Baseball Brawl Denigrates America's Pastime

As disgraceful as was the now-infamous brawl between the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers. occurring just  four days before the pageantry set for Chavez Ravine for Jackie Robinson Day,  it is overshadowed, in part, by Major League Baseball’s failure to take such incidents seriously.

It is shameful that the instigator of the incident, Carlos Quentin, was  suspended for a mere eight games, particularly given that the man for  whose injury he is responsible, Dodgers’ ace pitcher Zack Grienke, will  miss at least two months of his first season with the Dodgers with a  broken collarbone.

I am not a fan or admirer of Grienke, whom I find to be a cocky and  arrogant young man, but neither Grienke nor any player deserves to be  seriously injured within play for any reason.  Additionally, the example that this sets for young, impressionable fans is putrid.  If Quentin  believes that Grienke has been throwing at him, the worst means of  handling the situation is to violently charge the mound, creating chaos  and mayhem on the field.

If Major League Baseball wished to end bench-clearing brawls, it could  easily do so.  My idea would be to suspend for sixty days without pay  any individual that initiates or joins a fight. Furthermore, assailants of the game should be charged criminally just as they would be had their assault occurred outside the baseball diamond. 

The ugly spectacle that was seen Thursday night in Los Angeles is no way  for “America’s Pastime” to behave.  There is no place for thuggery in this great game. Shame on Commissioner Bud Selig for  displaying the attitude of “boys will be boys” by dispensing taps on the wrist to the offenders.