I so appreciate the sports of the San Francisco Bay Area. Be it Colin Kaepernick or the Golden State Warriors, they give me material. And now Bryce Harper and my San Francisco Giants.
Yes, my San Francisco Giants. Full disclosure for those who have been under an FB rock, baseball is and has always been my favorite sport, and the Giants are my favorite team. I got it from my pops. I modeled my pitching motion after high-leg kicking Giants pitchers Juan Marichal and Vida Blue. I lived long enough to see them win 3 world series rings in 5 years to lap the hated Dodgers in titles. Simply put, over the past 8 years, it’s been good to be a Giants fan.
And with all that being said, I am 100% in support of Bryce Harper for going after Hunter Strickland for intentionally hitting him with a pitch upwards of 97 miles per hour.
This all played out with the larger backdrop of baseball trying to reign in “bean ball” wars.
Good luck with that.
Since its inception, baseball has long had an unwritten code that says if you throw at one of ours, we will throw at one of yours. Of course, the likes of Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan, and Roger Clemens took this internal vigilantism to an entirely different level, both for retribution and intimidation. It was all understood that this was how things were done.
Of course, the other complication is that there is a legitimate tactical justification for pitching inside. The gentlemen’s agreement has long been that the outside part of the plate belongs to pitchers and the inside belongs to hitters. If a hitter gets greedy trying to crowd the plate to take aggressive hacks at pitches on the outside corner, things must be put back into order and the inside fastball is the mechanism for doing so. While this will surely result in some batters being hit, to ban the tactic in of itself would tilt the balance of competition so far in the direction of hitters to the point of the game ceasing to be what we have known it to be.
Baseball’s challenge is against whom and when does it intervene; against the first violator or the second? On the first shot, a pitcher could have legitimately simply lost control of a pitch. Should he be thrown out of the game? If second offender (or retaliator) is ejected, that will essentially give the initiators a free shot. The bottom line is that as MLB moves to eliminate this internal policing of the game, hitters can no longer count on their pitcher to keep things in order.
So, when a guy throws a 97 mph baseball at a hitter, what the hell do we expect him to do? If Harper does not make a stand, then the message to the rest of the league is clear; you can throw at him with impunity!
None of that contextual backdrop applies to what Strickland did Monday in San Francisco. He was simply pissed off because 3 years ago in the playoffs, Bryce Harper hit not one, but two moonshot home runs off him. The espoused offense was that Harper ran around the bases too slow. I was at the game in Washington. The ball cleared the Jackie Robinson number in the upper deck. While I did not think it was funny at the time, you could not help but be impressed. The one in San Francisco cleared the stadium and landed in McCovey Cove. Simply put, if Harper decided to walk around the bases, I would have had no problem with it at all, and if Strickland did, he should have learned to throw a damn change up!
The other aspect of the incident that has garnered a lot of attention was the Giants’, especially all-star catcher Buster Posey, lackluster attempt to “protect their guy”. Admittedly, it is unusual for the catcher not to grab the hitter or at least attempt to do so in that situation. Some have speculated if this will affect how Posey is perceived in the locker room. That is an assessment that cannot be made without knowing how Strickland is perceived in the locker room. If he is viewed as some out of control lone wolf who takes matters into his own hands, Posey’s place in the locker room will not be affected one iota.
The truth is that these “ride or die” loyalty codes we men swear to adhere by unconditionally are anything but unconditional. We espouse to believe in them because they are often a rites of passage for peer group, cultural and societal acceptance. But the graveyard has its share of dudes who actually took that nonsense literally at a party or on the streets. Such blind loyalty is romanticized in the media. Buster Posey is neither Cookie from Empire nor Marines from A Few Good Men. No matter how sincerely committed, there will come a time when one must use your capacity to think for yourself, to dismiss the group code in favor of your own individual best interests. Doing so doesn’t make one cowardly or disloyal. It makes one intelligent. In the real world, when the rubber meets the road, the sheer practicality of self-preservation will rule the day, be it among the Bloods and Crips or the Mafia. We should expect no less from baseball players.
Simply put, if a loose cannon like Strickland fires off a 97 mph fastball at a hitter for no legitimate tactical reason, and without any pre-approval or reassurance from the leadership or team collective that they have his back, HE IS ON HIS OWN!
