Opinion: Baseball Players Fighting on TV - So, How Old Are These Guys Anyway?

The image of the original box toy came inPhoto byOnline Source

Major League Baseball announced on Monday that 3 players and 3 coaches are getting suspensions for their part in Saturday’s benches-clearing brawl between the Cleveland Guardians and the Chicago White Sox.

That’s right, for a few minutes this past weekend we were all transported back to a schoolyard in 1953 where two guys shouted - Put up your dukes and started fighting right there on second base.

Why? Trash talking apparently.

Bad blood between the two clubs built up over several games. Sounds like the Hatfields and McCoys only this was on television and not back in Kentucky and West Virginia in 1863.

Tim Anderson (Chicago) and Jose Ramirez (Cleveland) duked it out for a few seconds before the benches cleared and 50+ players and coaches were pushing and tugging and otherwise looking fierce on the ballfield surrounded by 37,000 paying fans, including quite a few children. Not to mention those watching on television somewhere.

Tim Anderson got suspended 6 games and Ramirez 3. Both are appealing. Per their collective bargaining agreement, the players get to give their side of things and tell someone why it wasn’t their fault, why the other guy started it, and why they shouldn’t be suspended.

Even though there were 37,000 witnesses who saw the two of them, and only the two of them complete the play at second base - Ramirez was safe by the way. Then rise, take the traditional boxer’s stance with fists raised, and go at it.

What a game.

The coaches and managers, not having any such agreement are serving those suspensions tonight and tomorrow.

There are 162 baseball games played every season in the MLB, not counting playoffs. And with the average salary for a major league player in 2023 being $4.9 million that works out to $30,246 per game.

Not too bad. These guys get to play in our national pastime at a level that what, 1/1000th of 1 percent of Americans get a chance to play. Get to be on national television, and sign autographs as they warm up.

Get to sing the national anthem and play a game for 2 ½ hours before going back to the hotel or airport and off to the next city to do it all over again.

And if you forgot that number - doing it all for an average of $4.9 million a year.

What’s wrong with this picture because this isn’t the first time this has happened this year or last.

Or where a batter rushed the pitcher for throwing a pitch too close to their head. Or where teams start taunting the other side for stealing signs ending up with several players moving off the bench and taking to the field.

Baseball is a competitive sport. The people that play it get intense. This is their life, their livelihood. Their passion. Being good isn’t enough to make it to the major leagues.

You have to be persistent, dedicated, and lucky because one slip, one bad pitch or slide and you’re done. Replaced or back to the minor leagues waiting for another chance.

Remember the line in the 1989 movie, Field of Dreams where Shoeless Joe Jackson’s character talks about his suspension from baseball. (He was supposed to have cheated along with other players from the Chicago White Sox in the 1919 World Series and was suspended for the rest of his life by the commissioner.)

He talked about the smell of grass and his love for the game that he would have played for free if given the chance.

That’s the baseball we know and love but what’s happening to it today?

Okay, this is only one game, one bad moment, right? Only it isn’t.

The Houston Astros got caught stealing signs in a big way in 2017-2018. There were fines. There were suspensions of managers and front office personnel but interestingly enough the players involved remained mostly untouched, even though many were directly involved in what the commissioner said was an existential threat to the game of baseball.

MLB Commissioner eventually saw things differently and admitted earlier this year that he should have taken further actions with the players involved in that scandal but didn’t.

Maybe actions then might have prevented some of the fights and bench-clearing brawls we’ve seen over the past few years but maybe not.