Once upon a time, the Neanderthal was used as a derogatory term to describe people who exhibited “caveman”-like qualities…you know, violent behavior, primitive social interaction, poor judgment, that whole thing. That seems to be an insult to what evolutionary and fossil evidence suggested were a fairly intelligent and resourceful subspecies of human before they went extinct some 40000 years ago. The Smithsonian has a pretty cool article about Neanderthals if you want to check it out.
Now we know that injuries and accidents in baseball will occur. Take, for example, the Cactus League incident where Chicago Cubs pitching prospect Corey Black very accidentally hit San Francisco Giants outfielder Hunter Pence with a pitch and unfortunately broke Pence’s arm. If you read that article you’ll see a pair of competitors who exhibited good sportsmanship and handled the situation well, with Pence realizing that Black was not malicious and Black showing remorse for something that was (literally, given his poor command that day) out of his control.
Of course it’s not always like that. Take, for example, the incident last season when Arizona Diamondbacks infielder Chris Owings got plunked in the back. From just about everyone’s objective viewpoint, that pitch was not intentional and you could even see Milwaukee Brewers starter Kyle Lohse immediate react to his mistake. But the D’backs wanted blood anyway. It’s not surprising that a few weeks later, Paul Goldschmidt also got plunked on the hand and lost the rest of his season, and again manager Kirk Gibson was out for blood against the Pittsburgh Pirates, though I don’t think anything came of that…oh wait, that’s right, they hit Andrew McCutchen the day after.
So you would think that a year later, humanity (or at least the MLB version of it) would have evolved past pre-Neanderthal tactics, but…
Hey @Royals @Athletics take a chill pill https://t.co/cK3MneXPJ7
— Rice Cube (@CubicSnarkonia) April 19, 2015
Yeah that’s not cool. https://t.co/LrUVtHLBFb — Rice Cube (@CubicSnarkonia) April 19, 2015
Uh yeah you don’t do that, bruh. https://t.co/bKfIdNnzxv
— Rice Cube (@CubicSnarkonia) April 19, 2015
You can go to those superb reporters’ timelines to track the stupidity, but the gist of it is that the Kansas City Royals are still steamed that Oakland Athletics third baseman Brett Lawrie slid hard into Alcides Escobar and unintentionally injured him. I know we as Cubs fans are used to seeing guys like the St. Louis Cardinals’ Matt Holliday try to maim our middle infielders, but as far as I could tell, Lawrie’s slide was right on the bag and he expressed remorse about it, as did the rest of the A’s. Here’s Deadspin’s take of the situation if you care to read, but the kicker is that Lawrie APOLOGIZED for it.
Yet for the next two games after Friday night’s accident, the Royals kept playing beanball, and this time they decided to go head-hunting with a not-even-joking power arm in Kelvin Herrera. The saddest thing, and not that I am advocating for it, is that they’re in the American League where pitchers usually don’t hit for themselves so even if the A’s wanted to retaliate (they didn’t), they couldn’t except to hit some other non-pitcher on the Royals. The worst part of this is that pitchers KNOW that they could seriously hurt someone, and yet an elite reliever with an insane fastball like Herrera wants to exact diamond justice by throwing at a guy’s head.
Millions of years of evolution gone to waste because of a petty squabble over something that was clearly an accident. And you wonder why the world continues to have wars. I’ll bet the Neanderthals would facepalm at this level of stupidity. And I’ll also bet that they’re ticked off the A’s didn’t ultimately win the game as a form of karmic retribution.
You remember the scene in Major League where Lou tells the pitching coach to teach Ricky Vaughn some control before he kills somebody? Well, MLB needs to step in and do something as well. Here, “control” means much more than the strike zone; it means MLB players need to realize how dangerous a hit-by-pitch can be. Exact your vengeance on the scoreboard.
Please subscribe to our blogs (info here) and follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
