In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: showboating and celebrations These old stories help show just how far baseball has come.

Hitting home runs and crashing into catchers and 100-mph fastballs are ferocious things, but baseball is also a goddamned soap opera. For a sport filled with testosterone (both natural and otherwise), the amount of time guys spend on interpersonal drama is astounding. Designation as a professional athlete does not inure one to a well-placed emotional jab. And just like real life, if that jab comes from someone considered to be a close friend, it’s all the more painful. And if it takes time to retaliate for such a jab, then time is taken.

Rick Sutcliffe and Pedro Guerrero first became teammates in 1974, as 18-year-olds in the Dodgers organization, at Single-A Bellingham, Washington. Three years later, both were at Triple-A Albuquerque, as roommates and close friends. “When he didn’t have any money, I used to loan him money,” Sutcliffe told the Chicago Tribune. “I used to loan him my car. He used to ride around town in my car, and that’s how he met his wife.”

They remained friendly after Sutcliffe was traded to Cleveland after the 1981 season, then joined the Cubs in ’84. In 1987, however, things changed. In a game at Wrigley Field, Guerrero crushed a Sutcliffe pitch onto Waveland Avenue for a solo home run. It was hardly damaging, as the Cubs still led, 9-3, but it was Guerrero’s response that got under the pitcher’s skin.

Guerrero stood in the batter’s box and watched his home run until it left the stadium. Then he waved it bye-bye. With his team down by six runs. With his good friend on the mound.

Sutcliffe looked toward the plate in disbelief, shocked that someone he felt so close to could show him up like that. He responded by motioning with his arms and shouting for Guererro to get moving.

“I don’t say nothing to you when you strike my butt out,” Guerreo spat back, and went into less of a home-run trot than a home-run saunter, strolling languidy around the bases as Sutcliffe watched, seething.

“For a friend to embarrass me like that . . . maybe I better re-examine just how good a friend he is,” said Sutcliffe after the game. For his part, Guerrero insisted that there was nothing personal behind his actions, that it was just his style. He even went so far as to say, “I hope he will forget about it.”

Sutcliffe didn’t forget about it.

The two next faced each other 10 months later, in June, 1988, also at Wrigley Field. With runners on first and second, Sutcliffe walked Guerrero on four pitches, aiming the fourth offering just under his chin. “They were roommates in the minor leagues, and Sutcliffe even let him use his car,” said Cubs first baseman Mark Grace, looking back. “He said, ‘Now you’re going to do that to me? Here you go, son.’ ”

Guerrero glowered at the pitcher, stepped slowly from the batter’s box and tossed his bat toward the Dodgers dugout. The two started yelling at each other and then charged, though they were separated by other players before they could connect.

After the game, Sutcliffe was terse. “I ain’t got nothing to say about that,” he said in a Tribune report. “I take care of those things myself. It’s the same old thing.”

Sutcliffe’s message seemed lost on Guerrero. “I don’t know what his problem is,” said the Dodgers star after the game, adding that he’d done nothing to show the pitcher up.

Lesson not learned.

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: showboating and celebrations These old stories help show just how far baseball has come.

After St. Louis catcher Gene Oliver hit a long home run against Don Drysdale at Dodger Stadium, he watched the ball for a beat longer than usual, then compounded the mistake by saying, loud enough for Drysdale to hear, “Hey, bat boy, come get the bat.”

In Oliver’s next at-bat, Drysdale drilled him hard enough to buckle the hitter to the dirt. As the St. Louis trainer tended to the wounded player, Drysdale shouted, “Hey bat boy, come get Oliver.”

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: showboating and celebrations These old stories help show just how far baseball has come.

Outfielder Darrin Jackson: “I’ve got an interesting story from 1988. At that time, Goose Gossage (I’m giving you names here because it was a learning experience) was closing for us with the Chicago Cubs.

One of the unwritten rules you learn the tough way as a rookie is, when you hit a ball off a veteran like Goose Gossage, either fair or foul, if it’s going to be way out of there, you don’t stand there watching it. You don’t stand there and say, “Is it fair or is it foul, fair or foul … oh, it’s foul.”

That’s bad luck for you as a young hitter, because someone like Goose Gossage is standing right there staring at you while you watch the ball. If it’s that close, you run. Well, that’s what Ron Gant [then in his rookie season, with Atlanta] did, and Ron Gant didn’t run. The next pitch was in his ribs. That was definitely a learning experience for Ron Gant, I would have to say.

If it’s foul by 100 feet, you stand there, that’s fine. Admire a foul strike. But when it’s on the border, veterans will frown upon it, especially if it’s some young kid standing there watching the ball. Run the bases.

In lieu of actual baseball, I’ll be posting snippets that were cut from The Baseball Codes as a way of amusing myself and, hopefully, you. Today’s theme: showboating and celebrations These old stories help show just how far baseball has come.

Jim Palmer: “You never want to show up guys. My best story is the last year I won 20 games [1978]. I had hurt my elbow, and I went from something like 12-4 to 13-12, and I had seven more starts. I had to win them all to win 20, and back then it was a big thing to win 20 games. [It was actually 1977, Palmer’s second-to-last 20-win season. He was 13-11 on Aug. 26, and won seven of his last eight starts, with one no-decision, to finish 20-11.]

“I was going for number 19 in Cleveland on a Saturday afternoon. Football season had started. It was late September, and I was pitching against Dennis Eckersley, who was a starter at the time. Dennis is striking guys out, and then shooting them [with his extended fingers] and blowing the end of the pistol. Our guys aren’t happy. In baseball, if you’re a pitcher, your job is to get hitters out, and if you’re a hitter it’s to get hits. You don’t celebrate your own feats. But here he is, he’s blowing them off the field.

“It’s a 1-1 ballgame, bottom of the eighth, and I load the bases with nobody out: A leadoff hit, a couple of bunts, DeCinces falls down, I slip, because it’s a horrible ballpark anyway, and now it’s football season and it’s wet. The bases are loaded, and I’ve got Andre Thornton, their No. 1 RBI guy coming up, then Bruce Bochte, who hit .300 four straight years, and Rico Carty, who’d had hit .366 and led the NL in hitting about three years earlier.

“I didn’t know how to get Thornton out. He was a great low-ball hitter, but an out-over-the-plate fastball hitter, too. I throw him a first pitch up and in, and he pops up to Mark Belanger.

“I get 2-2 on Bochte and he keeps fouling balls off. Then he strikes out on a high fastball. I said, “Jeez, I might have a chance to get out of this.

“Rico Carty comes up. Rico always used to talk to you. He’s not as bad as Cliff Johnson, who if you pitched him in—because he couldn’t hit the ball in—he’d growl, “Hey, keep on comin’ in there. You’re gonna pay!” He was just trying to talk you out of throwing it where he couldn’t hit it.

“I’d thrown Rico a slider low and away earlier in the year, and he hit it about 440 feet to right center for a home run. I’m thinking, “It’s 1-1 and I have a chance to get out of this, then we have Murray and Singleton and the heart of our order in the top of the ninth.” I’ve only got one more start coming up, so I’ve got to get Carty out somehow. I throw him a high fastball, and he takes it! He never took those. Ball one. Throw him another one, ball two. He always swung at those pitches.

“The wind is blowing out a little bit, and the fences are in that year—they used to move them in and out depending on what type of offensive year they wanted to have. I figure that I can’t throw him a slider because he hit that for a home run earlier in the year, so I’ll take a little off my fastball and hope he gets out in front. I throw him a fastball about thigh-high down and away, and he hits it off the end of the bat to center field. The wind’s blowing out, and Bumbry goes back … and back … and back. Al wasn’t a real big guy, probably 5-foot-8, and he jumps and catches it right where it would have either gone off the top of the wall, or over it. It was as close as I’ve ever come to throwing a grand slam, but Bumbry caught it.

“We come up to hit. Here’s Eckersley, he’d probably struck out 10 or 11 [12, actually], pulled those six-shooters out a lot on the day, and guys are still trying to beat him. Singleton and Murray hit two of the longest home runs I’ve ever seen, back-to-back, and we end up winning 4-1.

“The next day I see Dennis in the outfield, and I said “Dennis. I know you’re young, and I know you speak “Eckinese,” as we used to call it, and I hope you understand how great a future you have … but when you strike a guy out, pretend it’s an accident and go on to the next guy. These guys want to beat you bad enough, especially when you’re a little bit brash. There’s an arrogance there. It’s all right to be good, and it’s all right to have a lot of self-confidence, but let everybody else toot your horn for you. When you strike people out, get the ball and just walk off the field.”