I’m a baseball fan. There’s lots I like about the game: the long season, the farm system, the patience in developing players, the way you have to put bad games behind you and start fresh on a new day. Of course those of us who are Dodger fans get to hear Vin Scully talk us through a summer’s evening providing stats and wisdom and humor along the way, all with the magical cadence that is his.
A couple of years ago I was surprised that Manny Ramirez got a fifty game suspension for performance enhancing drugs, but baseball knew that its soul was in danger if it did not root out this cancer. I think there’s another cancer growing in baseball: it’s called throwing a ball intentionally at a batter’s head. Baseball has moved from “understanding the game,” to assault with a deadly weapon. There’s the brushback pitch to make a batter keep on his toes, or supposedly to follow “an eye for an eye” kind of justice. But I’m witnessing a deteriorating progression, and baseball had better pay attention or it could lose its soul.
Throwing at a player’s head is going to cost someone a career, or perhaps even his life. It is assault for a pitcher to send his postage-stamp control at a batter’s face; the batter is defenseless. That warrants a fifty game suspension. It warrants a fifty-game suspension for the manager who called for the pitch (no pitcher will throw that pitch if the manager will not allow it). And somehow owners should have to be responsible. Baseball is a family sport; it claims to be our national pastime. Throwing at the batter’s head cheapens the game of baseball; in fact, that’s not baseball. Owners ought to demand that the game’s soul is protected, not only from drugs, but from assault.