A bean for a bean because that’s how we do things around here
When you shorten the word “weblog” you get Blog – a regular, running commentary usually maintained by an individual on a website, according to Wikipedia. It’s a conversation unless people just read the daily post and don’t provide comments. I’m new to the world of blogging and guiltily I don’t always comment on what I’ve read. But I do know controversy evokes reaction so here we go.
Manny Ramirez is a target both literally and figuratively. “Man Ram” was suspended for 50 games this season for testing positive for a drug banned by Major League Baseball. The suspension cost Ramirez $7.7 million, or roughly 31% of his $25-million salary. On Monday the Dodgers played the Brewers, famous for their sausage races in their home ballpark. The Brewers starting pitcher threw inside to Manny as others have of late and wound up hitting the slugger. So you know what followed – a retaliation by Dodger pitcher Guillermo Mota who dotted the Home Run Derby champ, Prince Fielder in the the 9th inning. Well, tempers flared and Mota was thrown out. Fielder attempted to confront Mota in the tunnel but was restrained.
Baseball Man Law says that if you hit our guy, we’ll hit yours and send you a message you’d be foolish to forget. Mohandas K. Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” So baseball and its fraternity along with probably that of any male-dominated professional sport would say Gandhi never stood in the box with a 3-2 count. They’d be right but in the world of debate such logic is called “Red Herring Fallacy”. It means somebody side-stepped the issue instead of answering the question. What say you? Is the normative practice of sport what we want to perpetuate as we continue to live in a sports culture? Sorry if you’re more the artsy type. 80-90 thousand attend baseball, football and even Galaxy games. We’re a sports culture in Southern California if not the whole Western Hemisphere. And we always talk about the morality, the bad ethics, the stupidity of athletes. So now that the Blog is loaded, if you’re on the mound and the opposing team hit your batter last inning, do you throw at their best guy?
Teams will do anything to gain an advantage over your slugger. Imagine that you’re on the best team in baseball poised to bring a World Series back to Los Angeles for the first time since 1988. I remember. I was in 8th grade when we beat the Oakland A’s. I’m ready to bring it back. The other teams in the league are coming for Manny every at-bat. What are you going to do with your 90-mile-an-hour fastball because your loyalty can only be to one thing – YOUR CONVICTIONS or THE LAW OF THE CULTURE. If you don’t bean that guy with a pitch, you could be on a fast track back to the minor leagues and/or in the dog house with your teammates. How’s that for a blog post that doesn’t tell you what to do. Sound off.
Posted: by Norman Anthony
thinking about it right now I would like to say that I wouldnt hit him, but then thinking about the intensity of the game, and if by hitting our player it changed the outcome or outlook of a close game it would be hard to hold myself back. But then again the words of my dad (he’s a big baseball fan) saying how stupid it was to do that after the game would probably be all that i need to pitch as clean as i could.
PS: when you said sausage races all i could think of was Sausage! please Sausage! haha. good times.
I hear you Tommy gun. It comes down to intimidation tactics and whether or not that belongs in pro sports I think. So much of sports is mental and the bean ball is kind of like getting low bridged in basketball. As the victim, you think twice the next time which could affect performance. As the assailant, intimidation is that thing you can do but don’t have to. What’s hard is that the older I get the more it seems like honest players and coaches will become the sacrificial lambs hoping to redeem sports. I lose a lot too trying to keep my game clean….and I hate losing.