For 150 years batters have been commanded to stoically trot around the bases after a home run, lest they be found guilty of “showing up” the pitcher.  It used to be even worse—I remember when a player would hit a home run, and then next batter would inevitably get plunked.  The pitcher had to punish the next batter because the previous batter had somehow insulted the pitcher by doing his job.  Hey, pitcher, you don’t want to be “shown up”?  make better pitches.

I also recall the furor when a Mets rookie named Lastings Milledge came up in 2006 at hit his first home run in his home ballpark, and he high fived fans in the stands as he went to his position in right field. “That young man will learn how to play the game right,” intoned the announcer, who couldn’t have been more disgusted by this spontaneous outpouring of exuberance if it had included photos of Roseanne Barr naked.

Things may be on the verge of changing.  Reining AL MVP Josh Donaldson hit a home run against the Minnesota Twins.  Obviously this was an insult to pitcher Phil Hughes, who greeted Donaldson with an extremely inside pitch in his next at bat.  Hughes next pitch was behind Donaldson, but plate umpire Ripperger didn’t even issue a warning to Hughes.  Donaldson’s manager John Gibbons came out f the dugout to complain and was ejected for his efforts.

Maybe, you say, Hughes wasn’t deliberately throwing at Donaldson. Maybe the two pitches just “got away” from Hughes.  Right.  Hughes is a professional pitcher, someone who makes his living throwing a baseball accurately, but after Donaldson hit a home run off of him he threw a pitch four feet off the plate behind Donaldson?  I’ve heard of nibbling at the corners, but missing a target by four feet is more than a little “off.”

Of course the Blue Jays aren’t innocent; later in the game they hit Minnesota catcher Kurt Suzuki in the bottom of the inning.  That’s always the way with these beanball wars; you always HAVE to retaliate.  The logic is this: if I throw at you, you will be intimidated, but if you throw at me, I’ll retaliate.  It never occurs to anyone that if they would retaliate if they were thrown at, then the other team will retaliate when THEY are thrown at.

A baseball is a weapon. Using a weapon against another person is wrong.  If you want some idea of what a baseball can do when thrown, look at what happened to pitcher Ryan Vogelsong when he was hit by a pitch (not intentionally).  Okay, pitchers want the inside part of the plate, but Hughes apparently wanted the batter’s box to count as a strike zone.

If pitchers insist on enforcing “the code” and throwing at players who run out a home run too slowly, or too quickly, or admire their homers for too long, or not long enough, then they deserve to have the inside part f the plate taken away from them by the umps.  Managers ordering retaliatory plunkings should be summarily ejected. 

I know there was one umpire who didn’t believe in enforcing the rule to eject pitchers who “intentionally” threw at batters because, he said, how could I possibly read the pitcher’s mind? The rule says “intentionally” so it must assume it is possible to infer intent.  Did the batter homer in the previous at bat?  Did the prior batter homer?  Was one of the pitcher’s teammates hit by a pitch after homering?  It isn’t rocket science.  And if occasionally a pitcher is ejected for a pitch that did get away from him, well, he should be a good enough pitcher not to let that happen.

It is time to end the beanball culture in baseball.  Maybe pitchers used to know how to throw at batters, hitting them with a change up near the rump, but today’s pitchers do seem to have less control; throwing behind a batter is extremely dangerous (batters tend to instinctively back up when they see a pitch coming inside).  Knock off the macho posturing and play ball.