It’s Time for Players to Start Using Their Beans

It isn’t that they yearn for the good ol’ days.

It isn’t that they don’t understand retaliation and an occasional fight. They did their share of retaliating and fighting.

It’s . . . well, when their favorite sport deteriorates into an old brawl game, with 50 players going at each other, some old-timers tend to shake their heads and bemoan what Bill Rigney, for one, calls the “mob mentality” of the modern player.

“It’s not the fighting that bothers me, it’s the feeling that everybody wants to beat up everybody else,” said Rigney, who spent more than eight years as the first Angel manager and, at 80, is senior advisor to the Oakland Athletics.

Everybody might not have wanted to beat up everybody else, of course, but everybody seemed involved in the two most recent brawls, that New York Yankee-Baltimore Oriole slugfest and the Angel-Kansas City Royal double feature.

Joe Torre and Ray Miller, the Yankee and Oriole managers, escaped fine and suspension, but the American League made an example of Terry Collins and Tony Muser, the Angel and Royal managers, after the second incident.

Gene Budig, the league president, suspended each for eight games, bemoaning the lack of leadership, as if somehow they could control their 25 players when called to arms.

An ensuing call came from acting Commissioner Bud Selig, who this week instructed Paul Beeston, baseball’s chief operating officer, and the two league presidents to meet with representatives of the players’ association to immediately devise more effective penalties for players and managers who leave the dugout, bullpen or their on-field position to incite or inflame violence.

“I hate to see the game become a police state, with rules that have nothing to do with the playing of the game, but I understand what Selig is trying to do,” Rigney said. “This is going to keep happening until somebody is hurt at the bottom of a pile.”

Sparky Anderson, the former Cincinnati Red and Detroit Tiger manager, said that a $10,000 fine for players leaving the bench or their position, and a $25,000 fine for players who do the fighting would end it.

“In the first place, if a guy knows the cavalry isn’t going to come to his aid, only the real tough guy is going to go [to the mound],” Anderson said. “In the second place, I don’t know of too many ballplayers who like to spend their own money.

“But you either stop it or you don’t stop it. If you don’t believe there’s a right or wrong, then let the players settle it. To me, it’s not a big deal. I don’t know of too many guys who have gotten really hurt. Most of it is a little yelling and scuffling.”

Gene Mauch, a longtime major league manager, discounted the impact of heftier fines.

“I’m not saying it wouldn’t keep some guys [in their place], but I don’t think so,” Mauch said. “The way I saw [Angel closer] Troy Percival come out of the bullpen [in Kansas City], he wasn’t thinking about fine or suspension, he was thinking about somebody copping a Sunday on one of his boys.

“To nail the two managers and declare they didn’t have leadership is nonsense. Can you imagine Walter Alston telling Don Drysdale not to do this or that? Or Sandy Koufax? Sandy was tougher than two old boots.”

Mauch, Anderson and Rigney concurred that the American League begets trouble with the designated-hitter rule. An offending pitcher doesn’t have to face retaliation at the plate. They also agreed that current players trigger too quickly.

“Either nobody has taught [the modern player] to get out of the way, or it’s become illegal to pitch inside,” Rigney said, facetiously. “Apparently, the players’ association has decided it’s illegal to pitch inside.

“I don’t know if it’s frustration or not, but the modern player doesn’t seem to know how to cope with it. Maybe it’s a fear of getting hurt.”

Said Anderson: “Not many guys really get thrown at upstairs. It’s usually [on the lower part of the body]. I’d tell my guys, ‘If you make a big deal of it, you’re letting them know you don’t like it.’ Nobody likes to get hit, but don’t let them know it. Just go to first base. All that talk, who needs it?”

Generations of young pitchers have been deterred from throwing inside by the aluminum bat, and hitters have become conditioned to not expect it and overreact when it comes. Mauch added that the machismo factor is hard to ignore. As manager of the Montreal Expos, he once led the charge against Steve Carlton and suffered bruises at the bottom of the pile.

“On the way back to the clubhouse, I noticed that one of our pitchers hadn’t come off the bench,” Mauch said. “I asked him about it the next day and he said that he had never taken overt action against another human being. Overt action. I can respect that, but he didn’t endear himself to the rest of his teammates.”

Rigney said he suffered two black eyes in a Brooklyn Dodger-New York Giant brawl in which Carl Furillo broke his arm when he charged after then-Giant manager Leo Durocher in the dugout. However, Rigney, Mauch and Anderson agreed that most of the fighting in their eras was one on one, sometimes with teammates ringing the combatants until it was settled.

“Pitching inside is part of the game,” Rigney said, “but 50 guys going at each other isn’t. Retaliation is part of the game, but we tended to [store it away for future use]. Now everybody wants to war immediately.

“I mean, at a time when we’re still trying to mend fences [after the strike], when we’ve got Mark McGwire and all those great young shortstops, the players need to get their act together. Stop acting like a mob and start acting like professionals. They’re making a travesty of it.”