• Home
• About
• Contests
• BFF’s

• Baseball
• Basketball
• Daily Dick Punch
• Fight Stuff
• Football
• Hockey
• Other Sports Crap

Subscribe

Fighting in Sports

I was watching some random 4am sports montage on some random cable station about fighting in Major league sports. The story was about how our hero’s are teaching our kids that violence is ok.

First off, I just want to say that soldiers are the real hero’s right? Whether we agree with the premise of why they are there be damned. We are here, they are dying, we are still sitting here…end of discussion.

So lets for a moment forgo the obvious problem I have with calling them heroes and focus instead on what they were actually doing. Violence in sports is never going away, and it is for the most part few and far between. Only when you are looking to scrutinize something do you begin to notice its regularity.

If I think that Hummers are a brutal strain on the economy and environment, I am going to see them everywhere, and I am going to tell people that they are everywhere, and now those people are going to see them everywhere.

The same principle applies here. If you think that fighting in hockey is getting out of control, and you voice your opinion to a concerned mother’s group that are sitting around the heater drinking coco and reading Oprah’s book of the month…wow. That one got away from me a little. You get the point.

Lets do a sport by sport analysis of fighting in the ‘big 4’ (if for no other reason than those are the four sports they had in the clip) (and if I included lacrosse, then I would have to do field-hockey, and we would devolve into curling and I would spend the next two months trying to find a curling fight on You-Tube). I might actually still do that.

Hockey

There is, for the most part, honor in the violence that happens here. A fight in hockey is between two willing participants and there is always some type of provocation that has led to the gloves being tossed.

I should also point out they these guys can actually throw down. One hand on the sweater, and the other just chain-sawing to the dome.

Fighting in hockey happens as a visceral gut reaction to an injustice that has occurred on the ice. Somebody gets a stick to the chops, somebody runs your star player, somebody ices your goalie, guy slept with you wife, and….well I guess just showing up to the rink.

The point is that there is not violence for violence sake. There are lines and unspoken rules, and when one is one is crossed or spoken there are consequences.

Now, If you gave me a shot of adrenaline, slapped some skates on me, put a carbon weapon in my hand, and asked me to fly around an enclosed area against five guys that want to kill me….I would get into a fight. Well, there is at least a greater chance than if I had a latte at a Starbucks while reading the ‘economist’.

Baseball

Baseball to me is like having a long nap on your couch and then your coffee table bursts into flames. Hours of quite mediation followed by four and a half seconds of excitement.

I do not think that there is enough violence in baseball. The potential is there. You have a pitcher throwing a projectile at 90+ mph and a large juiced up monster with a bat. Why do they drop the bat?

Pitchers can put the ball wherever they want it. So when a rising fastball scratches the brim of your helmet; that is like bumping into a guy at a bar. If the batter does not stand away from the plate, he is acknowledging that there is about to be a problem up in here. The pitcher will then either concede and continue pitching normally or rip one right at him. And it is on. Why do they drop the fucking bat?

My favorite part of fighting in baseball is when the other pitchers come running out from the bullpen. They are so exhausted by the time they get to the fight they just hang-on to a member of the opposite bullpen until it is all over. Someone should really pick up the bat.

With the exception of The George Bell drop kick, and Nolan Ryan’s old man strength headlock of Robin Ventura, fighting in baseball is generally more laughable than it is a threat to influence violence in children. That would all change of they would only pick-up the bat.

Football

You very rarely see a fight in professional football, and I think that is a good thing. Sure you see some pushing and the occasional helmet slap, but any indication of extracurricular violence and they get tossed.

They have an interesting rule; helmet is taken off on the field during an altercation and you are gone.

A bench clearing football brawl is the absolute worst case scenario for professional sports.

These are a group of men that start out wanting to kill each other, and there is a very thin line between manslaughter and football.

Basketball

What they do is not fighting…it is slapping and running away. They will not be included in this article. It may appear in my next article “WNBA..tougher than her brother?)

[Written by new HofS contributer Sean Murphy, if you have any questions for Sean, please F**k off.]

Comments

Copyright © 2008 Sports News and Other Cool Crap - The HOS · Log in