POSTED: Friday August 13th 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

What Baseball Could Be... Provided the Rule Book Gets Thrown out the Window

With the brawl between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Cincinnati Reds earlier this week, baseball got a taste of the kind of excitement usually reserved for the World Series. Was it really that bad for the game?

The St. Louis Cardinals completed the three-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds on Wednesday, a series characterized by one of the most bizarre incidents in baseball, which says a lot, none of it flattering, about the sport itself.

Let the record show that on one August 2010 afternoon/evening in Cincinnati, Ohio regular-season baseball became mildly entertaining. Of course, the record will also show that following the brief well-documented five-minute brawl between the Reds and the Cardinals it returned to its normal two-minutes-between-pitches pace. And widespread realization sunk in that the two-and-a-half pitches that normally would have taken place over the course of the fight wouldn’t have even been enough to make up even one at-bat. Man, baseball is slow. Hell, even the brawl itself was slow by brawl standards, but it did make for a nice reprieve from the everyday (at least during the summer) nine innings.

The point is whatever led Red Brandon Phillips to suffer temporary brain damage, trash talk the Cardinals before the game, and then tap Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina on his shin pads with his bat, whatever “that” was, Major League Baseball should definitely consider instituting some kind of rule to allow it to happen regularly, hell even find some way to make it happen regularly… pay off some stooge on a random team every few months to say something stupid about his team’s soon-to-be opponents’ starting pitcher’s wife and have him do something even more stupid like make a sarcastic friendly gesture as he steps into the batter’s box for the first time.

I honestly don’t know where the MLB would find another willing stoolie to pull the same or similar thoughtless stunt, but maybe they can brainstorm alongside Phillips, allow him to head a summit of sorts. He may not be all that bright, but there must be at least some ideas in that numbskull of his. Something did possess him to treat Molina like an old war buddy he had plans to go drinking with following the game, after all. My guess? A little obnoxiousness mixed in with a happy drunkenness of some sort. Now, if only baseball can harness this “boneheaditis” to its own benefit.

As a result of the brawl, managers Tony La Russa and Dusty Baker were each suspended two games apiece and Reds pitcher Johnny Cueto got seven games for kicking away like a wild man spasming inside the octagon, pitted against Anderson Silva and trying his best to last at least 10 seconds. Oh, he survived the brawl, but just made himself look like a fool in so doing.

In terms of baseball brawls, it definitely ranks right up there. Shades of the 2003 American League Championship Series between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, perhaps? I don’t think anything will ever rate above Pedro Martinez deflecting an incoming Don Zimmer onto the ground in terms of shock and entertainment value, but Phillips’s antics definitely come close.

All that said, in terms of overall value, baseball is still lacking. Oh, sure it’s popular, and NASCAR by comparison definitely makes each pitch look like the climax of the next Michael Bay film, but get real: When a significant brawl only takes place once every half-year, there are 162 long games during a regular season, only eight teams total make the playoffs, with four of those teams having their seasons extended possibly by a mere three games, it all adds up to one undeniable conclusion: changes need to be made.

The game doesn’t lend itself to a decent casual viewing experience, and, unless your team is the Yankees, it stands to reason that you will only make the playoffs like once every five years if you’re lucky, thus making its worth to even the game’s most hardcore fans questionable as well.

An acquaintance of mine once said that baseball is the only sport in which at the start of every season every fan believes his team has a realistic chance. A chance at what? I’m not sure. Futility, maybe? A long post-season? Overpaying some one-season-wonder pitcher for one half-season’s half-decent work before he goes down with tendonitis of the elbow? Trading away the farm, literally, for a player on a hot streak at the trade deadline, which, taking the actual odds into account, likely won’t even lead to a wild-card berth? The next public-relations scandal when it is revealed that the team’s one Hall-of-Fame-caliber player from way back when is suspected of having doped? What?

When all is said and done, yes the Cardinals won the skirmish and even the battle. And, at 10-5 against the Reds this season, they’re even winning the war… but when a war consists of 18 games, each characterized by a predetermined rest period where players and fans alike get the opportunity to stretch their arms and legs, is it really a war? More like a cross-country trip in an 18-wheeler with bathroom breaks at truck stops scattered in between.

The Reds and Cardinals showed us what true hate is. Now that we’ve seen it, can we ever go back? We always seem to (the 1994 strike would attest to that). But we shouldn’t have to.

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Keywords · Brandon Phillips · Yadier Molina · Cincinnati Reds · Cardinals · Tony La Russa · Dusty Baker · Johnny Cueto

Name: John Waverly
Organization: TheGetRealWorld.com
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