By Yours Truly
https://throneberryfields.blogspot.com/2018/05/michael-morse-holding-no-grudges-but.html
Michael Morse, now working as a television
analyst before and after Nationals games.Just in case you might be wondering, Tuesday will mark the anniversary of the most colossal stupidities I've ever seen in a baseball game. It also marks the anniversary of one player's career ending, though he might not have announced it formally for a long enough while.
Every member of the Giants from that day ought to be grateful that Michael Morse holds no grudges over the career-ending concussion he suffered when, hustling out to get Bryce Harper---an old buddy from their days as Nationals teammates---out of further damage after Hunter Strickland threw a 98mph fastball into Harper's hip, over a pair of 2014 postseason home runs, Morse collided with his own teammate, pitcher Jeff Samardzija.
"The way I figure it," said Morse, who became a Giant after an offseason conversation with general manager Bob Evans at Hunter Pence's wedding, to
USA Today's Bob Nightengale, "I was playing with house money. I wasn't really planning on playing last year. So, it was my last hurrah. Maybe the concussion thing was God's way of saying, 'It's time to take it to the house, man. You have no business being here'."
Morse now works as an analyst on Nats' pre-game and post-game shows. He knows how well he wasn't playing before he went down in a heap after colliding with Samardzija. He also knows how ridiculous some people can look carrying grudges and looking to avenge them after long enough periods.
People like his former teammate Strickland, who's making a renewed impression as the hapless Giants' very effective closer---when there's something for him to close, that is.
If Morse is right, God could have found a better way, surely, than letting Strickland drill Harper on the first pitch no matter what the cost, no matter how plain brain-dead the decision actually was.
Harper took Strickland out of the park twice during the 2014 National League division series with a pair of mammoth shots. The first, in Nationals Park, traveled to the upper deck. The second---with Harper pausing and watching,
not because he was admiring his handiwork or looking to stick it to Strickland, but because he, like everyone else with eyes in Pac Bell Park that night, wasn't sure the drive would stay fair---did fly just fair, past the foul pole and into McCovey Cove.
Until last year, Morse would have been remembered primarily for two things: 1) The grand slam he was forced somewhat hilariously to pantomime back at the plate before re-rounding the bases, as a Nat, after umpires wanted to be sure nobody passed anyone on the bases when the ruling was changed on review from in play (the ball hit the top of the fence) to grand slam. 2) The eighth-inning blast he'd hit to tie Game Five of that NLDS, setting the stage for Travis Ishikawa's game, set, pennant-winning three-run homer.
And lest there remain any doubt that Strickland drilling Harper almost a year ago was anything but premeditated, let the record show once and for all, as Nightengale does, that Strickland had told teammates he was going to let Harper have it if he ever faced him again and asked them to kindly butt the hell out of it when he got the chance.
You remember Giants catcher Buster Posey standing still behind the plate after Strickland's fastball ricocheted off Harper's hip and Harper charged the mound furiously. We know now that Strickland previously invited Posey not to even think about restraining Harper if the drill opportunity arose, because Strickland wanted any piece of Harper he could get.
Strickland now says he regrets the entire incident. "You hear things like I ended [Morse's] career," Strickland told Nightengale, "so sure, obviously, I feel bad for Mike. You never know how things would have played out, but that was the end of his career. That was a mistake I made personally and a decision I made, but you've just got to move forward and forget about it. You deal with the consequences."
Easy for him to say. A relief pitcher being suspended six games doesn't miss half the playing time a position player misses when suspended four games, as was Harper, erroneously. None of the usual pitcher's excuses for a duster or a drill applied in this case, and everyone in baseball whose eyes and brains hadn't taken a powder when Strickland threw the pitch knew it. Even Giants broadcaster Duane Kuiper hollered on-air, "I don't blame Harper for going out. Not one bit."
Until that afternoon, Strickland hadn't faced Harper in a game since that second NLDS bomb. Samardzija may have stormed from the Giants' dugout to help a teammate, but Harper thought he wanted more in that moment based on the look on Samardzija's face. "Crazed" may be a polite way to describe it. Did we mention again that that was an NLDS the
Giants won---en route a third World Series ring in five seasons?
And Morse followed Samardzija for two reasons, one to stand by a teammate right or wrong, and two to keep an old buddy from being drawn and quartered for no reason other than that he was enraged, rightfully, about being hit by a pitch deliberately over almost three-year-old home runs.
"I texted Mikey Mo afterwards," Harper told Nightengale, "and said, 'Thank you for getting in front of me.' I don't know what would have happened, but just the say Samardzija came out there, he saw blood for sure. I really haven't kept in contact with [Morse] much after that, but I'll always remember what he did for me."
Nightengale says a Giants coach told him if Samardzija hadn't collided with Morse he might have taken a swing or three and done some damage to Harper. Morse may also have saved Samardzija from incurring the most severe suspension. "It might have been the best thing that happened to me," Samardzija told Nightengale. "I might have been suspended for years if I hurt that kid, the prodigal son."
Harper is not a player to everyone's taste no matter his outsize talent and his results when he plays injury free. Enough people still see him as the too-brash rookie; enough accuse him falsely enough of non-hustle; enough even think he overdoes the hustle right into injuries. And that's just in the Nats clubhouse, dearly though they love him. His clear enough passion for playing the game and for its history still sometimes impresses enough people as self-possession.
But he was clearly in the right almost a year ago. And it cost an old buddy a chance to end his career the right way, playing out whatever string was left to him, rather than going down like one of
the old three cartoon goofy guards crashing their way into their king's presence, if not into His Royal Personage himself.
"Really," Morse insists, "I'm fine with everything, and physically I'm good." If you don't count that an ordinary headache for most of us has since been his brain in a blender on puree. Samardzija still deals with occasional aftereffects in his neck region. He also keeps in regular touch with Morse, with whom he says he laughs now about 29 May 2017.
I'm still not sure it was such a laughing matter.
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