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Just let them scrap: Is fighting what baseball needs to be lit again?
Puig went in guns blazing, and nobody wanted the smoke.
The Pittsburgh Pirates and Cincinnati Reds faced off against each other last night, with both teams jawing at each other in what has proved to be a heated rivalry.
After bickering all game, it wasn’t until the ninth inning that Reds relief pitcher Amir Garrett left the mound and sprinted to the Pirates’ dugout, throwing haymakers.
#Reds P Amir Garrett try’s to fight the entire #Pirates dugout which leads to a bench clearing brawl 😳😳😳
Yasiel Puig is in the middle of everything even though he was just traded to the #Indians 😂😂😂
— Unsportsmanlike Content™ (@UCSportsMedia) July 31, 2019
Are you not entertained?
This was clearly the most entertaining baseball fight this season, and possibly the most entertaining in years.
Seriously, you’ve seen batters storm the mound when they’re thrown at, you’ve seen pitchers storm the plate when the batter is talking shit, but how often do you see a guy sprint right at the dugout alone, filled with 20+ players?
Amir Garrett was really ready to fight the whole Pirates team by himself. 😳
— Complex Sports (@ComplexSports) July 31, 2019
As if the fight couldn’t get any better, Yasiel Puig joined in on the fight, when just 20 minutes before he was traded to the Cleveland Indians.
Puig is known for having a fiery temper, and his attitude has long been considered a disruption in the locker room. But he’s riding for his boys, even if he’s already out the door, and that is commendable, for real.
https://twitter.com/lindseyadler/status/1156390513337090053?s=20
Also notable is that none of the Pirates players wanted to scrap with Puig, and rightly so. The guy is jacked, and a tough, hard-nosed man born in Cuba.
Football is America’s most popular sport, basketball is the sport where stars are most marketable, and hockey is the sport where a certain amount of fighting is legal, but baseball is America’s pastime. And fights have always been a part of baseball.
Penalties and fines are going to be passed down in the aftermath of this fight, as they always are. The league cannot have players or managers running rampant, endangering each other and possibly even fans. But there is no denying MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is eager to see MLB ratings go up.
Manfred has made changes regarding pitchers’ clocks in between pitches in order to speed up the game. He also implemented a rule in 2018, limiting the number of mound visits to six per nine innings in a game.
Will fights start to see even steeper penalties if they occur more often? Or lowkey, are brawls like the one we saw last night good for a sport that some people label as boring?
Manfred would never admit it, but the buzz after this fight is not a bad thing for baseball, especially with no one being seriously hurt. You a wild boy, Garrett and Puig.