Beanballs don't belong in the Olympics
Posted: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 2:15 AM
Here’s one export the United States really didn’t need to send to China – the beanball.
You’ve probably seen the video by now of the U.S.-China baseball game that featured two collisions at home plate and five hit batsmen, including one American who was hit in the head. For that last one, we have to give total credit to former major league player and manager Jim Lefebvre, who’s managing the Chinese Olympic team.
The reason you have to look to Lefebvre is that China is new to baseball, and playing dirty isn’t something that this country has ever been noted for. (Officials may fudge a birth certificate or two here and there to get underage gymnasts in, but their athletes play it by the rules.) It’s something the baseball team had to be taught.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of former major leaguers willing to teach dirty play. Davey Johnson, the American manager, is an old-school, spikes-high, drill-the-s.o.b.-in-the-ribs kind of manager who presided over one of the more confrontational teams ever to hit the big leagues, the 1986 Mets. So it’s no surprise that two of his players took out two of China’s catchers in collisions at the plate.
There’s no rule against running over the catcher; it’s a hard play, but it’s within the rules. Lefebvre’s response is in the unwritten rules of the big leagues – drill the guy who hit you. Now, it’s part of the international game as well.
The game wasn’t close – a 9-1 United States’ win. So the two teams spent the last half of it throwing at each other. The beaning blow bounced off Matt LaPorta’s helmet in the seventh. Lefebvre, who had been ejected for arguing in the sixth, said the pitch got away from his guy.
Right.
Baseball doesn’t need this kind of nonsense. Throwing inside and occasionally plunking someone is part of the game. Throwing at a player’s head isn’t. And it’s just a shame that people like Lefebvre are teaching it to other countries as an honorable way to settle a grudge.
While I’m at it, it’s also a shame that managers in the Olympics have to act like big league managers and get into screaming arguments with the umpires. Japan’s win against China featured histrionics that saw Canadian players throwing equipment on the field to show their unhappiness with the umpiring. Canada, too, is managed by a former major leaguer, Terry Puhl.
Baseball, like softball, has been dropped from the Olympics for 2012. Both could be reinstated for 2016, and you’d think baseball would try to show off its best side to get back into the good graces of the IOC.
It could start by throwing all the histrionics out of international baseball. A manager should be able to ask an umpire for an explanation of a call, but if he starts arguing and making a jackass of himself, he should be tossed for that game and the next one. Players who behave like the Canadians should be sent home immediately, even if it’s the first game of the tournament.
No other sport allows such nonsense. We all know that umpires don’t change their minds simply because you yell at them and question their parentage. I’ve seen umpires reverse calls after being asked to confer, but I’ve never seen a call changed by a manager’s tantrum.
So why allow them? Basketball coaches don’t run onto the floor in the middle of the game to spew spittle in a ref’s face. Football coaches may ride the refs, but they don’t stop the game to scream at the back judge. If they did, they’d be tossed and fined heavily by the league.
Baseball allows this garbage because that’s the way it’s been from the game’s earliest days. It’s tradition. And now it’s a tradition that’s being exported around the world by guys like Lefebvre.
If that’s the best they can bring to the Olympics, they don’t deserve to come back.
Not in 2012.
Not ever.
