Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
October 13, 2003
It's Only a Game

Edward Cossette at Bambino's Curse seems a little too upset about the goings on Saturday:


I walked around in a funk all day yesterday, depressed, out of sorts, empty, and had there been no rain I wouldn't have watched a pitch of the game nor peeked in to check the score. And I don't say this because I was trying to prove a point or otherwise boycott Red Sox baseball. I say it because yesterday I honestly had no interest.

But what about today, after a cleansing rain, after some time to heal, after the apologies and the tears and the fines and the gag order?

I don't know. I really don't. All day yesterday I was telling people that something "broke" inside me after Saturday's disaster at Fenway, but now I realize that is the wrong metaphor. It isn't that something inside me broke but rather that I was awakened to or otherwise forced to acknowledge how I, as a fan, as a Red Sox fan in particular, need to better scrutinize my own relationship with the game of the baseball.

And under the light of scrutiny I realize I need to drop baseball down a few notches on my priority list. It is just a game. And I don't want to fall down the slippery slope of believing "I live for this," when it's the other way around: "It lives for me." The game of baseball is supposed to be about "betterment," about, as I wrote yesterday, transcending the quotidian existence of birth, school, work, death.


What happened Saturday was pretty minor in the annals baseball brawls. It was nothing compared to the Yankees-Red Sox fights of the 70's.

Bill Lee was pitching the next time there was a brawl at home plate. To his eternal sorrow. The brawl ended with a torn ligament in Lee’s pitching shoulder. He was disabled for nearly two months, and his fastball was never quite the same again.

This one occurred during the Red Sox’s first trip to Yankee Stadium in 1976, when Lou Piniella tried to score from second on Dwight Evans’ arm and was out by 10 feet. The only thing he could do was try to knock the ball out of [Carlton] Fisk’s glove. Or kick it out.. In the tangle of arms and legs, he kicked Fisk instead.

Whereupon Fisk decided to tag him a second time just to make sure. On the head. Hard.

Out streamed the players from both benches. Bill Lee, who had been backing up the plate, was grabbed, spun around, and belted in the head from behind by Mickey Rivers. As Lee was trying to clear his head, [Graig] Nettles picked him up and threw him down on his shoulder. When Lee got up, holding his pitching arm, he realized that his season was probably over. "You sonofabitch!" he screamed at Nettles. "How could you do this to me? How could you be such an asshole?"

By way of explanation, Nettles belted him flush in the eye, knocking him down and giving him a shiner to go with his crippled arm.


Saturday's theather was nothing like that. Sure it was ugly, and everytime something like that happens people gnash their teeth and rend their clothing wondering why it happens and what can be done about it. And nothing ever is done about it.

The problem is, you have extremely competitive people in a high stakes game under the pressure of media and fans, and sometimes they snap. Let's face it, Pedro doesn't like to lose. And when he was losing Saturday to the one team Boston wants to beat more than any other, his emotions got the best of him and he threw at Garcia. So it escalated until everyone got it out of his system, and now they can go back to playing baseball. The teammates who were phycially hurt were hurt from their own stupidity. In terms of making me like or dislike the game, this was a blip on the radar screen.

I would suggest what is really bothering people like Edward is that there was a shift of virtue from the Red Sox to the Yankees Saturday. It's been going on for a while, but Saturday the fault line moved. When it was Nettles and Jackson and Rivers against Lynn and Fisk and Lee, it was easy to see the Yankees as the evil team that deserved to be vanquished by the Red Sox. But on Saturday, it was Pedro and Manny who caused the trouble. Here they were in game the Red Sox had to win, and their antics came close to having them thrown out. Up until Zimmer charged Pedro, the Yankees did nothing wrong. Someone watching a baseball game for the first time would come away from Saturday thinking the Red Sox are a bunch of evil jerks and the Yankees were just defending themselves.

And that I think is what's bothering Edward. Red Sox fans no longer have the high ground; they are no longer the nice losers who are worth rooting for. Their stars are jerks, and the team they hate is in control. People who have based the allegiance on the virtuousness of the Sox have a lot to think about today. I'm not surprised they don't want to watch the game.

Update: I should have read this first, but Irina Paley basically agrees with me.


Posted by David Pinto at 01:58 PM | League Championship Series | TrackBack (1)