"Can't we all just get along?"

One of the things that definitely makes the highlight videos each time it happens is a bench-clearing brawl during a baseball game.  In football and hockey, they get all violent and bloody, but in baseball, especially since the decline of steroid use, fights between two teams are more psychological than physical.  Many times, pitchers hit batters on purpose, usually in retaliation for something that happened earlier in the game.  Nolan Ryan says it's very common, and if one of your guys is hit, it is your duty as his teammate to make sure that if your catcher calls for an inside pitch, you throw it REALLY inside.  I'm sure there will be a handful of bench-clearing episodes this season, and I will give my expert psychoanalysis of each one (I sharpened my psychoanalysis skills by trying to figure out my ex-husband, but I digress...).

Yesterday, during the Nationals/Cardinals game, Nats' soon-to-be-unemployed center fielder Nyjer Morgan was a little too aggressive running to first base, and ran into Cardinals' first baseman Albert Pujols.  Albert shook his wrist very dramatically, letting everyone know that he was "hurt."  (Whether he was really hurt or not is not known; he did what a lot of players would do and played up the injury.  That is when the psychological game started).  So after that inning was over, the Cardinals' Chris Carpenter (who I've mentioned in prior posts) decides to hit Laynce Nix.  He says it was unintentional, but whatever.  Then in the inning after that, the Nats' Liván Hernandez hits Colby Rasmus.  That probably didn't hurt, because Liván's fastball is about 30 miles per hour, but he hit him nonetheless.  So after that, the Cardinals send reliever (and former Nationial) Miguel Batista to the mound, and HE his a batter (Ian Desmond, who I would probably hit too, so he could stop committing so many errors at shortstop).  That's when both benches cleared, and both managers (Tony LaRussa and Jim Riggleman) had to be separated.  Now, I know it's the manager's job to defend his players, so I'm sure Tony and Jim were just acting, probably discussing where they would go out to dinner that night.  Only Batista was ejected, because even though both benches cleared, no one threw any punches and no one went into a "'roid rage."

As a die-hard baseball fan, I take bench-clearing brawls with a grain of salt.  They happen, and then life goes on.  What annoys me is when the media just won't let the incident go.  After yesterday's game, Tony LaRussa ended his press conference after only 2 minutes, because all anyone wanted to talk about was who hit who and why.  Never mind who won (the Nationals, 7-2), who hit well (Adam LaRoche and Matt Holliday), or who hit a home run (no one); all the talk was about the "brawl" that wasn't.

There's no avoiding scuffles and bench-clearing drama in baseball - that's what some would say makes the game "exciting."  Heck, these two same teams got into it at the last game we went to at Nationals Park last season, and it WAS kind of exciting being there and booing at the umpires!  But when the arguing is over and the guilty players have been ejected, let's sit back and enjoy the rest of the game, because chances are that after that episode, the players will play with such competitiveness and emotion that they will provide their own excitement until the game is over.