Wednesday night’s Red Sox-Yankees contest was highlighted by multiple bench-clearing incidents, first in the third inning following Yankees first baseman Tyler Austin’s hard slide into Red Sox second baseman Brock Holt and again the seventh inning after Joe Kelly drilled Austin with a 97 mph fastball. These incidents have led to suspensions for Austin and Kell (which they are appealing), as well as undisclosed fines for numerous other players. Nonetheless, these incidents show a part of the game that has no place in modern baseball.
From a team and player perspective, fights in baseball are an unacceptable risk, plain and simple. Players are paid millions of dollar a year to play a 162 game season, and teams depend on their performance. To risk any player, but especially a star being injured in a glorified playground shoving match is utterly stupid, and no team should even tacitly support their players taking such an inadvisable risk. Furthermore, in an age where the league is increasingly concerned with safety--implementing new concussion protocols and putting up more protective netting--why are steps not being taken to eliminate risky brawls?
As if the risk weren’t enough, fights in baseball are also simply lame time wasters that don’t achieve anything. When the benches clear, it’s a few players going at each other while the rest of the guys either hold people back or just kind of shove one another. I may be in the minority, but I want to see the game, and a fairly tame fight interrupts the baseball I’m there to watch. Fighting also takes up significant amount of time, which should be enough to antagonize the MLB as it agonizes over pace of play. Eliminating fights should be an easy measure to help streamline the game. In addition, the fight itself isn’t entertaining and doesn’t achieve anything, full stop. Going back to Wednesday’s game, Austin should have just taken his base-- there was nothing else for him to get out of that interaction. From a pure value perspective, fighting is an injury and suspension risk with no upside, so maybe don’t do it.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, fighting is simply unsportsmanlike. Baseball players have a huge audience and significant influence on a lot of people, including many children. Do we really want baseball players to be fighting on national television? Is that the kind of role model we want players to be? Should Little Leaguers aspire to clear the benches and fight over being hit by a pitch? Fundamentally, true sportsmanship is above fighting, with the contest being the game in progress. If guys want to fight, there are other sports that they are welcome to try out, but being a major league baseball player requires a higher standard of behavior. Players are role models for national audiences, and they should act like adults and not petty children.
Fighting, though officially discouraged, remains a hallowed part of the game, held up as an important part of baseball tradition. However, it is pointless, risky, and unsportsmanlike, and thus has no place in modern baseball. Luckily, the MLB has the power to crack down on fighting by adopting rules like in the NBA: if you leave the bench, you get suspended. This is the standard that should be applied so we can all sit back and enjoy our peanuts and cracker jacks while watching the ball game.
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