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MLB: Harper-Strickland brawl proves just how soft baseball is

By Evan Marinofsky

May 29, 2017; San Francisco, CA, USA; San Francisco Giants relief pitcher Hunter Strickland (60) and Washington Nationals right fielder Bryce Harper (34) in a fight after Harper was hit by the pitch of Strickland during the eighth inning at AT&T Park. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
May 29, 2017; San Francisco, CA, USA; San Francisco Giants relief pitcher Hunter Strickland (60) and Washington Nationals right fielder Bryce Harper (34) in a fight after Harper was hit by the pitch of Strickland during the eighth inning at AT&T Park. Mandatory Credit: Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Giants and Nationals recently got into a bench-clearing brawl. The fight raised lots of questions about the toughness of baseball or lack thereof.

This past Memorial Day, the baseball world got to witness its first bench-clearing brawl of the season when Hunter Strickland drilled Bryce Harper in the hip with a 98-mph fastball. Harper charged the mound and a full-on fight ensued.

The incident has prompted mixed reactions, but the majority of people believe that bench-clearing brawls such as these are wrong and should not be part of the game whatsoever.

But why? Why can’t a hitter stand up for himself like this?

Strickland was in the wrong for plunking Harper. Harper hit two home runs off him in the 2014 NLDS. Harper didn’t pimp the home runs; he didn’t even showboat them. This was strictly Strickland being mad for not understanding how to pitch to Harper and getting punished for it. So he hit Harper and Harper retaliated. What’s the big problem here?

The real problem is that baseball has become too soft.

What’s lacking from baseball is energy. There’s just not enough energy anymore. Superstars are humble, rivalries aren’t a thing and players simply go through the motions.

With regard to toughness, there are no more collisions. Shortstops and second basemen have been protected from getting their knees taken out; catchers have been protected from getting run into at the plate. In no way am I advocating for a player losing the rest of his season because of a torn ACL he sustained because a player slid into him. But it’s what you sign up for when you play shortstop or second base and are trying to turn a double play. And part of being a catcher is having to withstand collisions at home plate.

Or at least it used to be.

Baseball lacks the competitiveness it once had. Runners shouldn’t be trying to hurt fielders, but runners should be trying to score runs and advance at all costs. If that means hitting the catcher so hard he loses the ball, then so be it. If that means taking out the shortstop to impede him from getting an out at first, then so be it.

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Nowadays, runners’ slides are a judgment call. If they are in the catcher’s way, they’re called out. If they disrupt a shortstop or second baseman in any way, shape, or form, they’re called out. By protecting the fielder at all costs, MLB has softened the game and prevented it from being itself. The whole point of the game is to score runs. The team with the most runs wins, right?

With regard to brawls like the one we all got to witness on Memorial Day, they should be more prominent. They shouldn’t be every day or even every week. But a brawl like that every few months certainly wouldn’t hurt the game.

For one, there would be more rivalries. Players are more friendly with players from other teams nowadays. It’s hard to hate the superstars of today because of how humble they are. There are really no polarizing players anymore aside from maybe Harper, and he just charged the mound. The game needs some more polarization and tenacity. Baseball is not a sport that is known for toughness and fisticuffs but a tad bit of hatred certainly would help.

Also, bench-clearing brawls have been known to unite teams. A famous example of this is when the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, once the greatest rivalry in sports, had a bench-clearer in 2004 that turned the Red Sox’s season around and ultimately helped bring the club its first World Series in 86 years.

This large altercation ended up bringing the ’04 Sox together and helped propel them into the playoffs.

With regard to the most recent brawl between the San Francisco Giants and the Washington Nationals, there’s no doubt that it helped both sides. The Giants are a team down near the cellar of the NL West and are in need of some momentum. Whether or not they agree with Strickland’s plunking of Harper, it certainly brought the Giants closer together as a team and the effects of the fight could show on the scoreboard. In the case of the Nationals, they sit high atop the NL East and a brawl like this would most certainly bring the team closer together because it showed how they have one another’s backs through right and wrong.

Furthermore, bench-clearing brawls make the games more exciting. Some of these games during the season are meaningless and even boring. A brawl like this freshens things up and gets the crowd more involved in the game.

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It also draws fans in from other sports such as hockey and football. A lot of those fans love the violence and the hatred both teams have for each other on the ice and on the field. There shouldn’t be nearly as much violence in a baseball game as there is in a hockey or football game, but a little bit could draw in an entirely new audience.

The game of baseball needs to toughen up. By letting the game breathe and having a few brawls every so often, the game can only grow.

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