Braves-Padres historic 1984 brawl remembered

Most MLB brawls begin with an adrenaline rush for players, fans, and announcers. Players from both sides swarm from the dugouts and confront each other. Announcers exclaim, in almost these exact words, “And here come the bullpens!”

Yet most such incidents quickly fizzle into a couple of players shoving, yelling, and being restrained before order is quickly restored.

A few brawls feature unforgettable moments. Think Nolan Ryan putting Robin Ventura in a headlock. More recently, José Ramírez KOed Tim Anderson (with Cleveland Guardians radio announcer Tom Hamilton giving an epic “Down goes Anderson!” call).

Then there’s the brawl between the Atlanta Braves and San Diego Padres on Aug. 12, 1984. It featured almost everything that could possibly happen in a brawl. Players punching, players wrestling, players in headlocks, fans jumping on players, an umpire rolling around on the ground. Fans were arrested. Players and managers were ejected; so many that there remains confusion to this day how many people got booted. Numerous fines and suspensions followed.

It’s no surprise that 40 years later, the incident has achieved an almost mythical status as arguably the worst, and almost certainly the strangest, MLB brawl.

Setting the stage

The Padres entered the game with a 10.5-game lead on the second-place Braves in the NL West. They were hardly bitter rivals. But the bad vibes began brewing the day before the big brawl when Braves pitcher Pascual Pérez, charting pitches in his dugout, began yelling at Padres second baseman Alan Wiggins. The speedy Wiggins had attempted four bunts in the game, with two going for hits. The two players jawed with each other, setting the stage for the next day.

Storm warning

Pérez got the start in the infamous game. The 27-year-old right-hander, an All-Star the previous season, had a colorful reputation. He once missed a start when he somehow got lost on I-285, an Atlanta perimeter road; that earned him the nickname “Wrong-Way Pérez.”

On the very first pitch of the game, Pérez drilled Wiggins.

When Pérez batted in the bottom of the second, Padres starter Ed Whitson threw a pitch behind him. After the dugouts cleared, home-plate umpire Steve Rippley warned both teams. Whitson then struck out Pérez.

The Padres totally ignored that warning. Because when Pérez batted again in the fourth inning, Whitson tried to hit him, not once, not twice, but three times. He somehow missed with all three attempts, but the hijinks prompted Rippley to eject Whitson and Padres manager Dick Williams.

When Pérez came to the plate again in the sixth inning, pitcher Greg Booker threw a pitch at him and missed. He got ejected, along with acting manager Ozzie Virgil Sr.

By now, the Padres had thrown five pitches at Pérez and missed on all five attempts to hit him. A reasonable person might wonder how that could happen.

“I’m skinny,” the 6-foot-2, 160-pound Pérez succinctly told reporters after the game.

Given Pérez’s earlier HBP on Wiggins, followed by all the Padres’ attempts to retaliate, an explosion seemed imminent. That happened in the eighth inning.

The main event

Pérez came to the plate in the bottom of the eighth, and San Diego reliever Craig Lefferts succeeded where his teammates had failed — he hit Pérez.

Both benches cleared, and several different skirmishes broke out involving groups of two, three, or four players.

Braves TV announcer Pete Van Wieren tried to keep up with the furious action.

“Here come the Braves! They are going after Lefferts! … We’ve got one going now! And there are some hot-tempered individuals out there. … They’ve got about five separate fights going on out on the field.”

As players from both teams fought, some wrestling on the ground, Pérez walked over to his dugout. That led to the moment that sent the already wild brawl into overdrive. Padres outfielder Champ Summers charged toward the Atlanta dugout to confront Pérez. But wait — burly Braves slugger Bob Horner stepped out of the dugout and blocked Summers.

Horner was on the IL with a broken hand and had been watching the game in street clothes from the press box, but after seeing the trouble brewing, he suited up and went to the dugout.

“You didn’t have to be a brain surgeon to figure out what was going on,” Horner said (via Sabr.org ).

Horner and Summers jostled for a few seconds, which took them over near the stands. Suddenly drinks came flying out of the crowd, and several fans jumped into the melee. Players from both teams rushed over.

This was “Malice at the Palace”-level craziness, long before that infamous 2004 NBA skirmish.

“Oh, my! Oh, my!” Van Wieren announced. “This one is very close to getting totally out of control.”

Van Wieren was a great broadcaster, popular with fans, but if he considered this only “close to getting totally out of control,” you’d hate to see what he considered “totally” out of control.

Judge for yourself. Here’s a look at the entire eighth-inning melee.

Umpires, police, and stadium security finally restored order after a 10-minute delay. But five fans were arrested and six players were ejected, including Lefferts and Summers. Padres acting manager Jack Krol also got ejected, becoming the third San Diego manager tossed from the game.

Summers told NBC days later he “was just trying to make a point” when he charged Pérez.

“If he’s a team player and everything … why doesn’t he come back out there on the field with everybody else? Summers said. “All I wanted to do was just scare him anyhow. What am I going to do with that guy?”

“It’s unfortunate, it’s something you hate to see happen in this game,” Lefferts told NBC a few days later. “Unfortunately, they started it … and we finished it.”

Umpire crew chief John McSherry, who ended up on the ground scrambling for safety at one point, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution , “I’ve never seen violence like that. It’s a miracle somebody didn’t get seriously hurt.”

More trouble

Incredibly, the bad blood continued in the ninth inning. Braves manager Joe Torre inserted reliever Donnie Moore to finish the game, and he gave him specific instructions: Don’t throw at Graig Nettles. The two players had fought the previous inning.

“When I looked in his eye, I knew I had no chance,” Torre told MLB.com in 2013.

Moore hit Nettles with a pitch, Nettles charged the mound, the benches emptied, and Van Wieren got more practice as a fight announcer.

“And that pitch hits Graig Nettles, and he is going after Donnie Moore. Here we go again! … The benches are emptying again. … My, oh my, oh my! … I have never seen a ballgame where so many separate incidents have occurred. … Goose Gossage going after Donnie Moore. … Here goes Graig Nettles after Moore (again), and he was really tackled in front of that Braves dugout.

“And we’ve got another one breaking out — Gene Garber pulling Tim Flannery away from somebody. … And we’ve got more trouble breaking out. The Padres and some fans are getting into it over by the Padre dugout.”

A fan ran onto the field and got swarmed by Braves infielder Jerry Royster and other players. Padres infielder Kurt Bevacqua got nailed by a cup of beer from the stands, leading the Padres to confront a group of fans behind their dugout. Somehow, Whitson, who’d already been ejected for throwing at Pérez four times earlier in the game, ended up shirtless, screaming, and restrained by teammates.

“Look at those eyes,” Van Wieren said as the camera zoomed in on Whitson.

“If this keeps up, it’s just a matter of time before either a coach or somebody has a heart attack, or somebody gets seriously hurt,” fellow TBS Braves announcer Skip Caray said.

More ejections followed, including Torre. To prevent further incident, the umpires ordered all players from the dugouts into the clubhouses. Police officers were placed atop the respective dugouts. The game eventually ended, with the Braves winning, 5-3.

Many of the participants agreed that, as bad as things were, they could have been even worse.

“About one more pitch, and you’d have probably seen a full-scale riot out there,” Horner said at the time (via the AJC ). “Fans were getting a little crazy, and they’d probably had quite a bit to drink, and they were just about ready to come over the sides (in large numbers). I don’t think we had enough police out there to stop them.”

Aftermath

Following the game, Williams defended the Padres’ actions, saying “We will not be intimidated.” Torre called Williams an “idiot,” and compared him to Hitler.

The brawl immediately became the talk of the sports world. Torre told the New York Times a few days after the incident, “Everywhere I go, that’s all people want to talk about. I went out to dinner last night and, at the end of the meal, the waiter said: ‘I like the way you stuck it to that guy.’

“I said: ‘What guy?’ And he said: ‘You know, Dick Williams.'”

Williams and Torre both got fines and suspensions, of 10 and three days, respectively.

An additional five players earned suspensions: Summers and fellow Padres outfielder Bobby Brown, along with Braves players Gerald Perry, Steve Bedrosian, and Rick Mahler. Those players were all fined, as were an additional nine people.

Yet to this day, there remains some confusion about how many participants were ejected. Depending upon the source, there were anywhere from 13 to 17 participants ejected. Initial reports at the time, from sources including the New York Times , cited 13 ejections , but the Times also noted 16 ejections a few days later. Depending on the source today, you can find 13, 14, 16, 17, or 19 ejections cited. The Society for American Baseball Research lists 17 ejections, the most in an MLB game. The San Diego Union-Tribune concurs. That seems to be the generally accepted figure.

Fun fact: Pérez, the guy who started it all, did not get ejected.

Legacy

A number of players involved in that game have since died, many at a relatively young age. Ironically, Pérez and Summers, the two players most associated with the historic brawl, died within three weeks of each other in 2012. Moore tragically committed suicide in 1989. Wiggins died in 1991.

Yet for other players involved that day, vivid memories remain. Padres reliever Rich Gossage, one of those ejected, recalled the big fight in his autobiography, The Goose Is Loose .

“The donnybrook … was the best, most intense baseball fight I’ve ever seen or been involved with,” Gossage wrote . “Fists flew and skulls rattled. Unlike most baseball fights, which are more like hugging contests than real fisticuffs, guys on both teams got pasted.

“Ed Whitson came running out from the clubhouse completely deranged. He and Kurt Bevacqua went into the stands and duked it out with some hecklers. Stadium officials had to send out for the riot squad …”

The incident has been celebrated with brawl-themed merchandise.

In an interesting piece of enterprise reporting, the Sporting News’ Jason Foster tracked down bat boys who worked that game, for a 35th anniversary feature in 2019. Greg Kolb, 18 years old in 1984, recalled being “frightened” because he and the other bat boys were wearing team uniforms and were right in the middle of the huge eighth-inning melee.

“The bat boys from the other side came over,” Kolb said. “We were joking. We said, ‘Are we supposed to fight with each other?'”

Terry Kennedy, the Padres catcher that day, said at the time the entire game could have turned out differently, if not for one problem.

“It would’ve been a lot simpler if we’d hit Pérez his first time up,” Kennedy told the AJC . “The whole thing got pretty ridiculous.”

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