Harsher punishments needed in baseball

I stopped playing baseball when I was 12, but my little brothers kept going throughout high school and are still big fans today. Despite my lack of playing, I still have a good bit of knowledge of how the game works. There’s one incident I remember when I was watching my little brother’s high school baseball game back when my family was stationed in Germany. His school was up against a team based out of Heidelberg. That school was known for having gigantic men roaming the classrooms (OK, kids, but they sure looked like men). I swear, every batter that stepped up to the plate needed an ID check to make sure they were indeed high schoolers.

Late in the game, Heidelberg was up by probably more than 10 runs. Their batter came up to the plate and laid down a bunt, which is a huge no-no in baseball. So naturally, a dad in the crowd yelled out, then told others in Spanish, “where I’m from, we’d hit the next two batters so they learn.”

A lot of factors went into that parent yelling that out, such as the machismo attitude of my culture (he’s Puerto Rican, as am I), but the biggest influence would be the “American way” of playing sports, particularly baseball.

To be fair, this is more prominent problem in the professional leagues than in high school, but it’s still a big problem.

This past week in baseball, Orioles’ Manny Machado was thrown at for a sin committed in a previous series against the Boston Red Sox. On April 21, Machado slid to second, inadvertently spiking Dustin Pedroia’s leg which caused him to miss three games. Machado denied he intentionally tried to injure Pedroia, which I tend to believe after watching the clip, but of course, Pedroia’s teammates came out for revenge.

I understand wanting to get your teammate’s back, but throwing a ball a near 90 mph to the body? That’s childish…if a child had a cannon for an arm, of course.

So when a pitcher beans a batter, that should be the end of the incident, right? No more revenge hits? Nope. That’s not how baseball works here. It’s an eye-for-an-eye world in MLB. You hit our guy, we hit your guy. So naturally, the other team’s pitcher will go after another random batter and that’s what starts fights.

Machado said it best about being thrown at in his very expletive rant during a post-game interview.

“If you’re going to [expletive] hit me, hit me,” he said. “Go ahead. [Expletive] hit me. Don’t let this [expletive] keep lingering, [expletive] around, and keep trying to hit people. It’s [expletive] [expletive]. It’s [expletive] [expletive]. MLB should do something about it. You have pitchers out there with [expletive] balls in their hands throwing 100 miles per hour trying to hit people. I’ve got a [expletive] bat, too. I could go up there and crush somebody if I wanted to. But you know what, I’ll get suspended for a year, and the pitchers only get suspended for two games.”

He has a point.

There was an incident where Machado threw his bat toward third base on a swing after an inside pitch. He was suspended for five games. Yes, he shouldn’t have thrown his bat to express his displeasure, but when a pitcher does it, that is widely accepted in American baseball.

It’s common knowledge that the baseball bat is a weapon and treating it as such should result in discipline. But what should be added to that “unwritten” book of common knowledge is the fact that a baseball is a weapon as well.

Think of it this way, would you rather have someone throw a ball at your head (or any body part for that matter) 100 mph while he stands 60 feet away from you or would you rather try to dodge a bat that’s being tossed at you from 90 feet away? The answer is probably neither, but if you really had to pick one, I’d pick the bat.

So how do you solve this problem? More discipline.

Pitchers get a slap in the wrist. A warning from the umpire during the game, maybe even an ejection. But that’s usually not until after multiple attempts at throwing at a batter. An even when a pitcher gets suspended, it’s just for a trivial amount of games like when Red Sox’s Matt Barnes was suspended four games for throwing at, you guessed it, Manny Machado. Being suspended four games is the equivalent of one start. You think that’s worth “having your teammate’s back” for? Absolutely.

How do you solve this epidemic of pitchers throwing at batters? Treat the baseballs as if you’d treat any other weapon and discipline harsher. Four games isn’t enough, especially when the action can result in far more damage than a “dirty” slide would.