Don't Showboat, Jose Bautista, Retaliation

Bautista’s Game-Winning Homer Conveys Message, then he Conveys it Again

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Jose Bautista’s first home run Monday meant little on its own, save for being the slugger’s major league-leading 39th of the season.

His second home run Monday meant a lot more, at least to him.

The difference: What happened in between.

That would be the sixth-inning fastball that Yankees starter Ivan Nova sent spinning toward—and ultimately over—Bautista’s head.

The hitter took it as a response to his earlier bomb. Nova was more likely just wild, considering that it was his first start as a big leaguer. Bautista had words for the right-hander as he approached the mound, Nova didn’t back down at all and benches and bullpens quickly emptied onto the field.

Although no punches were thrown, the incident served as a prelude for an interesting response from Bautista after he hit another home run, in the eighth.

Baseball will tolerate a degree of showboating, so long as it’s in response to a Code violation. Bautista’s reaction to his second home run (the eventual game-winner, hit off of reliever David Robertson) started with a bat flip in conjunction with a glare toward the mound. It ended with one of the slowest home-run trots in the big leagues this season, and some fist pumping upon reaching the plate. (Watch it here.)

In addition is the notion that rookies must be tested, which, admitted Bautista, is what motivated his sixth-inning outburst, at least in part.

“I was just trying to see what kind of reaction I was going to get from him,” he said in the Bergen Record. “I was surprised to see he was pretty defiant. He was walking up toward me and flashing his hands up and started yelling.”

Part of Bautista’s motivation was to use Nova’s response to gauge intent. Despite the pitcher’s repeated assertion (in Spanish) that “I don’t want to hit you,” that, said Bautista, was “when I felt that the pitch was intentional.”

Bautista might have already been angry at a Toronto Star columnist who suggested that his power surge might be artificially fueled, using exactly zero pieces of evidence to back up his claim. (Bautista denied everything.)

Blue Jays fans can only hope that he continues to take out his anger on baseballs across the league.

– Jason

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No-Hitter Etiquette, Rich Harden, Ron Washington

No-Hitter in Hand, Harden Pulled

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Removing pitchers in the middle of no-hitters is getting to be downright commonplace these days.

Eight days after Twins manager Ron Gardenhire raised eyebrows for removing pitcher Kevin Slowey after 106 pitches over seven no-hit innings, Rangers manager Ron Washington did something similar with Rich Harden yesterday.

In Slowey’s case, he had recently been shelved due to elbow soreness, and his long-term effectiveness was more important to his manager than a longshot chance at finishing a no-hitter with an elevated pitch count.

Harden did Slowey one better, throwing his gem in his first start off the disabled list. A seventh-inning walk to Michael Cuddyer raised his pitch count to 111, with Jim Thome at the plate and the tying run on deck. It was all Washington needed to see.

Harden had no chance of throwing 150 pitches on the day—which is what it would have taken to complete the game at the pace he had set—and already possessed a storied injury history.

As pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, oddities about the moment were plentiful.

•  Slowey was watching the action from the Minnesota bench.
•  The plate umpire was Jim Joyce, himself at the center of a no-hitter controversy earlier this year when he incorrectly ruled that what would have been the final hitter of Armando Galarraga’s would-be perfect game reached base safely.
•  New Rangers owner Nolan Ryan—he of seven (full) no-hitters—was watching the game from the front row.

There may be no more prominent opponent of strict pitch counts than Ryan. Ron Washington is acutely aware of this. That he made the move anyway speaks to his conviction about the subject.

“He threw 111 pitches,” Ryan said of Harden in an MLB.com report. “He kept his stuff the whole time, but Ron didn’t have a choice but to take him out. You have to protect the player and do what’s best for the team. Ron did the right thing and Rich knew it.”

The no-hitter was broken up in the ninth, when Joe Mauer singled against close Neftali Feliz. If Harden needed a shoulder to cry on, Kevin Slowey was just down the hall.

– Jason

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Don't Help an Opponent, Francisco Cervelli, Vince Coleman, Willie McGee

Stop! In the Name of Glove

Posted on by Jason Turbow

There was a bit of hubbub in New York last week when Francisco Cervelli, normally a catcher for the Yankees, showed up at third base.

The clamor had less to do with Cervelli’s ability to make plays than the tools he used to make them. Midway through the game, TV cameras homed in on his Wilson model glove, smartly embroidered with the words “Wright No. 5.”

There is a Wright who wears No. 5 and plays third base in New York with a Wilson glove, but his home games aren’t at Yankee Stadium. It’s David Wright, the longtime third baseman for the Mets.

What, asked reporters later, was Cervelli doing with that glove?

“We have the same [glove] company,” Cervelli said in an MLB.com report. “That’s what they sent me, so I’ve got to use it. That’s my glove. I don’t know, maybe later when I’ve got more years in the big leagues, they’ll put my name on it. I don’t really care.”

It’s a far cry from Vince Coleman, whose actual glove was once used by an opponent. It was 1991, and Giants outfielder Willie McGee had his equipment stolen from the visitors’ locker room at Shea Stadium, so he turned to ex-teammate Coleman for backup. Using one of Coleman’s gloves, he recorded three putouts on the day.

(McGee was significantly happier with the result than were Coleman’s teammates on the Mets, who later fined him $10 per catch in kangaroo court.)

Cervelli’s tale also ended up in the Mets clubhouse, albeit a more circuitous route. Although he’s only played three innings at third base so far this season, he regularly takes ground balls there before games. When he left his glove on the turf when the Yankees plaed at Citi Field earlier this year, clubbies mistakenly returned it to Wright’s locker.

“He got confused and said, ‘I’m so sorry,’ ” said Cervelli. “I want him to sign my glove when the season’s done. I’m going to send it to him.”

– Jason

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Brett Gardner, Jeremy Bonderman, Retaliation

Living it Up in New York

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Sometimes the umpires know when to let ’em play.

Detroit starter Jeremy Bonderman drilled New York’s Brett Gardner with his first pitch of Wednesday night’s game, clear retaliation for Gardner’s takeout slide that injured Carlos Guillen on Monday. (Watch it here.)

(“If anyone over there thought it was a clean slide, we had a different opinion on that,” said Johnny Damon afterward, putting to rest any doubt about Bonderman’s intentions. That the response came two days later might be explained by the diagnosis that came down in the interim, confirming that what had been thought to be merely a ding was a deep bone bruise that would need weeks to heal.)

An immediate warning was issued by umpire Eric Cooper, in an effort to keep things from spiraling out of control.

Except that Miguel Cabrera then had to go and hit a pair of homers, possibly inspiring Yankees reliever Chad Gaudin to hit him in the ribs with a 91 mph fastball.

There was, apparently, sufficient doubt behind the intent for Gaudin to be allowed to stay in the game. (Tigers manager Jim Leyland disagreed, getting tossed after arguing for the merits of warning enforcement. “They’re going to the playoffs—we’re not going anywhere,” he said to Cooper, in comments picked up on the Fox Sports Detroit telecast and reported in the Detroit Free Press. Somebody is going to get hurt.”)

It evened out somewhat, when Detroit’s Enrique Gonzalez put a pitch behind Derek Jeter‘s back, and ran inside to both Robinson Cano and Mark Teixeira (each of whom hit first-inning homers).

After Cooper declined to identify Gaudin’s pitch as having intent, it would have been difficult for him to implicate Gonzalez on similar charges. There was also the fact that by drilling Cabrera, Gaudin had reignited a controversy that by all rights should have died. The Tigers were entitled to a response, and Cooper gave it to them.

* * *

One of the most entertaining pieces of any tit-for-tat beanball war is the creativity involved in blanket denials that come sweeping in from both sides. (Ozzie Guillen might be the only big league manager to steadfastly refuse to play the game—”Maybe people don’t believe that, but every time I get something done, I let you guys know who did it,” Guillen said about the concept of retaliation in the Chicago Sun-Times. ”And I got a lot of money paid to Major League Baseball because I say, ‘Yes, I did it’ “—although his admissions end up being far more amusing than anything he could fabricate.)

Yankees manager Joe Girardi did his part in the Bronx, insisting that Gaudin’s drilling of Cabrera made little strategic sense, eventually leading as it did to Girardi burning both David Robertson and Mariano Rivera in a game that New York would win, 9-5.

The players involved similarly chimed in:

  • “I don’t know. I don’t care,” said Cabrera in an MLB.com report, in response to a question about whether he felt he had been hit on purpose.
  • “I don’t know if it was [intentional] or not. That’s not for me to judge. It doesn’t really matter,” said Gardner about the pitch that hit him.
  • “I think guys can tell when you’re doing it on purpose. I didn’t,” said Gaudin, in denial. “This is baseball. It happens.”
  • “Next question,” said Bonderman, declining to discuss his pitch to Gardner. Of course, Bonderman was been suspended to start the season after drilling Minnesota’s Delmon Young at the end of last year.

Admission of intent, of course, is tantamount to signing your own suspension notice, so denials are status quo.

Although he was short with his answer, Bonderman opted for the most noble solution to the problem. While the public would enjoy a full dissertation on his actual motivation, the consequences for frankness in this situation won’t allow it. (Just ask Ozzie Guillen.) So rather than lying about the pitch in question getting away, Bonderman simply refused to discuss it.

Which is just fine by us.

– Jason

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A.J. Pierzynski, Carlos Quentin, Delmon Young, Delmon Young, Glen Perkins, J.J. Hardy, Juan Nieves, Retaliation, Sergio Santos

Twins-Sox Go Tit for Tat, then Start All Over Again

Posted on by Jason Turbow

The thing about retaliation is that its genesis can occasionally be difficult to pinpoint. In an attempt to score against the White Sox on Tuesday, Minnesota’s Delmon Young ran into White Sox catcher A.J. Pierzynski. Instead of sliding or attempting to bowl Pierzynski over, however, Young—who was out by several steps—went out of the baseline to throw his hands hard into the catcher’s face. (Watch it here.)

There was little chance of success on the play—Young didn’t even try to dislodge the ball—but he might have earned a degree of satisfaction. Perhaps it was a grudge against Pierzynski (which would hardly be shocking, given the general frequency of grudges against Pierzynski), but  it more likely had to do with a preceding pitch from reliever Sergio Santos, which Twins shortstop J.J. Hardy had to duck to avoid.

Santos is one of the game’s harder throwers; the pitch in question was a 94 mph fastball. There were two outs and first base was open—a great situation in which to drill a hitter.

If that pitch was indeed intentional, it was itself serving as retaliation, stemming from last week’s series between the teams, during which Chicago’s Carlos Quentin was hit three times.

Two of those pitches were thrown by Glen Perkins on Wednesday. After the second (which following an earlier Quentin homer) warnings were issued to both benches, spurring White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen to launch into a post-game diatribe during which he suggested that Perkins meant what he did.

“Everybody knows when you’re hit on purpose,” he said in the Chicago Sun Times. “To me, in my opinion, did this kid throw at the guy [Wednesday]? I don’t know, but in that situation it was so obvious and everybody thinks about it that way. He’s the only one who knows. But being in this game so long, first base open, a lefty behind him, he got his ass kicked, go hit the guy.

“I told my players, if you have any problems about somebody hitting you and you don’t like it, go get it and we’re behind you. I’ll be the first one behind you and I will protect you. I said in the [spring training team] meeting, ‘Don’t hit any players because you stink. Because one of the players might get hit, Get people out. But if you see somebody and you want to take care of yourself, that’s up to the players.’ ”

Guillen’s opinions, reported the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, were issued “despite the fact that Quentin stands close to the plate, leads the league in being hit by pitches and that the umpire was calling inside pitches off the plate for strikes that night.”

(For his part, Santos issued an emphatic denial. “If I was trying to hit someone, I would aim for the leg or the butt,” he said in an MLB.com report. “I was a hitter for many years and taking a baseball to the head is nothing to fool around with. I’ve had my fair share of 96- or 97-mph pitches in the back and legs. It is what it is and you move on. The last thing I want to do is hit someone in the head. I wouldn’t do that to my worst enemies. It got away and luckily it didn’t hit him.”)

Chicago’s bullpen coach, Juan Nieves, fueled things further with a burst of verbal bluster on WSCR (670 AM) in Chicago, saying that the White Sox weren’t afraid of the Twins, despite having lost 19 of the last 25 meetings between the clubs.

“There’s nothing that would please me more than having a brawl with them and kicking their rear,” he said on the air. “I’ve even thought of telling guys, ‘Hey [Matt] Thornton, smoke [Joe] Mauer, see if you can start a fight.”

This cumulatively represents a lot of calories burned on the subject of retaliation—how it’s delivered, and how it’s accepted—but if the goal of Perkins, Santos, Young or Nieves was to start a fight, all parties came up short.

Guillen even went so far as to offer backhanded praise to Young’s baserunning efforts. After calling the play “unnecessary,” he told the Chicago Tribune that “I like when baseball is aggressive. If anyone has a problem with that, there’s still a way they can resolve their problems.”

The way in question, according to many prognosticators, should have involved putting a baseball into Young’s ribs or thigh during the following day’s game. (Young had come up two innings after his non-slide, to lead off the 10th, but with Thornton trying to protect a 6-5 lead, it was hardly the time to send a message.)

Wednesday rang no different, however. In five at-bats, Young collected three hits (including a home run), scored two runs and was hit by precisely zero pitches.

This brings up interesting discrepancies when examining Guillen’s earlier comments in the Sun Times.

“I will protect my hitters myself,” he said in that report. “If I see somebody throw at somebody and I think it was on purpose, they will get hit. I guarantee it. Then, I’ll take my responsibility with fines and whatever they want to do.”

Perhaps Young’s non-slide doesn’t fall into the same category as throwing at somebody. Perhaps there was enough doubt about Perkins’ drilling of Quentin to give Guillen pause. That this is the same manager who has been known to order retaliatory strikes—see Tracey, Sean (find the reference within this story about Vicente Padilla—makes his hesitance in this instance peculiar.

In the end, the White Sox’ position was best summed up by pitching coach Don Cooper, who had earlier denied any part in ordering retaliation, in an MLB.com report.

“Let’s just keep our focus about winning games,” he said. “That’s the only thing that really matters.”

– Jason

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Bobby Thomson, Sign stealing

Stolen Signs and the Shot Heard ‘Round the World

Posted on by Jason Turbow

Bobby Thomson, who passed away yesterday, held an unusual place in baseball. Not a Hall of Famer, not even a superstar, he was nonetheless legendary, with his Shot Heard ’Round the World augmenting a long and successful career, during which he resided at the heart of the Giants’ batting order for his five best seasons.

Thomson will be forever linked to Ralph Branca, the Dodgers pitcher who served up the homer that’s kept them both famous. It was, and will always be, among the greatest moments in baseball history.

It’s also unique, in that its intrigue has grown over recent years, a half-century after it happened, as new information came out about the Giants’ proclivity for stealing signs that season, and questions arose about whether Thomson might have been signaled in advance of Branca’s fateful pitch.

None of it can detract from the gravity of the moment, or serve to deny Thomson his rightful place among baseball’s legends. Still, it’s a tale of Code-based intrigue, and brings new wrinkles to an otherwise well-worn story.

The original draft of The Baseball Codes offered a lengthier examination than was ultimately published. Today seems to be a good time to offer it up here.

Without question, the most infamous sign-relay system in baseball history—which inspired countless newspaper accounts and its own book-length examination—was the one used by the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds in 1951. That was the year of baseball’s greatest home run, Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ’Round the World,” which capped the Giants’ return from a huge August deficit to beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a three-game playoff and earned them a trip to the World Series.

The Giants’ system had been kept largely secret for a half-century, but was uncovered in 2001 by the Wall Street Journal’s Joshua Prager, who later wrote a book on the subject, “The Echoing Green.” Prager found that after a particularly rough stretch in mid-July 1951, New York manager Leo Durocher implemented a system with which the Giants expertly stole their opponents’ signs for the final 10 weeks of the season. During this stretch, New York went 40-14, after a solid if unspectacular 56-44 mark from April through July.

The Giants’ home ballpark, the Polo Grounds, offered the perfect setup for such a scheme, as the windows of the center-field clubhouse faced the field, giving a spotter a perfect sightline to the plate. It wasn’t exactly revolutionary to steal signs from that clubhouse—Bill Veeck alleged that as far back as John McGraw the team had someone looking through binoculars from that same vantage point, who would either raise or lower a shutter to signal the pitch.

The positioning was so favorable that even visiting teams used the setup to their advantage. Gene Mauch recalled that as a little-used infielder with the Cubs in 1948, he’d sit with a pair of binoculars in the Polo Grounds visitors’ clubhouse (located alongside the home locker room, it also had windows overlooking the field) and pick up the Giants’ signs. Mauch’s signal to Chicago’s hitters was a large can of peach nectar that he’d move back and forth across the sill—to the left for a curveball, to the right for a fastball and in the middle for a changeup. Because it was the Cubs, however, the signals were usually of little assistance. “I remember one game when Walker Cooper was catching and Dave Koslo was pitching (for the Giants) that I called every pitch,” he said in the Los Angeles Times. “I think we got three hits and one run.”

Mauch wasn’t the only Cub that season who knew his way around a spyglass. There was also Hank Schenz, who split duties with Mauch both at second base and behind the team’s binoculars. When Schenz, a journeyman, joined the Giants three seasons later, he appeared to be a good fit for the system that Durocher was about to install.

It was an electric signal that ran from the Polo Grounds’ clubhouse to the home bullpen. With it, someone sitting near the Giants’ locker-room window could press a button, which buzzed a bullpen phone. The system was simple and effective—no matter how hard anyone looked for an illicit signal coming from behind the center-field window, they wouldn’t see a thing. One buzz for fastball, twice for off-speed was the code.

Schenz was on the New York roster for the final two months of the season, during which he never came to the plate—possibly because he spent so many innings watching games from behind the clubhouse window. He was one of the first to man the buzzer, but much like his play on the field, his desire outstripped his talent, and he experienced occasional difficulties in properly decoding the opposition’s signals. The binoculars were soon passed to Herman Franks, a young coach whose days as a catcher had ended two seasons earlier (and who would go on to a long and storied career in sign thievery from the coaching ranks).

When the buzzer sounded, a bullpen member signaled the hitter, often with an indicator so subtle that it would go unnoticed by the opposition. Bullpen catcher Sal Yvars, for example, was said to occasionally tip fastballs simply by not moving at all. For something off-speed, he’d do something clearly visible from the plate, like stretch or toss a ball into the air.

(There is some debate about this. The Polo Grounds bullpens were 454 and 447 feet from home plate, making it questionable as to whether someone would be able to see a stretch or tossed baseball well enough to interpret it—to say nothing of the fact that, because of its notoriously bad drainage—the park’s site was actually shown to be lower than the adjacent Harlem River in an 1870’s map of the area—there was a significant dropoff to the outfield. The grade was so extreme that the managers in the dugouts could only see their outfielders from the waist up, which makes it even less likely that Yvars, at 5-foot-10, was easily visible from home plate. What’s beyond question is that the system—whatever it was—worked well.)

Durocher’s buzzer was of little use at first, as shortly after it was installed the Giants went on a 17-game road trip, during which time they dropped from eight games behind Brooklyn to 12 1/2 games back. New York was struggling as the Dodgers surged. “The Giants,” proclaimed Brooklyn manager Charlie Dressen, “is dead.”

The team returned to the Polo Grounds on Aug. 11, and a loss to open the homestand dropped them 13 ½ games back. This was the Giants’ first extended stretch with buzzer under hand, however—21 out of 24 games at home—and they subsequently took off, winning three straight from Philadelphia, then three more from the Dodgers. Three straight over Philly on the road. Two victories over Cincinnati, one from St. Louis and a four-game sweep of the Cubs gave New York 16 straight wins and brought the club to within five of the Dodgers.

The Giants never would have caught Brooklyn had they not won 14 of their final 18 road games in addition to their home success, but, as evidenced by Gene Mauch’s can of peach nectar with the Cubs, it’s clear that teams don’t need to be playing at home to steal signs from outside the field of play.

The Giants eventually tied the Dodgers atop the standings, and the season culminated in a three-game playoff. After splitting the first two, the Dodgers took a 4-1 lead into the ninth inning of game 3, setting up Thomson’s heroic home run to clinch the pennant. While since admitting to the sign-stealing scheme, however, the slugger has long denied—if sometimes half-heartedly—that he was tipped off to the pitch he hit out.

Branca was told about the Giants’ system in 1954, three years after Thomson’s homer, but never commented on it—even when a bylined article by Jimmie Piersall, then with the Washington Senators, in the May 1962 issue of Baseball Monthly, suggested that the hitter knew what was coming. (“Thomson says it never happened,” wrote Piersall, “but I’ll bet he could get an argument out of Ralph Branca, who threw the pitch.”)

It wasn’t until Prager reported on the entire affair that Branca broke his silence.

“When I heard those rumors and innuendoes, I made a decision not to speak about it,” Branca said in the Wall Street Journal. “I didn’t want to look like I was crying over spilled milk. Bobby and I are really, really good friends. He still hit the pitch.”

The baseball world is a bit poorer today.

– Jason

1
Kevin Slowey, No-Hitter Etiquette, Ron Gardenhire

Pulling Slowey Nothing to Get Worked Up Over

Posted on by Jason Turbow

It was a big deal Sunday, in a novelty kind of way, when Ron Gardenhire pulled Kevin Slowey from his start, despite the fact that his pitcher had not given up a hit to the A’s.

By almost all counts, it was the correct thing to do. It was Slowey’s first start since being skipped in the rotation due to elbow soreness, and he was on a short leash from the outset. He had thrown 106 pitches when he was pulled.

Some decry the concept of pitch counts in the modern game, but Slowey’s removal was not without precedent.

In 1997, Pittsburgh’s Francisco Cordova was lifted after 121 pitches and nine innings of no-hit ball against the Astros; reliever Ricardo Rincon worked one hitless frame and the Pirates won it in the 10th.

In the first combined no-hitter in National League history, Atlanta’s Kent Mercker was pulled after six innings in a 1991 game. It was just his second start of the year, after 44 relief appearances, most of which lasted just a single inning and none of which stretched beyond two. (Mark Wohlers and Alejandro Pena combined to shut down the Padres over the final three frames.)

Pitchers have been pulled from no-hitters because it’s early in the season (Anaheim’s Mark Langston was allowed only seven innings and 98 pitches against the Mariners in his first start of the 1991 campaign, which was reasonable after he got in only 16 innings of spring training work due to a lockout) and late (A’s pitcher Vida Blue threw five frames of no-hit ball against the Angels on the final day of the 1975 season before being removed to stay fresh for the playoffs.)

Then there was San Diego’s Clay Kirby, who was pulled from his 1970 no-hitter by manager Preston Gomez for a pinch hitter, because the Padres were losing and needed an offensive boost.

Gardenhire is in good company. If anyone still doubts his strategy, the bottom line is this: Slowey is still healthy enough to give it another go in his next start, and that counts more than anything.

– Jason

– Jason

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Alex Avila, Armando Galarraga, Brendan Ryan, Chris Carpenter, Gerald Laird, Teammate Relations

Dugout Dispute Dogs Detroit

Posted on by Jason Turbow

When Chris Carpenter upbraided St. Louis shortstop Brendan Ryan in the Cardinals dugout last week, not quite out of view of TV cameras, many people wrote it off as a notoriously hot-headed pitcher overreacting to a situation that was hardly dramatic. (Ryan was late to the field for the bottom of the first inning because he had been hitting in the cage as the first three batters in the Cardinals lineup made quick outs. He then compounded matters by grabbing the wrong glove and having to wait for the correct one to be delivered. Watch it here.)

Carpenter is in clear possession of a sharp-edged personality, so it was easy to pile on. When Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga did something remarkably similar yesterday, however, it became clear that this type of behavior is not necessarily reserved for the people from whom we most expect it.

After all, in watching his perfect game spoiled by a blown call, Galarraga showed more class and restraint than could reasonably be expected. So to see him flustered—completely undone over what was apparently some confusion with his catcher over pitch selection—served to illustrate what kind of line even the most collected pitchers walk under trying circumstances.

In Galarraga’s case, he had words near the bench with catcher Alex Avila at the end of the second inning of Detroit’s game against the White Sox, entering the dugout pointing and yelling. The Tigers’ other catcher, veteran Gerald Laird, stepped in to defend his would-be protégé, and tempers quickly escalated. (Watch it here.)

At least Carpenter made an effort to carry on his conversation away from prying eyes (although he ultimately didn’t make it far enough into the dugout tunnel to succeed). Galarraga’s dispute was totally undisguised.

Avila, Galarraga and Laird all described it afterward as just a few heated moments, but only Laird cut to the crux of the matter when identifying what exactly prompted him to intercede in a fight that wasn’t initially his.

“For [Galarraga] to come in and try to embarrass him in front of his teammates like that, I just didn’t think that was the right time to do it,” he told MLB.com.

In that regard, Laird is spot on. Players have angry words with teammates all the time—behind closed clubhouse doors. Opening it up for public scrutiny goes directly against the Code, which has an entire section devoted to protecting secrets of the trade.

In another odd twist, Fox Sports Detroit, which was televising the game in Michigan, opted not to air footage of the fight, nor did broadcasters Mario Impemba and Rod Allen ever mention it.

One unwritten rule of the media involves editing essential pieces out of a story at risk of credibility. By failing to reference the day’s key storyline, FSD appears to care more about appeasing the home team than informing fans.

FSD executive producer John Tuohey took responsibility, reported the Detroit News, saying that had the fight occurred during game action, rather than between innings during a commercial break, it would have made the air.

It’s a weak argument. Comcast SportsNet Chicago aired the entire affair, and it didn’t seem a bit out of place. People understand that things happen while other things are on the air. That’s what replays are for.

The Tigers won the game, so at least something went right for them.

– Jason

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Francisco Rodriguez, Protect Teammates

Mets Players Compelled to Back K-Rod, Even as they Shake Their Heads in Disgust

Posted on by Jason Turbow

By now, we all know what happened with Francisco Rodriguez—the fight with his father-in-law in the Mets’ family lounge at Citi Field; how he pummeled a much older man; his arrest and arraignment.

How does the Code play into it? Rodriguez is a member of the New York Mets, and his teammates are expected to stand up for him. Even if they can’t tolerate the guy, or what he did.

Carlos Beltran is a prime example. Talking to ESPN New York, he detailed this exact dilemma in clear terms:

It’s disappointing, man. You don’t want to see no one go through that. But it is what it is. Now he has to deal with that situation. Us, as players, as teammates, even though we don’t agree with what he did, we have to support him. He’s part of the ballclub. He’s going to come here and do his thing.

“You always protect your teammate, from management or the front office, even if they are wrong,” Jose Rijo told me a few years back. “They are your teammates, and you hate to see anything happen to them. Your teammate is like your girlfriend—once you get to know them, you love them no matter what.”

A more appropriate metaphor is teammates as brothers. Clubhouse fights are hardly uncommon, but the quickest way to get over them and build instant cohesion is for somebody wearing a different uniform to step in with an opinion on the matter.

Former Indians third baseman Al Rosen, a Jew, told a story about some vicious insults hurled his way from the dugout of the Chicago White Sox in the 1950s.

“Today they don’t allow bench jockeying, but in those days it was prevalent,” he said. “There was a lot of brutal stuff that went on. They tried to get to a player, and obviously a racial or religious epithet will do it. I went into the dugout at Comisky Park one time looking for the guy who had been on me for games and games. I looked right down the bench and said, ‘The son of a bitch who’s been saying that come on out.’ Nobody would.

“Saul Rogovin, who was Jewish and pitched for them, knew who it was, and he told me later on, ‘Al, I wanted to tell you who it was, but I was a teammate of his.’ He was put in that spot, and he couldn’t get out of it.”

As reported by Buster Olney, Francisco Rodriguez has far too big a contract to serve as reasonable trade bait for pretty much anybody (if his option kicks in, the Mets will be paying him $17.5 million by 2012), meaning he’ll likely be in New York for the long run.

If they haven’t already, his teammates should begin preparing their “no comments” right now.

– Jason

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David Bush, Don't Swing on the First Pitch After Back-to-Back Home RUns, Intimidation

D’Backs Go Deep Again and Again . . . and Again . . . and Again

Posted on by Jason Turbow

In June, we declared the antiquated unwritten baseball rule mandating that hitters take the first pitch after back-to-back home runs to be unequivocally dead.

It’s not that most hitters don’t abide by it—it’s that most hitters haven’t heard of it.

If more proof is needed, look toward the Arizona Diaondbacks’ efforts last night, when Adam LaRoche, Miguel Montero, Mark Reynolds and Stephen Drew took Milwaukee right-hander David Bush deep, all in a row, in the fourth inning. (Watch it here.)

Reynolds, batting after back-to-back homers, swung at (and missed) the first pitch he saw.

Drew watched one, but that’s because it was out of the strike zone.

The guy who followed them all, Gerardo Parra, swung at the first pitch, singling to right field.

The true Code violation here was Bush’s refusal to take advantage of the stipulation allowing him free reign to knock somebody down. The Arizona lineup had become all too comfortable at the plate, a development that Bush did nothing to discourage.

It’s another example of how the game has changed. Bob McClure recalls giving up back-to-back homers while pitching for the Brewers in the 1980s, and knocking down the next hitter, Dave Kingman, in response.

“The catcher, Charlie Moore, called for a fastball away, but he knew better,” he said. “He went through them all. He called for a fastball away. I said no. Curveball. No. Changeup. No. Fastball in. No. And then he goes (flip sign), and I nod. I threw it, and it was a good one. It went right underneath (Kingman) and almost flipped him. He was all dusty and his helmet was over here and he was grabbing at his bat and his helmet. . . . Back then, we were taught the 0-2 up and in. Home run, next guy: boom! Knock him down.”

It’s about more than respect. It’s about pitchers utilizing the tools at their disposal to better insure their own success. Angels pitcher Paul Foytack, the first pitcher to ever give up four consecutive homers also failed to utilize those tools, going down nearly as meekly as Bush.

It was 1963, and Foytack started by allowing consecutive home runs Cleveland’s Woody Held, pitcher Pedro Ramos (batting a robust .109 at the time) and Tito Francona. At that point, he said, he decided to send a message by knocking down the next hitter, rookie Larry Brown. Even that didn’t go quite as planned, however; Foytack missed his spot, left the ball over the plate, and Brown hit his first career home run—and the fourth in a row for the Indians.

That’s how it’s not supposed to go. Here’s a small handful of examples of more successful operations:

  • In 1944, Cardinals Walker Cooper, Whitey Kurowski and Danny Litwhiler hit consecutive homers against Reds pitcher Clyde Shoun. The next hitter, Marty Marion, was knocked down.
  • In 1991,Angels pitcher Scott Bailes hit Randy Velarde of the Yankees after giving up consecutive home runs.
  • In 1996, after the Red Sox connected for three home runs against the Angels, reliever Shawn Boskie threw a pitch behind Jose Canseco’s back.
  • In 2003, Astros pitcher Shane Reynolds gave up three home runs to the Pirates, then put a pitch under the chin of Brian Giles.
  • Mike Hegan: “In April of 1974, I hit behind Graig Nettles the whole month. Graig hit 11 home runs, and I was on my back 11 times. That’s the kind of thing that happened.”

None of this is intended to suggest that success merits retaliation. (The Commissioner’s office agrees; for his actions against New York, Bailes was ejected and fined $ 450.)

There is, however, importance in a pitcher’s ability to keep hitters light on their feet, and wondering at least a little about what his intentions might be on any given pitch. The more they think about their own safety, after all, the less they think about the act of hitting.

The Diamondbacks didn’t wonder about any of that with David Bush last night. Perhaps they should have.

– Jason

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