The St. Louis Cardinals and Arizona Diamondbacks participated on Sunday in one of baseball’s most unusual, most nonsensical, most useless traditions, which is saying something for a sport so imbued in useless traditions.
I’m talking about the bench-clearing “brawls” that seem to happen once a month or so in the Major Leagues over a hit batter or a “disrespectful” flip of a bat or anything else seen as violating the game’s well-known yet uncodified rules of decorum.
On Sunday, Cardinals catcher Yadier Molina was at the center of the lastest bench-clearing incident when he was approached by irate Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo. It’s unclear exactly what Lovullo said, but per reports it involved cursing at Molina. The Cardinals catcher started yelling, getting closer to Lovullo as home plate umpire Tim Timmons tried to restrain him.
And then, as they always do at the smallest scuffle, players from both teams poured from the benches like an undammed river and collided like a cloudy stream meeting a clear ocean, meeting but not really mixing all that much.
Then in came the fielders for the Cardinals, the bullpen for the Diamondbacks, and suddenly a two-person verbal altercation had evolved into an intense shoving match. Little happened after that.
This is a common sight for any baseball fan. Whenever anything goes wrong, benches, bullpens and fielders coalesce, usually near home plate, and shove or trample or shout. Sometimes the scene gets more intense, and maybe a punch is thrown.
As far as I can see, a scene like that last one is the only time when bench clearing is justified. For example, when the then-Florida Marlins played the Washington Nationals in 2010 and Marlins pitcher Chris Volstad threw behind Nationals outfielder Nyjer Morgan. Morgan charged the mound and was greeted with a clothesline courtesy of Marlins first baseman Gaby Sanchez and fell to the ground, where Volstad tried to get on top of him and slug him in the face.
Volstad, mind you, was 6-foot-8, 230 pounds. Morgan was 6-foot-even, 185 pounds. Regardless of why Volstad threw behind him or why Morgan charged the mound, Volstad probably could have done some serious damage if left unchecked. Luckily, a teammate or coach got in the way.
Yet whenever there’s any disturbance much simpler than this, like the one on Sunday involving Molina and Lovullo, entire teams get in on the action. It’s a phenomenon that’s pretty unique to baseball in a couple of ways.
First is the unanimity. When fights happen in other sports, it’s usually between two people. In hockey, where fights happen on a regular basis, two players get into it while their teammates skate away and the referees eventually separate the combatants. Even in basketball’s most famous brawl ever — “the Malice at the Palace” — video shows Ben Wallace and Ron Artest getting physical with maybe two or three teammates holding them back while the rest of the teams look on. There’s no innate desire to get involved any time something flares up.
The second is frequency. Sure, the NBA, NHL and NFL have seen their share of fights, of altercations, of up-in-your-face name calling, but can you recall the last time benches cleared — that is, emptied entirely — in an NHL or NFL or NBA game? Yet for some reason, it happens ALL THE TIME in Major League Baseball.
Maybe it goes back to the unwritten rules of the game. Maybe it’s something to do for a relief pitcher who plays every fourth day and otherwise sits bored in the bullpen. But regardless, it’s only a matter of time until someone needlessly gets injured or trampled or punched for being somewhere he has no business being.
I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say running in from the bullpen because of some shoving merits a suspension — again, there are times when players helping their teammates is necessary — but baseball ought to do something to incentivize staying out of fights.
They make the league look spineless, they make the players look like children on a middle school playground and they make the fans — this fan, anyway — wonder why every single player on a baseball team needs to be involved in every shouting match.
Ethan Bauer is a sports writer. Follow him on Twitter @ebaueri and contact him at ebauer@alligator.org.
Bench-clearing brawls have been one of the mainstays in Major League Baseball over the last several decades.
