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Sunday, April 20, 2014
Dukes! Snider!
Brewers center fielder Carlos Gomez hit what he apparently thought was a home run and it actually ended up being a triple. Pirates starter Gerrit Cole didn’t appear to appreciate how Gomez reacted and told him so. And it was, as they say, on:
Repoz
Posted: April 20, 2014 at 03:17 PM | 133 comment(s)
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Carlos Gomez thought wrong.
If you don't want batters to "disrespect" you, pitch better.
This.
I also feel that there's likely an unaddressed race thing going on here that nobody wants to acknowledge. The umbrage-takers always seem to be white dudes, and the alleged offenders are often dudes of color.
There is also the obvious culture clash between suburban, white baseball and latin/urban baseball.
1. I thought Gomez had it coming in the McCann incident as he was way over the line.
2. Nothing he did here looked bad at all. I have no idea what Cole is all riled up about. It's dumb.
3. That said, whatever Cole said to him it doesn't give Gomez the right to start throwing haymakers. A 5 to 10 game suspension deosn't help your team, Carlos. He really has a problem with his temper.
I also feel that there's likely an unaddressed race thing going on here that nobody wants to acknowledge. The umbrage-takers always seem to be white dudes, and the alleged offenders are often dudes of color.
This seems very possible.
Comprised of what, exactly? What are the cultures and how do they clash?
Um, yes...? In ages past, Carlos Gomez would probably be getting baseballs in the face rather than mere words.
For the life of me, I don't get why people here feel compelled to race to the top of the high horse after every fight or any time a player gets upset. We get it; we here at BBTF are all super mature and definitely would never get upset in a similar situation because we are not babies. Hurray us.
Personally, I think baseball fights are awesome. People talk about the great ones for years, and they are a proud-ish part of the games tradition.
Bo Porter thinks you aren't playing the race card the right way.
If he didn't mind getting under the skin of his opponents, he'd be awesome at it. But throwing the first punches of a brawl suggest otherwise.
He doesn't seem to like when his attention-drawing actions draw attention.
Because watching overgrown millionaire children throw temper tantrums when someone looks at them the wrong way is annoying to me. Just play the ####### game.
Hurray, me!
Hurray, you!
This whole silliness could've been avoided with an ounce of maturity/IQ on the part of either Gomez or the Pirate player in the jacket who got Gomez all riled up just when it was calming down. Cole is an idiot for yapping at Gomez, but at least he had the sense to let himself get led away.
Pedro Martinez and Bob Gibson would also like to add their two cents*
*Admittedly, with Pedro it's just cause he feels like it, and with Bob no one has to actually say "Play the game the right way". It's Bob's way or a ticket to Concussion City...one way.
This might work as a motivational tactic but it's not much of an argument to me. Any pitcher, no matter how good, will give up hard hits.
White American athletes are kind of the puritans of the athletic world, aren't they? I know that in soccer they have a reputation for not faking injuries ... which is commendable, if deleterious to their efforts.
In which case Gomez would've had an inside the park HR.
And that would be better?
Gibson hit roughly 6 of every 1000 batters he faced. Cole hits more than that. Jamey Wright hits 3 times that many. Don Drysdale hit not quite twice as many, Pedro and Randy Johnson hit slightly more.
To the extent there are (or were) actual headhunters in MLB (and I think it's overblown) Gibson wasn't one. Of course, being known as one while not actually being one is probably an advantage, and Gibson always seemed like a smart guy to me.
This.
I have no problem with Cole here. He didn't like how Gomez watched a big drive and barked about it after covering the play at third base. (I also don't have a problem with Gomez flipping the bat after the big drive but I will note that the drive didn't actually leave the park so it was a little premature). In any case, it was just words.
Gomez is the one who pulled off his batting helmet and stormed off the base for a couple of steps. That's what escalated this from a couple of opposing players yipping at each other to everyone clearing the benches.
Gomez: That hit was awesome! I'm awesome! Oh shoot, that didn't go out of the park, I better run.
Cole: You poopyhead. I'm mad at you for hitting that ball hard and making me look bad. Oh, and for not running right away.
Gomez: How dare you get mad at me? You're not supposed to get mad at me. I'm mad at you and I'm going to punch whoever is standing close by to prove it.
Cole: I think I'll walk away and let other people handle this.
I love when rape logic is used in sporting events.
This is the worst comment in BBTF history.
Yeah, yeah, we all know about the legendary Bob Gibson, who is #1 all time with 10,000 hit batsmen and has instilled a mandate to have his name invoked after every brawl.
I apologize, on second thought McCann was perfectly justified. Gomez was asking for it worse than a college girl in a short skirt. You wouldn't let a college girl traipse through your office in a short skirt, would you?
This.
Not this. Getting a hit off of a pitcher does not give you the right to act like an ass. You are allowed to have opinions on how the game should be played, no matter how good you are. Now, throwing a fit about it is probably not the right way to express your opinion. And it doesn't look like Gomez really did anything worth yelling about.
But saying that a player who gets a hit or a team that wins a game should be able to do whatever they want is ridiculous.
If this isn't proof that the comments nowadays are juiced, I don't know what is. Fruit flies live longer than records these days.
You must be new. Welcome aboard.
I'd hate to see a college boy doing that.
That's how it looked to me too.
It was mentioned upstream but I'll repeat the point: Why did Cole feel the need to jaw at Gomez? If anything, he should have thanked him profusely for not hustling on what might have been an inside-the-park home run. (Heck, the Brewers didn't even score that inning.)
Martin Maldonado, who is already on the Pirates' list after spiking Jordy Mercer in Saturday's game.
-- MWE
for those not aware gomez newborn child was diagnosed with hip dysplasia which led to frantic calls from his wife until the docs calmed her down
No excuse for gomez acting like a twit and he will get suspended and deservedly so
I share the above because it may have been caused gomez to be more emotional than usual
And I don't understand people who dislike a Carlos gomez. Guy failed repeatedly but kept at it and is now a really good player albeit flawed. Plays great defense, hustles and really enjoys playing
If you don't like watching a Carlos gomez I don't know why such a person watches baseball
And he's already on Rawlings' #### list.
I feel like I just watched a dude of color totally lose his mind.
MM slid through the bag
Your post makes it sound like Martin was Ty Cobb
Was that snider?
I find white people in general tend to be a little more uptight about the unwritten (and written) rules and who's breaking those rules.
A little bit?
Ha, ha
Nowadays you're not supposed to have fun, or look like you're having fun, or show any sort of happiness/joy.
Is it possible to watch that play and not think that Maldonado went after Mercer on purpose? He slid way past the base with his feet up off the ground. For the soccer fans out there, he would have gotten a straight red card if he did that to someone, and no one would have had a word of complaint.
No need to throw any punches.
I think the problem is just white dudes. Clemens/Piazza, or Ryan/Ventura. I'm sure it exists, but can anyone think of a major brawl between two hispanic, or black, players? Or any major beef that did not involve a white player?
Edit: or kinda what #47 said.
One of the beefiest - Marichal-Roseboro.
Pedro Martinez vs Karim ("Who?") Garcia
Despite having provoked the race discussion, I have to say that it seems like there's a high chance that Gomez is a certifiable psycho. I felt that McCann was in the wrong in last season's dustup, and I think that Cole should probably be less of a tiny-penis butthead about this one, but at the same time if you are involved in weird fights with some regularity there might be something wrong with how you react to stuff.
Pedro v Gerald Williams, aka the weirdest beanball war of all time.
What about Pedro v Reggie Sanders, when Reggie charged the mound after an HBP delivered while Martinez was throwing a perfect game?
That being said, in the non-beanball division, I can't think of any "play the game the right way incident" that didn't involve a white guy in the role of the aggrieved party. I'm sure there have been some, but it does seem like pale guys are the ones most likely to take offense at a violation of the unwritten rules.
Yadi Molina - Brandon Phillips. And Cueto was the ####### who kicked in a white guys head.
Good one. And it differs in type from both the HBP-triggered brawl and the Unwritten Rulebreaking set-to.
Iwamura was involved in the Coco vs. the Rays scrum, both in the precipitaing incident (he blocked second on a SB attempt by Coco one inning, which Crisp responded to by taking him out with a hard-slide later in the game) and the brawl itself. When James Shields drilled Coco the following night, Akinori was an active participant in the goings-on at the mound.
Seems like the perfect time to charge the mound to me. Bait the pitcher into throwing a punch and getting tossed.
Around 63% of all MLB baseball players are white, and that number is more like 70% for pitchers. Given that these flaps tend to be batter vs. pitcher, and pitchers tend the be the party that feels slighted, the odds are in favor of a white guy getting ticked off in any such situation even without any racial/cultural/ethnic tensions.
Now it's possible that Gomez is the next Milton Bradley. But when I have seen a guy go from annoyed to nuts in a half-second based only on words, those words generally relate to the guy's race/ethnicity, his mother/wife/child or his manhood.
If all that was said was "run next time MFer" then Gomez was way out of line. If something more personal was said then I'll cut him at least a little slack.
FWIW:
Cole said he told Gomez: "If you're going to hit it out of the ballpark, then you can stop and look at it. But it you're going to hit just a fly ball to center field, then don't stand and look at it."
That didn't sit well with Gomez. He took a couple steps toward Cole and the benches and bullpens emptied.
"Everything had stopped," Gomez said. "He told me something, I told him back, then I talked to the umpire. Then Snider came like a superhero, trying to throw punches at everybody. I just tried to protect myself."
Interestingly, Gomez said he didn't run not because he thought he hit it out, but because he thought it was going to be caught, which is actually a less defensible reason for not running. Of course, his decision not to run is one Ron Roenicke, not Gerrit Cole, should be concerned about.
Cole also claimed to follow that profanity-free advice with this: "You see what happens, Carlos? You see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps?!"
Sure. That is totally the message you should take away from this discussion.
At the time, Marichal was largely seen as the villain, but that view has tempered over time as Roseboro eventually admitted to deliberately grazing Marichal's ear with a return throw to the pitcher. I'd say that Marichal is still given the majority of the blame, but historians now believe that Roseboro should share in the responsibility.
Maybe, but there still seems to be a semblance of "play the game the white way" in a lot of these.
What, is he the FedEx guy? Cuz it didn't seem to me like he spoke to Carlos for 30 seconds.
(Man, ya gotta be old to remember that one.)
On a different topic, I always liked those gold Pirate caps (not the bumblebee ones).
Mr. Pogo and Mitsuhiro Matsunaga swing a barbed wire baseball bat like they've stood in the box a few times before. Pogo throws quite the fireball at the end of this carnage too.
Again, literally this week: Bo Porter. It's still on the Front Page here.
I remember last year Terry Pendleton accosted Chris Johnson in the dugout because the latter threw his helmet. And when Pendleton was a player, he once walked off the field because Marvin Freeman refused to retaliate and throw a beanball.
We may not know everything that was said, but in the video you can hear Cole speaking, and it sounds like he's taunting him to the effect of "that's why you run, idiot."
which is more likely:
that a tenured pro known for his energetic style and passion with a lot on his mind (see above post concerning his child) is caught off guard by someone ELSE initiating a confrontation and after some degree of jawing another third party escalates the situation further (snider) and then Gomez responds out of proportion
OR
Carlos Gomez is a loon
I suspect it's the former
And why Cole pouting over another player's play is getting no attention here is puzzling. None of this happens if Cole concerns himself with his performance and not others
Again, Carlos deserves a suspension. So anyone accusing me of bias can go pound sand
It's kind of a dick move, but it's not really unusual for a pitcher to do something like that. Whereas a runner on third base walking over and throwing a punch is a bit more novel (and responsible for most of the escalation in the situation).
The game had better video and jibes with gomez' words on how he didn't lose it until snider showed up
So give Cole a pass if you wish but then what about Snider?
* Rod Allen charges the mound against Kazuhiko Daimon and chases him all around the field.
* Izzy Alcantara kicks Jeremy Salazar and then charges Blas Cedeno.
Is Jeff Salazar caucasian, or Hispanic? Salazar is a Basque name, but he's from Oklahoma, and photo evidence is inconclusive. Either way, him getting KTFO at second base in the LMP is a pretty underrated brawl.
Whatever Snider said obviously didn't help, but if he's the guy that I think he is in the video, it looked like he was trying to get between Gomez and his pitcher. That's a pretty understandable reaction, given the direction the situation was heading.
He did throw some punches, so he'll probably get (and deserve) a suspension, though I think Gomez's should be a bit longer since he was the first one to go from words to actual violence.
I think people would be less likely to question Gomez's mental stability if this was the first time he did something like this.
Snider was rightly ejected, but in the many replays I didn't see him do anything that warranted Gomez throwing a punch. Maybe he said something rather untoward.
Not the first time doing what? Reacting to some uptight, holier than thou opposing player?
gomez will be suspended for 3-5 games for his loss of control
But Cole and more so snider aided and abetted
Do you remember what happened in the incident versus the Braves before McCann stood in front of home plate?
Harveys, if this had happened in a different context, Gomez would be arrested. I've had plenty of heated exchanges with co-workers in my career, some of them involving many heated f-bombs, but it didn't give me or the other part carte blanche to start throwing punches or swinging batting helmets at peoples' heads. Gomez' behavior to Cole's ############# is completely unacceptable. Gomez is a fun player, but he needs to stop having temper tantrums as if he was 8 years old.
As I offered at the time there was history between gomez and that pitcher
McCann misunderstood gomez reaction and made it a "situation"
And for the sake of discussion assuming gomez did initiate the braves incident 2 events generate a rep?
versus 8 years in the pros turning himself from a failed touted prospect almost out of the league into a tremendous player?
that strikes me as more than a bit odd
Just curious: Were the co-workers yelling at you to quit chatting about last night's GoT episode and just pour the coffee already? :)
Agreed
Ron created the environment to help Gomez succeed. Now he needs to get him focussed on continuing to succeed
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