In St. Louis yesterday, Phillies reliever Brett Oberholtzer knocked down catcher Yadier Molina with an inside pitch at the knees. Molina, having pitched forward to avoid it, ended up face down in the dirt, over the plate, bat still in his hand. Then he did some push-ups. (Watch it here.)

You can’t intimidate me.

Most hitters opt for less representational manifestations of that kind of message, opting simply to get back into the batter’s box as if nothing had happened. Frank Robinson would actually move closer to the plate. But push-ups?

You can’t intimidate me.

Pete Rose made a point of sprinting to first base after being hit by a pitch, to prove that not only could he not be intimidated, he also couldn’t be physically hurt. Guys like Stan Musial and Ted Williams took pleasure in abusing pitchers who threw too far inside, following knockdowns with extra-base hits. Just last year Andrew McCutchen set precedent for Molina, doing push-ups of his own after being knocked down in a game against Cincinnati, and then hitting a double.

The notion of anti-intimidation has a rich history in baseball, never more prominently enacted than by Jackie Robinson early in a career in which opposing pitchers made him one of the most tested batters in big league history. In his excellent book, Baseball’s Great Experiment, Jules Tygiel described a game from 1946, when Robinson still played for the minor league Montreal Royals:

Paul Derringer, a thirty-nine-year-old former major league hurler who had won 223 games over his fifteen-year career, faced Robinson in an April exhibition game. The Kentucky-born player told [Montreal manager Clay] Hopper that he would test the black athlete. The first time Robinson came to the plate, Derringer hurled a fastball at his head. “He knocked him down all right,” said Hopper, “Forced him to put his chin right in the dirt.”

Robinson stepped back in and Derringer threw a second pitch that headed at him and then broke sharply over the inside corner. Robinson lashed the ball on a line over the third baseman’s head for a single.

Two innings later, Derringer again decked Robinson. This time the angry batter drove the next pitch into left-center for a triple. After the game Derringer confided to Hopper, one southerner to another, “Clay, your colored boy is going to do all right.”

And Molina? On the pitch following his batter’s-box calisthenics, he singled into center field. Even if Oberholtzer’s knockdown was unintentional, Molina sent a powerful message to the rest of the league.

You can’t intimidate me.