Baseball Fight

“Violent” may be the word most associated with football; depending on the teams involved, I’d say the same holds true for hockey.  But baseball fans are more likely to think of their game as “pastoral” (or “boring” to its critics). All of which makes baseball fights so interesting and different from other sports.

One broke out Thursday night between the Royals and White Sox.  Long story short, you root for your team while blaming the other guys.  So, the Sox were in the right, and Royals starter Yordano Ventura is more than a little nuts.  I mean, who yells at a batter for hitting the ball back to him, the way Ventura did to Adam Eaton?  After the usual shoving and sideways punching, peace was restored, and there were no reported injuries, thank heavens.  See below.

The two biggest brawlers for the Sox appeared to be starting pitchers Chris Sale and Jeff Smardzija; Sale wanted to start things up again after the game when he tried to get into the Kansas City clubhouse.  In football, fans would be shouting, Yeah!  In baseball, we say, Are you nuts?  What if you break a hand?  And Sale already has suffered a broken foot in spring training.

“We’re not boxers, we’re baseball players,” Sale told reporters afterwards, and he wants everyone to know “this isn’t going to turn into ‘Fight Club’ or anything like that.”  Well, let’s keep a good thought.