You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball, and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time. ~Jim Bouton, Ball Four, 1970
The game is too big to not mention things out loud.
Let’s look at the Cards vs. Brewers the other day, Morgan vs. Carpenter if you will.
Friday, Carpenter came clean and admitted that he did as much, though he refused to say that was when the problem started. Yes, he yelled the f-bomb in Morgan’s direction after striking him out. But that isn’t exactly what started the problem.
Well…. according to CC it was Morgan who began the mouthing off..
He noted that while he said something once to Morgan, Morgan said a lot of things, repeatedly, over the course of Wednesday night and in prior starts as well. Each time, he ignored it,
Morgan of course had a retort via Tony Plush
Alberta couldn’t see Plush if she had her gloves on!!! Wat was she thinking running afta Plush!!! She never been n tha ring!!!
An exchange, a possible tussle.
It’s always the Cards is it not? If we were with Bouton and his crew we’d call him a Red-Ass.
But we’d also have have memories of battles like the following described in a Sports Illustrated article in the late 1950’s:
One of the season’s most tumultuous brawls occurred in Washington. The Senators, who already had had more than their share of trouble with the Browns, sent up George Case to squeeze in an insurance run. Case fouled off the bunt.
“Are you afraid to swing?” Nelson Potter sneered from the pitcher’s mound. Words not nicely describable were exchanged, and Case charged Potter. Brownies and Senators erupted onto the field, throwing punches.
The game in question occurred in 1944, during wartime baseball, winning is always the goal, and being “embarrassed” seems to be a moving target, with more avenues to achieve the last word these days than the black and white world of outs/hits and fists and chins.
