By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/08/25/basebrawl-comerica-the-umps-got-some-splainin-to-do/
If baseball government intends to investigate the Thursday afternoon riots on the Comerica Park field in
Detroit, they should begin by calling home plate umpire Carlos Torres to account and asking him one
question. The question is, “What on earth were you not thinking when Michael Fulmer drilled Gary Sanchez
in the top of the fifth?”
When Sanchez checked in at the plate against Fulmer an inning earlier, the young Yankee star had
absolutely no thought that the hanger he’d hit over the center field fence to open the inning would get
him a fastball on the hip an inning later, after Aaron Hicks’s sacrifice fly made it a 3-2 Yankee lead.
Maybe the Tigers were a little tired of Sanchez hitting like a wrecking machine at their expense this week,
considering Sanchez had gone deep twice on Tuesday and once on Wednesday. But maybe Fulmer didn’t
stop to think that Sanchez taking one on the hip an inning after he went long yet again just didn’t look
pure.
“I respect Gary Sanchez, I really do,” Fulmer pleaded about the Yankee who beat him out for the American
League’s Rookie of the Year award last year. “I would never throw at anybody that hit a homer off of me,
just because they hit a home run.”
If he thought Yankee manager Joe Girardi bought that for one nanosecond, Fulmer should be advised not
to go into the bridge selling business. “If you can’t see that Fulmer clearly hit Sanchez on purpose,” Girardi
said, “there’s something wrong.” Indeed, Girardi would argue, persuasively, that Torres and company’s failure
to hand down a warning at minimum planted the seed for what sprouted in short enough order.
When baseball’s current hottest hitter takes one in the hip a smart umpire assumes there’s liable to be payback
and does what has to be done to prevent it. Forget the warning, Fulmer—whose face gave every indication of
“mission accomplished” after he drilled Sanchez—should have been tossed.
Let Ausmus scream blue murder. The toss would have taken the Yankees’ reason for payback away. And they
could have continued playing baseball without the Yankees and the Tigers’ impersonations of the Ultimate
Fighting Championship.
When Yankee reliever Tommy Kahnle threw behind Miguel Cabrera with two out in the bottom of the sixth, a
classic you-drilled-our-hottest-hitter-we-get-your-best-hitter message pitch, Torres tossed him post haste, with
no warning, and the pitch hadn’t even hit Cabrera. Out went Kahnle, in came struggling Aroldis Chapman,
recently relieved of the closer’s job, and then the real fun began.
Cabrera and Yankee catcher Austin Romine had words, then Romine had a spot on the ground when Cabrera
gave him a shove in the chest, followed by a couple of punches after Romine went down. The benches emptied
and what looked like an ugly street brawl broke out, including Sanchez ill-advisedly jumping in and throwing
a sucker punch or three on Cabrera, which is probably likely to get him a few games off for bad behaviour.
But Cabrera got thrown out of the game, too, and rightfully, while Romine also got tossed for no crime worse
than trying to defend himself. Both men had slightly different takes on it. Cabrera said he didn’t so much
object to being thrown at as he did with Romine talking to the umpire, saying he told Romine to calm down.
Romine said Cabrera asked if the problem was him to which Romine said he replied, “It’s not about you.”
One inning later, Betances drilled Tiger catcher James McCann in the helmet on the second pitch of the inning.
There’s a point that the last thing Betances wanted to do was put the leadoff man on the hard way in a game
that was tied at six by that point, and he didn’t exactly look like a man who’d just hit his target, but crew chief
Dana DeMuth ran Betances after the second brawl of the day began clearing.
“I threw him out and that was to keep control of the game,” DeMuth said after the game. “And the reason
why it took a minute or so, was because I wanted to get the players apart. Once I got Detroit going to their
dugout and New York going to their dugout, then I informed him that he was ran. It wasn’t necessarily of
him intentionally beaning the batter, but to keep control of the situation, I deemed it necessary that he
went.”
With a mouth
that mealy—yes, it’s fair to wonder what DeMuth was dreaming during his little snooze when
Fulmer nailed Sanchez—DeMuth might make a good U.S. senator, if not a better U.S. president.
David Robertson came in for Betances and caught John Hicks, the next Tiger batter, in the hand, but the
umpires couldn’t determine if Robertson was trying to drill Hicks. But Wilson, who’d relieved Fulmer in the
seventh, had absolutely no doubt, and to prove it he drilled Todd Frazier in the leg on the first pitch, with
one out in the top of the eighth. Basebrawl number three of the day.
One way or the other, the Tigers managed to win the game, 10-6, a day after the Yankees buried them
10-2 with Sanchez contributing to much of that mayhem. But his contributions then came strictly courtesy
of his bat on pitches with “Hit me!” signs on them.
The season series between the two teams is finished. The adherence to outmoded unwritten rules, and
umpires’ still too selective judgments on purpose pitches, isn’t, unfortunately. And if Sanchez is one of the
Yankees who face an unpaid day or four off, with the Yankees clawing for a piece of the postseason pie,
that’s the last thing he and they need.
“I was in the dugout; I looked up, and I saw Romine rolling on the ground with the other guys,” Sanchez
said through an interpreter to reporters after the game. “In that moment, instinct takes over because
you want to protect your teammate. That’s your family out there. Everything happened so quickly, it
was a blur.”
Not good, and someone’s going to have to tell the kid that that’s not the best way to make friends, influence
people, and help your team down the stretch of a pennant race. But in one way you couldn’t fault him. It
was Sanchez taking one for the team that he shouldn’t have had to take at all that seeded the rumbles in
the first place.
The umpires ought to have some splainin’ to do.
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