April 11, 2007
Baseballs at Twenty Paces
The feud between Jose Guillen and Brendan Donnelly escalated last night after Donnelly struck out Jose and then hit Johjima with a pitch. Jose, ever the calm soul, handled the situation well:
Yesterday, in a game that was 14-1 in the eighth inning, Donnelly fanned Guillen on three pitches, punctuating the strikeout with a gesture that caught Guillen's ire.
Guillen had to be restrained from going after Donnelly, and the benches and bullpens emptied. When the game resumed, Donnelly hit the next batter, Kenji Johjima, prompting an immediate ejection from plate umpire Phil Cuzzi.
Jose wants to settle it on the field of honor:
"If he wants to take care of this problem, our clubhouses are pretty close, so he can have one of the batboys come get me outside and we can take care of this as men. That's it. That's all I have to say."
How about this? One of them stands on first base, the other on third. Each gets a bucket of balls and the two throw at each other until one falls down.
Nah, I say let them settle it another way:
Thumb War!
If Guillen had to be restrained from going after Donnelly after he merely struck him out (and fine, made a gesture he didn't like, big whoop...), shouldn't he - Guillen - have been thrown out of the game on the spot?
Because that seems pretty juvenile. Baseball can't be in the business of letting people take physical offense at activities that happen in the normal course of the game.
Guillen did get tossed right away. Both teams were warned before the game.
I think they should meet behind the swingset at 4pm. They can then have a cage match to the death in the jungle bars.
How many fueds does Guillen have now? I remember him getting all mad because Pedro Martinez had the audacity to hit him - or almost hit him - last year as well. Does he just want a rule implemented that no pitcher is allowed to even remotely come close to hitting him? How about they just all give in and serve him nothing but meatballs over the middle?
What a crybaby. No wonder every team cuts the guy loose despite his talent.
Paul-
Hit him? Pitchers are apparently not even allowed to strike him out anymore?
How many teams has this guy been on again? Somehow, I'm on Donnely's side here.
Donnelly should have just said he put too much pine tar on the ball, and couldn't control it very well...
How many teams has this guy been on again?
That would be 8 in a 10+ year career, 6 in the past 5 years.
Come to think of, pitchers shouldn't even look at Guillen. They should have to wear a veil over the face when they pitch to him, and they just will have to wing it up there somehow.