Stung Ballplayers Forget That Proper Retaliation Is an Art

In a season happily marked by golden-anniversary celebrations of 1941’s magical season and last-place teams of a year ago catapulting toward first, baseball 1991 has been plagued by a downside of player discontent. Of pitchers knocking down batters. Of batters charging the mound. Of players fighting with teammates. Of players confronting fans.

Tension has been high between pitchers and batters. It’s become a familiar practice for batters hit by pitches -- and even pitched closely -- to charge the mound. Bench-clearing incidents have become summertime staples of television sports-highlight programs, replacing hockey brawls. Players reacting to fan behavior they consider “too personal” have taken to challenging the paying customer and even retaliating.

To name but a few controversies: Cincinnati pitcher Rob Dibble threw behind a Houston batter; Dibble again, unhappy that he gave up two runs, heaved a ball that struck a woman in the stands; Cleveland outfielder Albert Belle fired a ball into the seats at a fan who taunted him over his alcoholism; Oakland slugger Jose Canseco had to be restrained in New York from going after a man who yelled at him; Chicago White Sox pitcher Jack McDowell threw behind Toronto rookie Mark Whiten after giving up a home run, with Whiten then punching McDowell.

Years back, it seemed that being a major-league player implied not only a high level of talent but also a sense of decorum. For the most part, players stoically gave no indication they heard anything from the stands no matter how loud or profane. (A notable exception was Ted Williams’ spitting toward his detractors.) Batters who were knocked down by and large retaliated by digging back into the batter’s box and trying as hard as they could to put the ball into play.

But players’ emotions have unraveled enough this season to raise a number of questions concerning manners at the ballpark:

-- Are batters edgy because they’re making so much money they don’t want their rare career opportunities jeopardized?

-- Does a batter charging a pitcher reflect societal behavior in general?

-- Has fan behavior worsened, or do players lack the discipline to mind their own manners?

Frank Robinson, who as a player crowded the plate and often was hit by pitches, comes down hard on batters who charge the mound. In his Hall of Fame career, Robinson had a well-earned reputation for extreme competitiveness -- but not viciousness. There’s a big difference. He also believes that fans’ heckling is no worse than before and that players have no business responding.

Robinson, the Baltimore Orioles’ assistant general manager, believes there’s a reason why batters charge the mound and it doesn’t have anything to do with the salaries they’re making. It’s a lack of education in the game’s unwritten rules: the role of the knockdown pitch or one that even hits a batter, and the ways a batter can legitimately retaliate.

“The hitters are a little too sensitive today,” said Robinson, who led the National League six seasons in times hit by pitched balls while playing for Cincinnati.

In high-school and college ball, in which aluminum bats are used, players aren’t brushed back or thrown inside very much at all, said Robinson. There’s not much point to the inside pitch because with an aluminum bat a hitter can turn a close pitch into a base hit anyway, far easier than with a wood bat. When these players get into pro ball, and sometimes very quickly to the majors, they get a surprise introduction to the brushback.

“And because the pitchers don’t hit” in the American League, Robinson said, “the hitters think there’s no way to get back at them. But there are ways to get back.”

Retaliation is an art, and Robinson and many older players were great practitioners. The drag bunt that brings the pitcher to cover first base and into the path of the batter used to be elementary. A batter put on base by being hit often went into second with his spikes up.

“You don’t see a player drag a ball and run up a pitcher’s back,” Robinson said. “I’d drag a ball or take it out on the middle infielders. Once I was playing against the Giants and put my spikes into Darryl Spencer’s chest. ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ he said. I said, ‘Ask your pitcher.’ ... “

To Robinson, charging the mound reveals a batter’s lack of sophistication.

“Being hit by a breaking ball and charging the mound, there’s no sense in it,” Robinson said. “I’d say to a pitcher if I got hit by a breaking ball, ‘Thank you.’ Hey, he put me on base.”

Being hit was acceptable to him “as long as the ball hit you in the side or in the legs. ... But I don’t buy the pitcher’s excuse that the ball got away from him. These are the best pitchers in the world, or they’re supposed to be. ... “

Robinson said he doesn’t believe anyone ever intentionally threw at his head, and that only once did he start to charge the mound before being restrained. He’d injured his arm just above the elbow crashing into an outfield wall, and later was plunked on the bruised spot by a former San Francisco pitcher. The pain set him off.

Robinson applauded the restraint exercised by Toronto’s Joe Carter recently after he was hit in the helmet by a pitch from Detroit’s Bill Gullickson. The first two batters of the game had hit home runs, then Carter, the next batter, was hit. Carter, Toronto’s new team leader this year, started toward Gullickson, then stopped. “He said he did it for the good of the team,” Robinson said. “He could have been suspended. That’s smart baseball.”

Carter, in Baltimore last week with the Blue Jays, said it was “obvious” that Gullickson was throwing at him.

Carter’s approach to the game is similar to Robinson’s. Getting hit by a pitch is part of the game. “You always expect that -- that’s playing hardball.” But Carter believes that Gullickson’s beanball warranted a charge of the mound. “If I wasn’t in a pennant race,” he said, “I’d have been out there.”

“You find ways to get back, you definitely do,” Carter said. “And there will be a way I get back at him.”

As Robinson once handled such matters, it could happen in the flow of a game. Carter said that being hit by a pitch “wakes me up, gets me psyched up.” It increases his incentive to help win the game. After he was hit by Gullickson, he stole second and then third.

Intra-club squabbling, such as the Mike Greenwell-Mo Vaughn tiff in Boston, is nothing new. But players’ behavior toward fans this season has made an unusual number of headlines. Canseco has argued with spectators in New York and Baltimore. Belle, who previously had been treated for alcohol abuse, was angered by a fan at Cleveland Stadium who “invited” him to a keg party. Belle threw a baseball into the stands, hit the man in the chest and was suspended for seven days.

While taunting a player with a difficult personal problem would seem extreme, Robinson said he believed Belle could have handled the situation better. “From what I read somebody yelled for him to come to a beer party,” Robinson said. “If he said, ‘Hey, thanks a lot but I’m on the wagon,’ the guy would have laughed. I bet he’d have had a fan for life.”

Robinson noted that he had a difficult time himself with fans because of what he called “the gun incident.” (In 1961 in a Cincinnati restaurant Robinson pulled a pistol to frighten off a man threatening him with a knife. “A man learns from his stupidities,” Robinson said afterward, and later that year led the Reds to the pennant.)

“I knew I was going to hear about it,” Robinson said. “I prepared myself for it. I was ready for it. I know they said more vicious things to me than they said to him (Belle). ...

“You hear it all,” he said of fans’ shouting. “Don’t let any manager or player tell you they don’t hear it.” (Robinson said he never heard any racial epithets from fans during his major-league career, but did when he was coming up through the minors).

But for Robinson, one of the unwritten rules of the game is not to respond to taunting fans no matter what.

Suspensions have been meted out in the most blatant incidents of improper behavior by players -- but there’s still sentiment for tougher punishment.

“The penalties given,” said John M. Silva, sports psychologist at the University of North Carolina, “simply do not deter them.”

While studies have shown alcohol consumption spurs fan rowdiness, he said, it’s also true that “fans have taken their cues from the people they’re watching.” Thus, much of the burden rests with the players. “Athletes are role models whether they like it or not,” Silva said.