I was out doing some shopping and running errands last Saturday when the World Champion Chicago White Sox played the lowly Chicago Cubs at Cellular Field. In the bottom of the second inning the bases were loaded with one out and A.J. Pierzynski on third base and Brian Anderson at the plate batting against Cubs pitcher Rich Hill. With the count 1-1, Brian Anderson hit a fly ball to left field. After the ball was caught, Pierzynski tagged up and ran toward home plate. Cubs catcher Michael Barrett was blocking the baseline in front of home plate, so Pierzynski had to barrel throw Barrett to get to the plate.
After knocking Barrett backward, Pierzynski slammed his hand on home plate and then got up and tried to walk around Barrett to pick up his helmet, which had fallen off during the collision and landed on the other side of home plate. Barrett immediately grabbed Pierzynski in a bear hugged, said "I didn't have the ball, bitch!" and then sucker punched Pierzynski in the jaw. At this point all hell broke loose. Scott Podsednik, the Sox' leadoff hitter, immediately tackled Barrett to the ground even though Barrett had at least 50 or 60 pounds on him.
My favorite part of the brawl was when Brian Anderson ran over and threw a punch at Barrett. Unfortunately he missed, as Barrett was falling down to the ground by this time. However, Cubs first baseman John Mabry got in Anderson's way and Anderson mixed it up with Mabry, throwing a couple more haymakers and then throwing Mabry down to the ground. Mabry was beaten badly enough that he had to go to the hospital for x-rays on his ribs.
Eventually order was restored and Pierzynski, Anderson, Mabry, and Barrett were all ejected. I expect that Barrett will soon receive a lengthy suspension (maybe10-15 games), and Brian Anderson will probably also be suspended for 2 or 3 games. Pierzynski probably won't be suspended, as he didn't really do any fighting - he was just the recipient of a punch, but threw none of his own. I'm not sure whether Mabry will be suspended either, as I only saw him getting his ass kicked, but I didn't see him throw any punches.
Even though the fight was several days ago and the White Sox have moved on, the Cubs are still complaining about the fight even though their player, Barrett, started it himself unprovoked. Everyone is pretty much in agreement that Pierzynski's collision was a clean play.
After the game, Cubs pitcher Rich Hill said that Pierzynski's play was "gutless" and "pathetic." the Cubs' GM Jim Hendry and manager Dusty Baker heard Hill's comments, they immediately called Hill into a closed-door meeting and explained that it was a clean play and told him to keep his mouth shut. "Sometimes the young man speaks more than he listens," Baker said about Hill in a rare public tongue-lashing of a player. "That's been part of the problem. We sent him out, and hopefully he will have learned something and be better when he gets back."
Sox manager Ozzie Guillen was livid when he heard Hill's comment. Guillen said "tell that Triple-A [bleep] to shut the [bleep] up," Guillen said. "Tell him to start throwing some strikes or he's going to get Dusty fired."
Barrett is another Cubs player unable to keep his mouth shut about his actions. He claims he felt threatened by Pierzynski and that's why he hit him. That's a pretty crappy explanation for his actions. This is not the first time Barrett has lost it - he yelled at San Diego Padres' Dave Roberts a few weeks ago and at Houston Astros' Roy Oswalt back in 2004. He's always been a hothead and his actions last Saturday were probably inevitable.
Now a member of the Cub's crappy bullpen is chiming in. Ryan Dempster claims that the diminutive White Sox third base coach Joey Cora jumped into the pile of players and bit Jacques Jones on the leg. Dempster said that he "thought that was one of the most bush things I've ever seen. You're on the other side of the white lines now because you can't play anymore, so don't come swinging ... just break the fight up. Don't act like you're a player anymore because you're not. If you're going to do that, you're going to end up getting yourself hurt one day."
When Guillen heard of Dempster's comments, he flew off the handle. "All of a sudden he's saying coaches shouldn't be out there, coaches shouldn't be involved in fights," Guillen said of comments he thought Dempster made during "The Mike North Morning Show" on Monday on WSCR-AM (670). "Good thing he's thought about it because if he keeps pitching like that, he might be coaching pretty soon."
Most baseball fans has probably already seen the melee at the White Sox-Cubs game last Saturday many times already. However, with the big pile of players, it was kind of hard to see who was doing what when everyone ran out onto the field. Luckily, however, I downloaded a digital copy of the game from mlb.com and found a little gem about 90 minutes into the downloaded broadcast.
