Selig causes another bench clearing brawl

Once upon a time there was a disagreement during a baseball game that led to a bench clearing brawl, how do you correct that from ever happening again? If you are Bud Selig, you don’t, and you don’t even acknowledge that there is a even a problem. That is what happened Sunday during the Brewers-Pirates contest. If you have not seen the play you can see it here.

This incident is the one of many unnecessary multi-player incidents that seem to occur weekly MLB baseball in this so called “Modern Era” of baseball. It should be of no surprise to anybody that the commissioner does absoultly nothing to address the issue nor acknowledges that there is a problem while his counterpart league have resolved their issues years or decades ago. Bud Selig sits around while the kids run the household, but this no surpise to me since he has proven before that he is weak on punishment.

I have written about this before, but it amazes me that nothing is done about a simple rule change. Suspend the players that join in from the outside and suspend anybody that comes out of the dogout/bullpen.

In this case, Gomez will get what he deserved unlike last year, he escalated a shouting match with the pitcher. This appear to be the one thing that Gomez needs to work on or he will self-destruct as everybody will try to get into his head all the time and provoke fights with him, especailly since it appears that Selig will do nothing to curtail these indicients from occuring.

The use of instant replay should used in these situations (if commistioner do nothing does nothing) to assist in ensuring who should be ejected. I would normally expect this to be an easy thing to change, but given that it took 10 years longer than it should have just to get replay, I’m not expecting any changes anything soon.

In the end, it should be of no surpise that if at the end of the season attendence is down, what is the cause of it. The lack of changes or the delay to put in much needed changes will be the downfall of MLB if drastic action to bring back the youth to the game are not implemented. There are other sports that will be more than happy to fill its spot, this incident is just one of many problems with baseball.

Selig continues poor punishment record

Given the events of last nights altercation between the Milwaukee Brewers and Atlanta Braves, I would have expected some kind of punishment to be handled down, but once again the kids are running the house with no guidelines to controlling the household.

First and foremost, I will state that I agree with the Gomez suspension for 1 game. You can not jaw with everybody around the base paths and not expect something to occur. I also agree with the suspension of Reed Johnson, though I like how he then hid behind his coach after getting his shots.

Like one of my previous posts , how does McCann not get anything out of this, just like Matt Kemp earlier this year? How can not punish the secondary and third party offenders who commit equal or greater offenses than the people caused the initial starters. McCann ignited the fight, yet he gets nothing. This can no longer occur now or with the new commissioner in a couple of years.

You can not have these major brawls night after night in baseball. People might say that it is going to occur over a 162 game season with 30 teams, but honestly how is it even remotely acceptable in baseball, but in any other job where you work 3 times the hours a night for double the number of nights a year? If you start a fight at a normal job, you are out of a job, but in baseball you might not even get a fine.

This needs to change now, any person who does joins a fight should get ejected and suspended for future games. Period!

Selig allows fights to continue in MLB

If you have not heard by now, during the 4-0 victory for the Brewers over the Braves during Wednesday’s game, there was a little scuffle between Carlos Gomez and the rest of the Braves after his home run which ignited a beach clearing brawl. In this post, I could take the high level perspective on this and talk about the unwritten rules, but I want to have a different take on the events that occurred.

Bud Selig has lost control of the ship or at least lost control of the ability to right the ship when events occur that require a review and change in the rules. Even before I started this blog I knew the rules had to change, I even mentioned some of these rule changes within a previous post.

This is a simple rule change, simple! Any player who joins a fight outside of the original parties are ejected and hit with a suspension. This fact eludes Bud Selig that the rules have to change or at least he has to make the attempt to change the rules, even if the players union might reject them, then it is not on Bud.

Some will say that fighting is part of the game and that these “unwritten” rules are part of the baseball tradition. This complete bull, traditions are meant to be broken(or else there would still be gladiator fights at the Colosseum) and the rules should be changed. Baseball has been stuck behind this “unwritten” rules for too longer and something has to change, the first being the way we police the game.

One additional question I have out of the game today, how does Brian McCann not get ejected from the game? He escalates a volatile situation by standing in front of the plate and then gets in the face of Gomez. This is another problem with the MLB umpiring today, the inability to get the call right when large scale situation occur. Like in the NBA and NCAA basketball, the use of replay could have led to additional player being dealt with during the game [cough] [cough] Kelly Johnson [cough].

What do I expect in the end? Nothing. Bud might hand out a couple of fines and maybe a 1 game suspension, but nothing to address the root cause of the issue. In the end, what will it take for change? Season ending injury, career ending injuries or maybe incident that might end the reign as commissioner.

Only time will tell.

Selig disappoints with suspensions again!

If I started to say… Did anybody see that thing that fight late last week? You know the one that started with two guys but then everybody joined?

Would you not assume that I was talking about some incident that occur outside some bar or tavern? Well you would be wrong, I’m talking about the fight that occurred on April 11th between the Dodgers and Padres in which Zack Greinke was left with a broken collarbone.

What does Carlos Quentin get out of the whole ordeal? A very unjustly 8 games. What does Matt Kemp get? Nothing! While I don’t think the suspension should be tied to when Greinke time on the DL, the suspension should have been longer and sent a clear message. As for Kemp, I guess you can go off on a ‘Roid rage jumping on top of people swinging wildly, start a second fight plus cause trouble in the parking lot and you get no discipline.

Once again MLB front office lets another set of players off the hook, Bud Selig is letting the kids run the school and the discipline is non-existent. This suspension will have done nothing to prevent future incidents like it from occurring in baseball. Selig has had numerous opportunities to address the issues of bench clearing brawls in baseball, but he sits idle like he can do nothing about the issue.

The thing is, Bud Selig can do something about it, he can make a statement that this kind of behavior is not acceptable in the game of baseball. He needs to enact rules that eject & suspend any players who joins the fight outside for the initial players that started fighting. Rules like these exist already today in Soccer, Basketball and Hockey.

People might say that fighting and bench clearing brawls have been apart of the game since the start of time, but does not really make it acceptable? Should we not be progressing the game into the future and modernizing the rules of the game? I think this is the reason that Selig has not changed the rules, he is still stuck in this 1960’s fantasy version of the game of baseball.

Bud Must Go! The game of baseball is counting on it, I know I have written about my disapproval of Selig before and this incident should further prove that Bud has no place anymore in baseball. It is time for change, time for new ideas, its time for a new commissioner.

S.O.S to Major League Baseball and Bud Selig

This post today is an S.O.S to MLB and Bud Selig to fix the slowly sinking ship called baseball…. If you have not seen it by now, there was a conversational play in the Tampa Bay/Texas game on Monday night in which Marty Foster called Ben Zobrist. In one of my previous posts here, I talked about how Bud Selig is out of touch with the fans and implementing new technology and this incident proves once again the need for instant replay in baseball.

We have a commissioner in baseball that cares more about some fantasy image of baseball as it was in the 1960’s than the progress of the game today. Selig thinks that people will plop down $50+ minimum including all costs to watch the games calls get botched. He would rather hear baseball get bashed in the media for 2 days with bad publicity and shave 2 minutes off the game now without instant replay than get the call right.

Would you go to a bank that does not use a computer system to keep track of the books? Would you go in there and open up an account if you saw someone working all day with a pencil and ledger paper? This is how Bud Selig has run baseball, like bank that is behind the times and has not caught up with the times, without modernization, there are bound to be big mistakes.

I’m really unsure what the big fear is about instant replay, you get the call right, you don’t have controversy and it takes some stress off the umpires. Personally, I would not be asking to replay every single play in the game, give each manager two replays a game which would only add 8 minutes maximum and everybody goes home happy.

Peoples livelihood’s are the on the line with each and every missed called. There are large amounts of money that gets moved with each and every play whether on the betting counters or on the playing field, someone gets affected by the wrong code. It is essential that baseball should take every realistic step to ensure that no call is blown.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, it is time for Bud Selig to step down as commissioner of MLB and find someone who will relate to what the fans are saying, relate to the younger generation and keep the integrity of the game. I know being the commissioner of MLB can not be an easy job and I would not want the job, but how much more will the fans endure before they stop showing up at the ballpark?

MLB losing touch with fans

A couple of days ago MLB approved a couple of rule changes for the upcoming 2013 season as explained in this article.Normally when I hear about rules changes, I’m ready to jump right into the article and update my knowledge of the rules in the sport. With this article, I was also struck by a sense of disappointment as MLB once again proved to me that they are out of touch with the fan’s and their expectations of the game.

Frankly, I don’t care about banning the third to first move or adding the seventh coach to the dugout during the game. Along with the on field interpreter rule, if those are the only rules that MLB could come up with this season, they are more out of touch than I ever thought. There are so many other problems that are holding up the progression of the game in America to worry about the assistant hitting coach being in the dugout.

We have been for about five years that MLB continues to look into the use/expanded use of instant replay, but yet we continue to hear week after week during the season about blown close calls that could have been easily and quickly reversed with replay.

The NFL went through the same kind of issues with incorrect calls on close plays back in 1997. The NFL was able to implement an “experimental” system for the preseason in 1998 with full implementation in 1999. It only took 1 year to put in a replay system, yet we are waiting year after year for MLB to get their act together to modernize the game. This modernization of the NFL coincided with major increase in popularity of the game while baseball continue with their slow downward trend.  Most every other sport in the world uses some form of reply in their top tier professional league with the exception of soccer, but they are even investing in goal line technology. The young and middle aged people now a days know that these game are judged by the human element and that nobody is perfect, but if the technology exists to quickly correct the play/call, it should be used.

The main argument against instant replay from the anti-replay people is “The game is already running long, this will make the game run longer”. My reply to that is, the game is already being held up by the manager auguring the call, replay would take 2 minutes or less to correct the call which would be far less than the time the manger spends yelling at the umpire.

Another argument against instant reply is that “It will interrupt the flow of the game”. That is another weak comeback as the flow of the game has already been ruined when the player or manager is arguing the call.

Proponents of instant replay are not talking about stopping the game every five minutes to use instant replay. We are talking about 1-2 calls a game at most that need to be reviewed. Just give each manager 1 challenge per game just like in Little League. MLB seems like they would rather save 2 minutes during the game from not using replay and would rather receive negative publicity for 2 days on all the major sports cast shows.

People who are against replay do not truly care about the game and its future. They care about a past vision of the game, they are trying to hold onto something from their past and not look into the future. They want to remember the game for the black and white images that they see from time to time, but those images are in the past and can never be recaptured.

Another rule that needs to be changed is the DH rule between the two leagues. Most people want the DH to be used in both leagues, but personally I don’t care how MLB want to address the issue as long as the rule is consistent between the two leagues especially since there is an odd number of teams now in each league.

It is time for Bud Selig to step down as commissioner. The game has passed him by, he is dragging the progress of the game down while other sport continue their rise in popularity. It should not take to genius to make the needed rule changes in a quick manner to help the game.  He always says there are logistical and financial issues with these types of changes, but it has not stopped other sports from quickly put in similar major rule changes. If your focus is on the first to third move or how many people are in the dugout, the game has passed you by and you need to past the reigns to somebody else.

This will not be the last time you will hear me talk about MLB rules, instant replay or Bud Selig, as long as the game continues to fall behind other sports. All I can do is hope that someday baseball will wake up and listen to the fans as they walk away from the game.