And Why Shouldn't He?
We've seen it so many times in the great game of baaseball. There is a battle of wills between the batter and the pitcher. Usually, as we all know, the pitcher wins. Sometimes, the batter wins. The great batters fail 70% of the time.
Sometimes, in this battle of wills, the batter starts to get the upper hand. And when this happens, a pitcher must respond. He could try to avoid the batter with outside pitches. Or he could do what at least the two best pitchers in the last fifty years have done and knock the batter down.
We saw it with Clemens and Piazza, Clemens and Jeter before that. We saw it with Pedro and Jeter. Sometimes it seems we've seen it with Pedro and just about anyone who starts to get an edge on him (he does, after all, have the highest rate of hit batsmen among the greats -- I know I did the calculations myself). No one hits Pedro or Clemens for very long.
And what about Barry Bonds?
Clemens said, when he was a Yankee and they faced the Giants, that he would drill Barry in the elbow guard. First pitch -- BAM!! As promised. By the way, Barry didn't have a whole lot of success against the Rocket when he went to Houston.
So now it comes to light that Barry Bonds cheated his way to 713 home runs. All those pitchers who watched Barry's swing send a ball deep to right, who had to endure that degrading sneer of his, were actually cheated themselves. He had an unfair advantage over them.
That takes us to last night and Russ Springer. Springer gave up a home run to Barry back in 2001 -- the year he hit 73. Barry was, as we all know at this point, deep in steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. Springer was sixty feet, six inches from a man who smugly stared at a ball that flew out of the ballpark -- a man who may not have hit it out if he didn't cheat.
Russ Springer threw four pitches last night. Each pitch was thrown intentionally at Barry Bonds. He hit Barry and was subsequently ejected, as was Astros manager Phil Garner.
Considering everything swirling around this pitcher and this batter, can you really blame Russ Springer?
Sometimes, in this battle of wills, the batter starts to get the upper hand. And when this happens, a pitcher must respond. He could try to avoid the batter with outside pitches. Or he could do what at least the two best pitchers in the last fifty years have done and knock the batter down.
We saw it with Clemens and Piazza, Clemens and Jeter before that. We saw it with Pedro and Jeter. Sometimes it seems we've seen it with Pedro and just about anyone who starts to get an edge on him (he does, after all, have the highest rate of hit batsmen among the greats -- I know I did the calculations myself). No one hits Pedro or Clemens for very long.
And what about Barry Bonds?
Clemens said, when he was a Yankee and they faced the Giants, that he would drill Barry in the elbow guard. First pitch -- BAM!! As promised. By the way, Barry didn't have a whole lot of success against the Rocket when he went to Houston.
So now it comes to light that Barry Bonds cheated his way to 713 home runs. All those pitchers who watched Barry's swing send a ball deep to right, who had to endure that degrading sneer of his, were actually cheated themselves. He had an unfair advantage over them.
That takes us to last night and Russ Springer. Springer gave up a home run to Barry back in 2001 -- the year he hit 73. Barry was, as we all know at this point, deep in steroids and other performance enhancing drugs. Springer was sixty feet, six inches from a man who smugly stared at a ball that flew out of the ballpark -- a man who may not have hit it out if he didn't cheat.
Russ Springer threw four pitches last night. Each pitch was thrown intentionally at Barry Bonds. He hit Barry and was subsequently ejected, as was Astros manager Phil Garner.
Considering everything swirling around this pitcher and this batter, can you really blame Russ Springer?
posted by E-Luv at 10:05 AM
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