A SHAMEFUL CODE OF RETRIBUTION

The game of baseball is defined by being a “non-contact” sport, its rules dictating that players barely touch each other, a fact that only becomes truer with time. (For the past few years, the MLB powers that be have tried to reduce the risk of bodies violently crashing into each other by instituting a new slide rule and measures to avoid leg-breaking home-plate collisions.) Baseball actively looks to avoid the brutal blows and body checks of the hockey rink, and doesn’t have the same concussion epidemic as its NFL counterpart. In fact, so many fans I know come to this game precisely for that reason—because it doesn’t evoke injurious combat, or cash in on gratuitous damage.

This is why when violence does occur in baseball, whether executed on the field or off, it always feels jarring. When Chase Utley breaks Rubén Tejada’s leg with a hard slide into second, or Jonathan Papelbon chokes Bryce Harper in the dugout, or an on-field brawl breaks out at Globe Life Park between the Texas Rangers and the Toronto Blue Jays, we (should) generally feel uncomfortable and unnerved by the whole thing. That’s not why we’re here, we think. This is supposed to be a slow, meandering, civilized game. We’re supposed to exist and cheer under the illusion of widespread gentlemanliness.

I certainly won’t claim that baseball fans are universally a bunch of empathetic pacifists (you only need to look at my Twitter mentions to dispute that naive idea), but explicit direct hits, like the one we saw the Texas Rangers’ Rougned Odor give José Bautista during the eighth inning of the final game of the teams’ May 2016 series, always feel alien in a game predicated on players only ever lightly touching each other. Sure, they get emotional, they get “hotheaded,” but they don’t come to Road House—style blows, right? “The Game” is better than that, right? It’s elegant, and intelligent, and above all that, right?

Yet this illusion of the sport being a gentleman’s game conceals an undercurrent of retribution that is coded into baseball itself. There are all those pesky unwritten rules that we keep hearing about—dictums that demand you act a certain way lest you get plunked with a fastball, or skewered with an aggressive slide. These are the same “rules” that lead people to think of recently banned sexist hazing rituals as hilarious, that require rookies to wear little girls’ backpacks and always know their place, that endorse upstarts getting “appropriately” shamed, and that ensure Bautista’s celebratory bat flip gets the payback it “deserved.” These rules are damaging and distracting, and during that Jays—Rangers game, they caused players’ feelings to boil over, culminating in an ugly discordant punch to José Bautista’s face that was played on a gleeful slo-mo loop by anyone who subscribes to this kind of archaic thinking.

If you were contrarian enough to have an anti-violence stance during that game, or brave enough to say that no one scuffling was in the right (except maybe Adrian Beltre, with his violence-diffusing Bautista bear hug), you were told repeatedly that you don’t understand how baseball works. It’s a game of revenge, apparently. One where, seven months after an emotionally fraught playoff game, a team can get theirs and it’s considered entirely appropriate. And if you stared in disbelief as a group of men you admire brutalized one another in a frenzied pit of hostility—again, you just don’t understand how baseball works, and should probably just look away.

“Because he flipped his bat, Bautista got what he deserved,” “Bautista was asking for it,” “Bautista needs to take it like a man, hashtag karma”—this was the general pro-plunking and pro-punching stance. (Pretty sure that’s not the intended interpretation of the word karma, but okay, whatever bros.) Some of the brilliant minds on social media even went as far as to claim that this was a good lesson for children: Don’t be openly proud of your accomplishments lest ye get hit in the ribs and punched squarely in the jaw, little one.

What kind of deranged, destructive viewpoint is that?

When baseball disputes happen, we’re expected to take a side—brand one team or player evil, the other good, and then fight it out viciously among the fanbases. We fail to foster any productive dialogue or nuance, nor do we understand how ingrained systems of institutional violence just beget more violence, and that a “pound of flesh” pitch is a sanctioned first step toward a punch in the face. We watch as high-profile commentators like Sportsnet’s Gregg Zaun trot out their hallowed old-school baseball ideals, claiming that this is just the way it is, the way it’s supposed to be, and everyone involved is simply a puppet in baseball’s grand, mythical stage play.

“I’m here to tell you that in this whole situation everybody did as they were supposed to do,” said Zaun postgame, following up with numerous additional “supposed to’s” to drive his entirely weak point home.

Zaun suggests that if you’re “squeamish” you should just look away, but I take great offence to that, just like I take offence to the idea that I don’t enjoy baseball violence simply because I don’t get it. This is my game as much as it is the game of those who view it through Zaun’s fetishized, old-school lens. I am allowed to object to escalating (and sometimes illegal) aggressive acts, sanctioned or otherwise, and to suggest that there’s got to be another, better way to play. The fact is, when violence is promoted as an appropriate dispute resolution in sports, that concept can bleed into all areas of our lives, with dire results.

Frankly, I’m tired of hearing about the need to “man up” and “settle scores” as an excuse for egregious behaviour. I’m tired of literal assault being excused in a game context. I came to baseball fandom precisely because it offered me a shelter from the ubiquity of violence, and I am allowed to express my disappointment when aggression rears its ugly head in this place where I’ve found refuge. When people talk about what a terrible example Bautista set via his celebratory gesture, or how bad a role model full-of-himself Bryce Harper is, I have to wonder why encouraging this kind of punishing, vengeful masculinity is somehow the better option. Why hitting people with pitches, slides, and fists is what is “supposed to happen.”

Though our animal brains are likely thrilled by the drama that went down in Texas, our honed reason should always default to “violence, in whatever form, is a problem.” That means everyone involved had a part in that toxic stew, from Matt Bush hitting Bautista with a pitch, to Jesse Chavez returning the favour with Prince Fielder, to Bautista’s aggressive slide, to Odor’s merciless punch. As hard as it is to admit, even Kevin Pillar and Josh Donaldson, with their steadfast if bulldozing “support your teammate” reactions, were in the wrong. And despite some fan admiration, hearing Pillar invoke eye for an eye and militaristic language in a scrum postgame didn’t make me think he was commendable. Just because someone did something worse doesn’t make what you did any better. I can certainly empathize that they’re men in the moment, that emotions are at eleven, and that loyalty is important, but someone at some point has to make a choice to stop the momentum of violence.

Though the theatre of it all understandably entertains and amuses, it shouldn’t be remotely controversial to suggest that every plot point in the narrative that played out that day is worthy of our critique. We shouldn’t be jubilantly comparing this to “great base-brawls and punches in sports history,” or calling people heroes because they decided to join in the spat. Regardless of our affiliations, it was a nasty scene all around, and if you don’t think so, you’re just using baseball to condone hurting another human being.

You can do the mental gymnastics. You can tie yourself in knots trying to figure out who started it, who was asking for what, and who gets anointed with the label of “The Worst.” But in the end, the side of right is always going to be: Don’t punch a guy in the face because of a game.

If you take offence to that, maybe you just don’t understand baseball.