Why the Jose Bautista punch is a good sign for baseball
The New York Post’s Joel Sherman also likes what the fight means for the game, but for different reasons:
Baseball is a very popular local sport now: You care about your team, but not much about those in other cities. But if the Rangers and Blue Jays were playing again tonight, would you watch?
After all the niceties — the hitter from one team tapping the shin guards of a catcher on the other, first base turning into talk show auditions for first baseman of one team and baserunners for another — forgive me if I prefer old-fashioned hatred. This is supposed to be competition, big-money, high-stress, that-guy-is-trying-to-take-what-I-want competition.
I am for making the game safer. Yay for rules that better shield catchers from concussion-inducing collisions, pivot men from late, high slides and batters from 98-mph headhunters. But this is still not a genteel sport. Even within a more enlightened, protective environment, fierce competition can flow — as the Rangers and Blue Jays exemplified.
After Odor’s ugly punch, remember: Baseball must not become hockey
Unsurprisingly, Canada wasn’t so stoked about what Odor did to Bautista. Also unsurprisingly, a hockey analogy was made by The Globe and Mail’s Dave Bidini:
Baseball is one of the few sports in which conversation is a large dimension of what happens on the field. Catchers talk to pitchers, batters talk to catchers, base runners talk to infielders, and, most poignantly, first basemen talk to batters who reach base, addressing them like a Wal-Mart greeter or a maître d’ asking if all is well with their evening. …
In Canada, we impulsively reached for hockey analogies quicker than your uncle for his pack of smokes. But if hockey still harbors the occasional fight or face wash or shivving or slew foot without it being perceived as a blight, the same cannot be said for baseball — a sport where men can throw 100-mile-an-hour fastballs and not be threatened by angry batters.
There exists a civility in the game that is different than that of any other sport. It shows us that we can play hard and play well and honorably, with care for each other, without losing our minds and throwing punches. Or at least that’s how it works with teams not named the Rangers. …
Note to Rougned: let’s keep the game civil and inherently good natured. Anything less, and the sport, and maybe more, is doomed.
