I read your post and fell down. I’m currently writhing in pain!! Owwwww!
(Looks around, doesn’t see any mod getting ready to give you a stiff talking to.) Hey, look at this! I’m all better now.
Yeah, you’re right. So which sport do you play competitively?:rolleyes:
Yep usually the pitcher either throws a slower pitch at the batters body, or brushes them back or throws behind them at full speed. No one is trying to kill anybody. Just trying to send a little message.
There’s a time and place for throwing at guys, but you don’t throw at their head. Some of the breaches of etiquette can be resolved by a little hollering, sometimes you just have to hit them. Pitchers don’t plunk the batters as much as they used to, overall that’s a good thing but it’s something that can’t and shouldn’t be taken out of the game.
The “little message” is “I could hurt or kill you, so don’t piss me off.”
My preferred message to such pitchers (and other players) is “Grow the fuck up, you ridiculous man-child.”
Well played, Sir, well played. You have been awarded an honorary Bill Laimbeer medal.
I would have said Vlade Divac, but yours works, too.
Only if the pitcher gets to wear as much armor as the batter does.
It’s one of those things where if you’re not steeped in the cultural mindset, it just won’t make any sense, because it doesn’t make any sense. Pitchers are babies, basically, but the culture is such that acting like a baby in this way is the old school, which makes it macho and tough.
You can dress it up and apotheose it by talking about the Old Days and Bob Gibson and whatever, but the way to understand it is to think about how little boys act, and that’s what we’re talking about it. Pitchers used to get angry and throw the ball at batters’ faces if they didn’t like the way the batters were acting, and that used to be something most people in baseball accepted as normal behavior. See, home plate is supposed to “belong” to the pitcher – “Mine!” – so if the batter is hanging out too close to it, that makes the pitcher mad. And once the pitcher is ready to throw, it’s time to go, so if the batter steps away from the plate because he’s not ready, that makes the pitcher mad. And if the pitcher gives up a home run, that makes the pitcher mad, but if the batter watches where the ball is going, or celebrates his hit, or looks at the pitcher even though the pitcher is looking at him - “Stop looking at me!” - that *really *makes the pitcher mad. And if the next batter up looks like he’s getting ready for his at-bat by watching the pitcher’s timing and taking his practice swings just when the ball gets to home plate, that REALLY makes the pitcher mad.
And when the pitcher gets mad, he tries to hurt the batter, or tries to hurt the next batter, by basically throwing a rock at his head and saying I’m not throwing it at you, I’m just throwing it over there and it’s your fault if you get in the way.
Tough guys, the lot of them!
I don’t like the way baseball has taken away the inside part of the plate. Miss outside, no one cares. Miss inside and it’s a felony. With the box position of some hitters, any inside pitch is a brushback pitch, and those are some of the same batters who take umbrage at being brushed back.
Eliminate all the armor that the hitters get to wear.
By, as D_Odds pointed out, leaning in over the plate, the hitters are increasing their ability to access the outside corner pitch. Hitters are emboldened to do this, since many of them are armored up with wrist guards, elbow guards, shin, ankle, etc. etc.
The pitcher and the hitter are in a battle over control of the strike zone. The hitter wants to get as close to the plate as he can get away with, since doing so means he can reach that outside on-the-black pitch. The pitcher wants him back a little so that even he reached for that outside pitch, he can’t get the sweet part of the bat to it.
One of the tools a pitcher has to push the hitter back is the inside pitch. Part of the game is getting plunked.
Part of the game is also not showboating. I don’t find bat flips necessarily showboating, but it is the excessive ones that probably draw the ire of opponents.
Certainly some parts of baseball can be deemed childish by those who want to criticize. Name me a sport that doesn’t have it’s share of childish traditions and rules. They are called “games” after all.
IMESHO… meh… I dont care about bat flips anymore than I care about the pitchers going batshit after gettting a K in a key spot (Paps, I’m looking at you). I just wish players would stop bitching about getting hit. There is usually a reason for an intentional drilling and it’s generally a known thing. Get over it or get on your guy that caused it.
If the eight hitter gets an assfull of 90MPH cheese cuz his cleanup guy flipped his bat or watched his solo shot sail while down (or up) five runs, get on him. If the inning leadoff hitter gets a thigh bruise cuz the pitcher displayed too much getting a strike out with two outs and the bases juiced in the previous half inning, have a conversation with that pitcher. You know it’s coming, you generally know the reason.
And the reason will be so incredibly stupid that it’s actually no reason at all.
If your husband beats you, best your child for annoying him.
But to do that you would have to back the batters off the plate wearing more body armor than a medieval knight and give them the strikezone as defined by the rules and not the postage stamp size they are now. And let them pitch inside (not advocating hitting the batter unless he is hunched over the plate).
Errr… umm… sure… thats a reasonable extrapolation in a baseball threaad…
WTF?
Yeah that is one heck of a straw man you’ve tossed out there. I mean, obviously, those two things are exactly the same. Sweet Jesus.
Yeah, seriously. Beaning someone with a baseball for a stupid reason is nothing like punching them for a stupid reason.
In the one, they’re in uniform!
Not a straw man, an analogy.
Agian… sure ok… you forgot Ray Chapman for the irrelvant tragedy exacta…
This thread is an Izzy Alcantrara reference away from going up like the first little pig’s hut… Jesus H Christ.