Suppose They Gave A Brawl And Nobody Watched

This weekend, the Toronto Blue Jays found themselves at the centre of attention of the baseball world.  Combined with their playoff run last fall, that's twice in the last year.  Or twice in the last twenty years, if we're being honest.  Only this time, the team wouldn't be nearly as happy with what got them the attention. To review:

• In last year's playoffs, the Jays' Jose Bautista hit a decisive home run, leading the team to a comeback win against the Texas Rangers.  After hitting the home run, he watched the ball go, then flipped his bat away emphatically before beginning the ceremonial jog around the bases.  Though the batflip has been celebrated among Jays fans, other baseball fans thought it was a violation of the sport's etiquette.
• On Sunday, the Blue Jays were playing in Texas, and by a foible of the schedule, it was the last time the two teams would play this season. When Bautista batted late in the game, he was hit by the pitch, seemingly in retribution.
• Miffed at this, Bautista took out his frustration a few batters later by sliding hard into second base, trying to upend second baseman Rougned Odor.  Odor took issue with this, the two started arguing, and Odor punched Bautista hard in the face.  This led to a bench-clearing brawl.

And the funny part is that all this happened during the fourth quarter of the Toronto Raptors' game seven against Miami, so hardly any Jays fans saw this happen.

So since then, the sports world in these parts have been debating the ethics of sports fighting and vengeance.  Actually, people have been discussing it since the original bat flip.  Some baseball old-timers criticized the flip, though many have been defending it on the grounds that:

• This was a big emotional moment, and you have to judge it by the context (keep in mind that the home run capped-off a bizarre inning that included errors, lead-changes, obscure rules, arguments, and nearly a riot.
• You have to change with the times, people are showy than they once were.  You know, hip-hop and all that.

To me, this is another example of how sports has weird ideas about what is and is not acceptable.  I remember a psychology prof pointing this out once: in hockey, fighting is acceptable, and even celebrated.  But try spitting on someone in a hockey game and it's crimes against humanity.

Baseball, as the sport that's been professional the longest, seems to have far stranger and more arbitrary rules of behaviour. If someone hits a home run, and then jogs around the bases a little too slowly, there'll be hell to pay, since it might hurt someone's feelings. But it's also accepted that the pitcher may hit the next batter out of frustration.

Normally I hold up hockey as the ultimate example of a sport with strange and nonsensical accepted behaviours, but Baseball has plenty of foibles that could do with some revisiting too.  Hard slides and batter-hitting and other physically-dangerous actions are being equated with actions considered offensive just because someone in the 1800's didn't like it.  And strangely, anyone questioning the morality of the fighting and other physical actions is told to suck it up, it's a man's game etc. You essentially have to suppress your emotions, except in things like bat flips, which people probably wouldn't be angered by if they weren't told to be angered by it.