Or rink, or court, or whatever. I’m speaking of criminal charges. Have police ever stepped in and arrested players for a fight during a game?
Todd Bertuzzi was charged and pleaded guilty after sucker punching Steve Moore, ending Moore’s career.
Eric Cantona while playing for Man U.
At the final whistle as he was leaving the field of play some guy in the crowd insulted him, Cantona saw his arse and jumped over the barrier wall and Kung-Fu kicked the bloke.
Joey Barton (Newcastle United) is currently serving 6 months in jail for beating up a bloke outside a McDonalds.
During a training session whilst Barton was with Man City he beat up a fellow team member, he’s on a suspended sentence for that.
There are several on this list including the aforementioned Mr. Bertuzzi.
Also shall we not forget the Malice at the Palace. (I’ll admit I’d not heard that before I went and looked for a cite just now)
I’m not sure this really counts – looking up the Wiki story, he wasn’t actually charged until months later, and doesn’t seem to have spent even a day in jail.
Why wouldn’t it count? He commited an act of violence, was charged, and pleaded guilty. What else are you looking for?
From Wiki:
Why would he spend any time in jail if it was not part of the plea agreement?
He wasn’t charged right away because there was some debate about which jurisdiction should bring the charges against him. Bertuzzi was in Italy with team Canada when the charges were announced. It was a brutal attack, surely he would have served jail time if not for the plea bargain they negotiated.
Another football one: Duncan Ferguson, whilst playing for Rangers in a pre-season friendly game against Raith Rovers, head-butted John McStay. The incident was reported to the police as an assault and he ended up serving approx 2 months of a 6 month sentence in Glasgow’s Barlinnie prison IIRC, one of the worst prisons in the UK.
Sending a player to jail over something like that is ridiculous on the face of it - worse happens every weekend of the football season up and down the country. In Ferguson’s case, I believe he was on probation, or had been before a judge that many times for assault, drunk and disorderly etc, that it was the last straw and he had to do some time.
Ah, the memories of Duncan 
He was a great player.
Josen Offerman was charged with assault for this incident
I’m not sure if he was convicted or not.
Dave Winfield of the Yankees was famously arrested at the ballpark in Toronto… for violence against a seagull, which he beaned with a baseball.
Not necessarily. As an aside, people often seem to assume that if there was a plea bargain, it means the accused got off easily. That’s not the case. The function of the Crown when negotiating with defence is to see if they can reach agreement on a sentence that is within the generally accepted range for that particular offence. That involves researching the sentences that courts have given in dealing with that offence in that particular jurisdiction. In the Canadian system, judges have considerable discretion in sentencing, to make the sentence fit the crime and the offender. When speaking to sentence, both Crown and defence do their best to determine what the likely range of sentence will be.
The Crown may agree to a sentence towards the low end of the range as a result of the accused being willing to plead guilty, sparing the cost of the trial, the stress on the Crown witnesses, and the accused’s recognition of his own misconduct. Another factor is that the Crown has to consider the likelihood of a conviction if the matter goes to trial. Even so, the Crown will still be looking for a sentence within the range.
Looking at the Bertuzzi matter, the first thing to remember is that there have not been a lot of convictions for assault at the pro sports level, because players in violent sports have implicitly accepted that they will be hit in ways that off-ice/off-field would be an assault. You can consent to be assaulted. That means that in practice, it is not easy to get a conviction for assault for a hit that occurs during a game. The Crown doesn’t just have to show that A hit B; the Crown has to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that A’s conduct was well outside the acceptable range of violence in that particular sport. That’s a pretty hard burden to meet in a sport like hockey.
The difficulty of getting a conviction may have factored into the Crown’s decision to accept a guilty plea and a conditional sentence. It’s pretty hard to say with certainty that if the matter had gone to trial, Bertuzzi would have got jail time. He could just as easily have been acquitted.
And even if he had been convicted, what would be the acceptable range of sentence? Since there are so few convictions of pro athletes for assault during the game, it’s hard to determine what the sentence should be - what the range is. Again, the fact that hockey players go onto the ice, consenting to being hit in ways that would be an assault off-ice, raises an issue for sentence. How does a sentencing judge take that into consideration? The judge doesn’t say, “what would I give for a sentence if this happened between strangers on the street?” The judge has to say, “Knowing that the victim of the assault consented to some violence, how far above the acceptable level of violence was this assault?”
Now, at least there is one precedent on a potential sentence, if the issue comes up again.
Jeeze, I know there are unwritten “rules” in baseball about pitcher/hitter relations, but you can’t attack someone with a baseball bat, even if he did just dot you!
Northern Piper, this Todd Bertuzzi case is quite interesting, due to as you say the high level of violence in hockey to start with. I think most people who saw that hit pretty much agreed on it - hits in hockey are expected and part of the game, but you don’t break somebody’s neck. You’ve probably heard about the outcry in Calgary now that Bertuzzi has been traded here - there are many people who don’t want a “dirty” player here.
He was given two years special probation[sup]1[/sup]. The charges will be dropped if he doesn’t violate the terms of the probation. So I guess that doesn’t count as a conviction, unless he does something dumb and is subsequently convicted of the charge. I’m not entirely sure how that works.
[sub]1. Not double secret probation[/sub]
James Butler was charged after his notorious sucker punch after a close loss. The video used to be on youtube. Don’t know if it still is.
Then you hadn’t heard the (admittedly lame) joke:
Why did Ron Artest leave the game early?He wanted to beat the crowd
That wasn’t even the worst attack with a bat in baseball history. Juan Marichal, pitcher for the Giants, damn near killed John Roseboro, Dodgers catcher, in a bat attack.
Marichal later was elected to the Hall of Fame.
I forgot to mention Panama Lewis and Luis Resto and what they did to Billy Collins, Jr. Look, if you dare.
Teddy Atlas is, in my opinion, reasonably skeptical about the plaster of paris packing.
Look at this picture in the just-cited article.
My question is, what the heck is the guy depicted in that statue doing?
If my total ignorance of baseball technique is on display here, then so be it. 
-FrL-