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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Mint-on-sunday/  When a baseball game turns into boxing match
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When a baseball game turns into boxing match

Players trading punches on a baseball field goes against the spirit of sport, but the fans sure love it

Photo: APPremium
Photo: AP

For no particular reason—I dislike boxing—I pulled up a YouTube clip the other day, of James “Buster" Douglas fighting Mike Tyson in 1990. Now, Tyson had made a career of going at opponents like a buzzsaw, hammering them into submission in quick time. Douglas was an unknown, and nobody expected him to last very long in the ring with Tyson, let alone win. This was going to be another quick Tyson show, everyone assumed.

But Douglas not only lasted, he ended up dominating the fight and knocking out Tyson. You may remember that at the time, this was considered one of the great upsets in boxing history.

None of that is the reason I mention the Tyson-Douglas fight. Instead, I was reminded of it by another YouTube clip that was attached to a news story I stumbled upon. What I don’t like about boxing is the brutality—savage blows to the head, plenty of blood, men tottering and falling senseless. The clips show you every detail in slow motion. You can actually see Tyson’s face crumpling with the impact of the decisive uppercut (or whatever it was) from Douglas.

And that’s what I saw in this other clip—a face crumpling with the impact from a punch. But here’s the thing: it wasn’t a clip about boxing. This was during a baseball game last Sunday between the Texas Rangers and the Toronto Blue Jays. Seems these two teams have a history of mutual dislike, so maybe trouble was only a matter of time.

Trouble came indeed, with Texas leading 7-6 and the Blue Jays batting. Their José Bautista found himself trying to make it to second base, sliding in on his knees. I don’t know enough about baseball to understand this fully, but apparently the way he did this interfered with what the Texas fielder on second base, Rougned Odor, was trying to do, which was to throw the ball to first base.

Perhaps he said something to Bautista, I’m not sure. But Bautista then approaches Odor, not exactly all friendly-like. Odor shoves him in the chest. Bautista keeps coming, his left arm reaching to grab Odor’s shirt, his right arm hooking back to throw a punch.

But Odor is much faster. He lands a swift and brutal punch to the side of Bautista’s face, sending his helmet and shades flying. The force in that fist almost knocks Bautista’s head off. As he falls, just for good measure, Odor whacks him on the head with his gloved left hand and keeps after him as others step in to separate the pair.

Take away the uniforms, it could have been a boxing match. Douglas would have relished that punch.

Both teams poured onto the field and indulged in plenty of shoving. The game continued somehow, but there was more nastiness later, if not quite Odor and Bautista’s hand-to-hand combat. Days later, pro baseball’s authorities announced various punishments: Odor suspended for eight games, Bautista for one, and penalties for several others as well.

Of course, this wasn’t the first ever fight at a baseball game, nor will it be the last. And it’s hardly the case that other sports don’t have their fights. Off the top of my head, I put together this dismal catalogue in just a few minutes:

• Harbhajan Singh slapped S. Sreesanth during an IPL cricket match in 2008. Sreesanth cried.

• In 1991, as the Duleep Trophy cricket final meandered to a close, Rashid Patel attacked Raman Lamba with a stump, chasing him all over the field. (Aside: Seven years later, Lamba died while playing in Bangladesh, when a ball hit him during fielding.)

• Jimmy Connors walked over to John McEnroe during a 1982 exhibition tennis match in Chicago, his finger wagging all the way till he was nearly in McEnroe’s face. McEnroe pushed him away angrily; if officials had not intervened, it might have gotten worse.

• During the 1996 final of the Aga Khan hockey tournament, Jagdev Singh of the Punjab Police “tackled" an Indian Airlines opponent so roughly that he broke the man’s knee. The Punjab Police then went after the other Indian Airlines players with their hockey sticks, breaking bones and skulls. The match was abandoned. So was the tournament itself: it was not contested again for several years.

• There’s plenty more: the selfsame Tyson bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear during a fight in 1997. And Luis Suarez famously bit Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini during a 2014 World Cup football match; incredibly, it was the third time Suarez had bitten an opponent. Nor do men have a monopoly on this kind of behaviour; in a 2009 college football game, Elizabeth Lambert of the University of New Mexico threw a fist and then pulled her opponent’s ponytail so hard that she fell to the ground.

So, what’s the point? Certainly players get keyed up and intense in competition. Thus, it should hardly be a surprise that emotions sometimes boil over and we see incidents like these. No amount of regulation and penalties will ever stop them, either.

Of course, nobody wants people get hurt in such altercations—so biting ears and throwing punches better suited to a boxing ring should certainly be heavily penalized. But other than that?

The real point is, despite any harrumphing you might hear, we audiences actually love moments like these. Check the YouTube hit counts for the clips above, for example. They are usually far higher than clips of the games themselves; certainly we remember those games for the incidents rather than any intrinsic sporting value.

Like with the Odor-Bautista battle. If you watch the fans as the fight unfolds, you will see plenty of them holding up their cellphones to record this particular sporting pinnacle. Predictably, at one point, the crowd switches from chanting “Let’s go Texas!"—the game was at their field—to chanting “USA! USA!" Throw some nationalism into the mix, why not?

So, when the man calling the game exclaims “All of a sudden, this ballpark is filled with electricity!" you know just what he means. A punch will do that.

Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His latest book is Final Test: Exit Sachin Tendulkar.

His Twitter handle is @DeathEndsFun

Comments are welcome at feedback@livemint.com.

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Published: 21 May 2016, 11:26 PM IST
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