Beanball Wars : Throwing at an opposing player is considered an accepted practice in baseball. Only sometimes, the results are not so acceptable. : Baseball’s Been Lucky--Only One Has Died

Few remember Ray Chapman, the Cleveland shortstop who was killed by a beanball in New York in 1920. Chapman is the only on-field fatality in the history of major league baseball. But that fact is a distant recollection.

Most of us remember, too vividly, cringing at color pictures of Tony Conigliaro’s grotesquely swollen left eye. It taught us a shuddering fear of a pitched baseball.

When Conigliaro was hit by Jack Hamilton’s fastball Aug. 18, 1967, it nearly cost him his eyesight. A couple of inches higher and it most likely would have cost him his life. He didn’t play the rest of that season and all of the next. He made a couple of comeback tries, but he was never the same. His vision was never quite right.

The tragedy of Conigliaro would have been all the more tragic if that ball had been aimed at his head. It wasn’t. The pitch was high and tight and running in. Conigliaro was guessing fastball. He stepped into the pitch.

In fact, the worst beanings have not been intentional, from the fastball that killed Chapman; to the inside curveball in 1953 that left Don Zimmer with a fractured skull, a blood clot on the side of his brain and, eventually, a steel plate in his head; to the 94 m.p.h. fastball that dropped Ron Cey during the 1981 World Series; to the high slider that struck Dickie Thon last April.

So far, no pitcher has had to live with the knowledge that he maimed or killed a player with malice.

Injuries from beanballs are seldom as severe as the injuries from the resulting brawls.

In Atlanta last summer, the Braves’ Pascual Perez hit the Padres’ Alan Wiggins with the first pitch of the day. So when Perez went to the plate in the second inning, Ed Whitson threw a pitch behind Perez.

Throwing behind the batter is considered especially insidious because the batter is likely to move into it. The ball thrown behind Perez’s head was meant to get his attention. It did. Both benches cleared.

But Whitson didn’t hit Perez in that at-bat. In the fourth, Whitson was ejected for throwing three straight inside pitches to Perez. The second San Diego pitcher, Greg Booker, was ejected for throwing his first pitch at Perez in the sixth. And the third San Diego pitcher, Craig Lefferts, was ejected for hitting Perez in the eighth.

The brawl that resulted even included fans. It also included Brave third baseman Bob Horner, who was on the disabled list with a broken right wrist. Horner, who had been watching the game from the press box until the sixth inning, went down and changed into his uniform because, as he said, “you could see what was going to happen.”

San Diego Manager Dick Williams had been ejected in the fourth inning, along with Whitson, in accordance with the rule that says the manager is responsible for the beanballs. Coach Ozzie Virgil, who took over for Williams, was ejected along with Booker. Padre replacement manager Jack Krol was kicked out, along with Lefferts.

In the ninth inning, Atlanta pitcher Donnie Moore hit Graig Nettles, starting another brawl. Moore and Atlanta Manager Joe Torre were ejected then.

In all, 16 players were ejected.

Umpire John McSherry said: “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It was pathetic, absolutely pathetic. It took baseball back 50 years.”

Indeed, 50 years ago, beanball wars were quite common. But back then, it was unnecessary to brawl after every encounter.

Brewer Manager George Bamberger, who has been in professional baseball since 1946 as a pitcher, pitching coach and manager, said: “Years ago, it was an accepted part of the game. Every game, four or five guys would be knocked down. If a guy got hit, he accepted that. He’d be right back hitting again, as soon as his dizzy spells ended. I sometimes wonder how some of today’s players would have been able to hit then at all. If a pitch even comes close, they’re crying. They cry about every inside pitch.

“Today it’s accepted that you’re not going to throw at anybody. The intentional stuff these days is very, very minor. The whole beanball thing is dying out.

“You hear more about it now because the hitter is crying on every inside pitch. When a pitcher misses outside, nobody says a thing.

“It used to be that if you had to knock a hitter down, it was a purpose pitch. Do that today, they say you’re throwing at them.”

A pitcher can be ejected from the game for throwing at a batter, but that doesn’t happen until after someone has already been used as a target. Then the umpire issues a warning that the next pitcher who throws at a batter will be ejected. It could be the pitcher who started it, or it could be the pitcher who is obliged to retaliate.

National League umpire Dutch Rennert said: “A guy hits somebody, you’ve got to go over and warn the other manager and the pitcher who hasn’t even done anything wrong. It’s a bad rule, the opposite of what it should be. If a guy throws at somebody, he should be ejected, but, instead, the second pitcher is thrown out and the pitcher who started it is still in the game.

“And the fine is only $50. (If) you throw your helmet, the fine is $100.”

Tom Gorman, National League supervisor of officials, added, “They should make the rule at the beginning of the game. You tell the pitcher, ‘You take a shot, you’re out.’ ”

How do you know whether a pitcher is wild or throwing at somebody?

“It’s a judgment call, but that’s what we get paid for,” Rennert said.

How likely is it that the umpires could get the rule changed?

“Who’s going to listen to us?” Rennert asked. “There’s not one umpire on the rules committee. Does that make sense?”

It might be tough to guess intent if incidents were isolated. But the game situation almost always gives away intentions. Everyone on the field knows when there is a chance for retaliation and there’s not much an umpire can do about it.

Sometimes, there’s not much a pitcher can do about it.

Consider the time Oriole pitcher Jim Palmer hit New York’s Mickey Rivers. Palmer didn’t want to hit anyone, but he had to. It was his duty, according to baseball tradition.

It was 1976, and Reggie Jackson was with Baltimore. New York pitcher Dock Ellis started the incident by hitting Jackson in the face with a pitch. Actually, Palmer said, Jackson had brought that on by telling Ellis, “If you’re going to hit someone, hit me.”

Well, he did. So Jackson was taken to the hospital and Palmer, who was, at the time, resting in the clubhouse, was told, “Reggie’s been hit and he’s been hit hard.”

Palmer said: “Earl Weaver says he never tells his pitchers to hit anyone. But that time the message was clear that something had to happen.

“I had a 4-0 lead and it was the top of the ninth. I didn’t want to hit anybody, but you’re in a situation where you have to protect your teammates. They expect it. Usually, you would hit the next batter you face, but the next batter was Elrod Hendricks.

“I certainly wasn’t going to hit Hendricks. He had been with the Orioles. He had caught my no-hitter. So I just got him out and then Mickey Rivers came up.

“Now, is it fair that he should have to get hit? If Dock Ellis had been batting, I would have hit him. But with the DH rule, it’s the next guy up. That’s just the way it works. I felt very bad about having to hit Mickey Rivers. It took me four tries to hit him. He knew it was coming. He was moving around.”

Palmer winged him in the shoulder with a half-speed fastball.

Why hadn’t home plate umpire Bill Deegan issued a warning to Palmer so that he would have been ejected on that first pitch?

The reasoning was that if the Orioles had not gained their revenge right then and there, it would have festered until the next game, leaving another nine innings for who-knows-what.

There are those who reasoned that if Whitson had hit Perez in the second inning of the game at Atlanta, that little battle would not have escalated.

What Palmer did was acceptable. More than acceptable. He was duty-bound. He was not ejected and he would have paid no $50 fine to the league. But, as it turned out, he paid a $500 fine for breaking a taboo. He admitted that he was throwing at Rivers.

“It was not like I was bragging about it, but it was so obvious, what else could I say?” Palmer said.

He could have said what every other pitcher has said--ball slipped, inside pitch, glare off the helmet, anything. But he admitted it.

“The next day Lee MacPhail (American League president) called and said, ‘How’s the family, how’s the weather and oh, by the way, we can’t have pitchers saying that they intentionally threw at somebody.’ So I paid the fine.”

And years later he’s still being asked about it. “I’m not proud of it,” he said. “It wasn’t my style. It was just something I had to do.

“I hit very few batters in my career. I always looked at it as unnecessarily putting a man on base. . . . Hitting Mickey Rivers cost me a shutout. It ended up, 4-1. . . . You look at pitchers like Catfish Hunter, the real artists, they didn’t have to hit people. You might have to move ‘em back, but you don’t have to get into that intimidation thing.

“There are pitchers who feel like they have to intimidate the hitters. There is a certain macho-ism that is part of the game that will always be there.”

Gorman acknowledges that there are still a few headhunters in the game. (He’ll mention no names.) “But there isn’t a guy in baseball who’ll throw at you to hurt you,” Gorman said.

“The game really is changing. You remember Bill Terry? When he was managing the Giants, if he told you to throw at a guy and you didn’t, it was a $10 shot, which is like $100 today.”

One of the biggest changes in the game was brought about by the beaning suffered by Zimmer. Soon after Zimmer was hit in St. Paul on July 7, 1953, the batting helmet became required equipment.

After Zimmer’s vision came back into focus and after doctors had him outfitted with a plate in his head, Zimmer came back to play. He continued to crowd the plate, continued to step into fastballs and continued to get hit again. In 1956, a fastball from Hal Jeffcoat broke his left cheekbone.

It’s all part of the game.

With the batting helmet, though, chances for real tragedy are greatly reduced. When Cey was hit by Rich Gossage in the fifth game of the 1981 World Series, Dr. Frank Jobe, the Dodgers’ doctor, said that if he hadn’t been wearing a helmet, he would have been killed.

Major league baseball would have had its second fatality.