Trust me, I am going to get to Rougned Odor’s punch to Jose Bautista’s face and the on-field fracas between the Rangers and Blue Jays. But let me see if I can navigate there by talking about Yankees players yukking it up with David Ortiz before games at the Stadium last week.
I recognize that there is just a ton of cross-pollination in the game now. Players switch teams more frequently than in the past, or they share player representatives or come from the same country.
Thus, Rule 4.06 of the Official Rule Book, which states: “Players of opposing teams shall not fraternize at any time while in uniform” is enforced less frequently than is jaywalking.
Fine. But do players really have to express that friendship on the field after the gates have opened and fans are in the crowd? Really, go to lunch, go to dinner, meet underneath the stands for a bro-hug.
Even within that context, Ortiz and the Yankees are a different case.
No player in history — not even George Brett, maybe not George Brett plus Edgar Martinez — has done the kind of meaningful, historical, painful damage to the Yankees that Ortiz has done singlehandedly. Which makes me wonder what he would have to do further for Yankees players not to behave on the field with him like teens at a Bieber concert.
Is it right that the people paying those expensive ticket prices at the Stadium — who see Ortiz as Public Enemy No. 1 — have to look at that love-fest behind the cage or on the outfield grass? Would you want a hidden camera backstage at a debate catching Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump doing karaoke together?
Which brings me to Odor, Bautista, the Rangers and the Blue Jays.
I do not like fastballs thrown at players. I do not like late slides designed to injure. I do not like overhand rights to the jaw, outside of a boxing ring or an MMA cage.
But, man, I love when two teams hate each other. I loved what the Yankees and Red Sox used to have in 2003-04, when the mere sight of each other would bring out their best and their worst. The same for the Davey Johnson Mets and the Whitey Herzog Cardinals.
Baseball is a very popular local sport now: You care about your team, but not much about those in other cities. But if the Rangers and Blue Jays were playing again tonight, would you watch?
After all the niceties — the hitter from one team tapping the shin guards of a catcher on the other, first base turning into talk show auditions for first baseman of one team and baserunners for another — forgive me if I prefer old-fashioned hatred. This is supposed to be competition, big-money, high-stress, that-guy-is-trying-to-take-what-I-want competition.
I am for making the game safer. Yay for rules that better shield catchers from concussion-inducing collisions, pivot men from late, high slides and batters from 98-mph headhunters. But this is still not a genteel sport. Even within a more enlightened, protective environment, fierce competition can flow — as the Rangers and Blue Jays exemplified.
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Their hostilities stem from last year’s Division Series, notably Bautista’s bat flip following his seminal homer in Game 5. Bautista is the kind of player who is going to annoy the opposition with constant ball-strike complaints and a heightened flair to his game and that bat flip, which managed to be well-timed joy and excessive all at once. Odor, even before Sunday, had a reputation as a player who plays on the edge between overzealous and over-the-line.
Still, I do not believe it proper that Matt Bush heaved a 96-mph fastball at Bautista’s upper torso seven months after the bat flip, nor that Bautista went late into Odor at second nor that Odor reacted by going all Mike Tyson with an overhand right. Joe Garagiola Jr., MLB’s on-field rules VP, was reviewing the incident Monday and suspensions — potentially something significant for Odor — are due no later than Tuesday.
Nevertheless, with all the problematic elements of what occurred, I loved that these games in Arlington were played with passion and fury and loathing. And mainly played without something: fraternization.