Take Me Out To The Brawlgame

Bill Simmons, formerly known as Boston’s Sports Guy, has been writing some hilarious stuff for ESPN’s irreverent Page 2 lately. His piece on Tom Seaver’s aborted comeback was funny and poignant at the same time, one of the best articles I’ve read all year.

In the wake of the Jeff Weaver-Mike Sweeney steel cage match, this piece is a celebration of baseball’s bench-clearing brawls. Among his reasons for loving them, my favorites are number two, “Relievers charging in from the bullpen,” and the taxonomy of the various approaches the wronged hitter can take (among them “the Izzy,” previously discussed here).

Simmons mentions two of my favorite vintage brawl moments. One is Yankees reliever Graeme Lloyd, a.k.a “The Big Dingo,” charging in from the bullpen during the Yanks-Orioles brawl triggered when Armando Benitez plunked Tino Martinez (Simmons gets the year wrong; it was 1998, not 1996, but oh well). The other is the famous Nolan Ryan-Robin Ventura showdown, a one-sided affair where the 46-year old Ryan hit the 26-year old Ventura (then with the White Sox) with a pitch in 1993. Ventura took offense and charged the mound, but Ryan grabbed him in a headlock and broke out a can of Lone Star-brand Whupp Ass. The photo pretty much says it all: