Awesome brawl at Texas

[Don't Feed the Greed Guy]

 

  On 5/17/2016 at 12:50 AM, jimmer said:

You actually believe that Odor's throw had to do with the slide?  

Odor's shove had to do with the slide. Bautista kept coming at him after the shove, and so Odor punched him. There may have been some built up tension due to past history, but Odor's actions were reactive to the situation at hand. Bautista tried to break his ankles, sliding way past the bag with spikes up. 

[jimmer]

 

  On 5/18/2016 at 2:24 PM, Don't Feed the Greed Guy said:

Odor's shove had to do with the slide. Bautista kept coming at him after the shove, and so Odor punched him. There may have been some built up tension due to past history, but Odor's actions were reactive to the situation at hand. Bautista tried to break his ankles, sliding way past the bag with spikes up. 

His spikes weren't up.  That's been pointed out multiple times. His spikes were down, not up. And I seriously doubt the hit by pitch or Odor throwing at Bautista's head had more to do with the slide than what happened in the playoffs. Retaliation by butthurt Rangers.  And I like how the Rangers waited until the last meeting of the season to do all this.  Classy.

 

[jimmer]

 

  On 5/18/2016 at 3:26 PM, jimmer said:

His spikes weren't up.  That's been pointed out multiple times. His spikes were down, not up. And I seriously doubt the hit by pitch or Odor throwing at Bautista's head had more to do with the slide than what happened in the playoffs. Retaliation by butthurt Rangers.  And I like how the Rangers waited until the last meeting of the season to do all this.  Classy.

And they just showed the slide again during the Twins game showing right now, and if his spikes had been any lower, they would have been underground.

[KirbyDome89]

 

  On 5/18/2016 at 11:43 AM, TheLeviathan said:

1) I think you've just failed to see how any form of unregulated, self-policing comes with inherent problems of fairness and serious risk.

 

2)  The NHL hasn't had a Bertuzzi incident in quite some time.  You should read more about the Bertuzzi assault.  It was clearly a team that felt it needed to self-police the game and Bertuzzi took it in his hands.  (The language is clear unwritten rules stuff about "respecting leading scorers", etc.)  The league has cracked down on this mindset and made it clear that it will harshly punish players so that teams never feel like they have to do this.  All baseball has to do is the same.

 

3) I claimed the NHL is reducing it's level of fighting, I didn't compare it to MLB.  I said the NHL's recent changes are making it safer, cutting down on fights, and even squeezing enforcers out of jobs.  In other words - league rules are working. The self-policing style of Todd Bertuzzi never accomplished this.  It accomplished an assault that is still haunting one man. 

 

Fighting in baseball, almost always, starts and stops with someone breaking "the code".  This started with a bat flip and an attempted retaliation.  I can pretty much guarantee every brawl starts similarly.  In fact, there is one story that talks aobut a majority of them starting for racial reasons.  

 

So the real way to stop fighting/brawling is to make players understand that unwritten rules are no longer to be self-policed by players.  The league has to step in and more harshly punish the events that lead to these incidents.  That means guys who throw at people need to sit for a long time and eat some hefty fines.  Any timea player intentionally tries to intimidate someone with violence they need to eat a healthy penalty for it.  That will change things (as other leagues are showing) and it will make the game safer.

 

1) When you continue to argue counterpoints to their extreme to fit your narrative I can see how risk is an issue....

 

 

 

2) I already touched on the Bertuzzi thing and where the "unwritten rules," come in. I don't want to see umpires attempt to "objectively," judge something that is subjective. You might be fine with it but I'm not and I've already made that point as well.

 

3) When you bring up the fact that fighting is on a downward trend in the NHL you are directly comparing it to MLB. My counter was that even if it isn't as prevalent in hockey now, it still occurs, and it occurs more often than we see in baseball. You keep saying you want fighting out of the game and implementing more rules will do that. My point is that the trend line won't reach zero, and at some point those excess rules become a hinderance to the game and fail to serve the purpose for which they were created. 

 

4) I already gone over the rules that exist to prevent fighting now. If you're trying to determine intention you're right back at the objective vs. subjective debate. 

 

 

[TheLeviathan]

 

  On 5/18/2016 at 7:05 PM, KirbyDome89 said:

1) When you continue to argue counterpoints to their extreme to fit your narrative I can see how risk is an issue....

 

2) I already touched on the Bertuzzi thing and where the "unwritten rules," come in. I don't want to see umpires attempt to "objectively," judge something that is subjective. You might be fine with it but I'm not and I've already made that point as well.

 

3) When you bring up the fact that fighting is on a downward trend in the NHL you are directly comparing it to MLB. My counter was that even if it isn't as prevalent in hockey now, it still occurs, and it occurs more often than we see in baseball. You keep saying you want fighting out of the game and implementing more rules will do that. My point is that the trend line won't reach zero, and at some point those excess rules become a hinderance to the game and fail to serve the purpose for which they were created. 

 

4) I already gone over the rules that exist to prevent fighting now. If you're trying to determine intention you're right back at the objective vs. subjective debate. 

 

1) We've seen things escalate too far.  We had a brawl over a bat flip.  A freaking bat flip.  

 

2) Bertuzzi was self-policing the unwritten rules.  You're losing track of the contention you made originally.  You want self-policing.  My point is that self-policing A) doesn't stop the thing you want policed and B ) usually leads to escalated vigilante "justice".  As opposed to the league implementing harsh penalties which, in a matter of just a few years, has almost made the enforcer a thing of the past.  Self-policing was ineffective at stopping players from being targeted for decades and it's taken less than 5 years to fundamentally change the game with just a few rules.  

 

That's the argument - self policing doesn't work.  It leads to violent nonsense.  Harsh, objective, league-wide rules are a much mroe effective way to alter behavior.

 

3)  My comparison was to what MLB could do should it choose the path of the NHL.  The NHL and NBA chose league-wide rules to change the fabric of the game and it has worked for the better of the game and the safety of the game.  Contending that any change that doesn't result in a "zero" effect is asinine.  That's now how laws or justice or rules work.  The point is to make the game played better and safer.  And the NHL and NBA have demonstrably done both with league wide policies after decades of failed self-policing forced their hand.

 

4) Of course rule enforcement is subjective.  It's just MUCH less so than Bitter Joe on the mound deciding to enforce his own code with 90 mph baseballs.  That's what self-policing is at the core - one guy who decides he's the one who gets to decide right and wrong rather than a committee or group of people doing so within a firmly outlined set of criteria.

[KirbyDome89]

 

  On 5/18/2016 at 8:11 PM, TheLeviathan said:

1) We've seen things escalate too far.  We had a brawl over a bat flip.  A freaking bat flip.  

 

2) Bertuzzi was self-policing the unwritten rules.  You're losing track of the contention you made originally.  You want self-policing.  My point is that self-policing A) doesn't stop the thing you want policed and usually leads to escalated vigilante "justice".  As opposed to the league implementing harsh penalties which, in a matter of just a few years, has almost made the enforcer a thing of the past.  Self-policing was ineffective at stopping players from being targeted for decades and it's taken less than 5 years to fundamentally change the game with just a few rules.  

 

That's the argument - self policing doesn't work.  It leads to violent nonsense.  Harsh, objective, league-wide rules are a much mroe effective way to alter behavior.

 

3)  My comparison was to what MLB could do should it choose the path of the NHL.  The NHL and NBA chose league-wide rules to change the fabric of the game and it has worked for the better of the game and the safety of the game.  Contending that any change that doesn't result in a "zero" effect is asinine.  That's now how laws or justice or rules work.  The point is to make the game played better and safer.  And the NHL and NBA have demonstrably done both with league wide policies after decades of failed self-policing forced their hand.

 

4) Of course rule enforcement is subjective.  It's just MUCH less so than Bitter Joe on the mound deciding to enforce his own code with 90 mph baseballs.  That's what self-policing is at the core - one guy who decides he's the one who gets to decide right and wrong rather than a committee or group of people doing so within a firmly outlined set of criteria.

1) I'm talking about the straw man argument you're using. You're trying disprove my counterpoints via reductive arguments

 

2) I haven't lost sight of anything. I've been nothing but specific and very clear about my stance the entire time. Please, go back and read the comments I made. I said I didn't mind self policing. I NEVER advocated for it as a primary means of punishment. I'm opposed to the introduction of rules I view as unnecessary, especially when they will attempt to interpret subjective matter such as intent. You have either misstated or confused what I have said multiple times and I have corrected it. 

 

3) What's asinine is yet again twisting what I said. I said you have to consider the cost of additional rules vs. the results and in this case I think the rules will create more trouble than they'll prevent. I NEVER said because a rule doesn't operate at 100% efficiency it is pointless. In fact I believe I told you exactly the opposite of that in a previous post. 

 

4) We've had the subjective vs. objective argument. 

[TheLeviathan]

Additional rules in other leagues have made them safer. Self policing has not. Additional rules have never caused violence. Self policing has. Additional rules are based on set criteria. Self policing is on the whim of the self appointed policer. Both are subjective, only one is effective.

 

I've had a grip on the point from the start. Self policing doesn't accomplish anything and as other leagues take charge of the issues, we see how central they are to the problem, not the solution. The further we get from them, the better and safer sports will be.

[USAFChief]

  On 5/19/2016 at 2:27 AM, TheLeviathan said:

Additional rules in other leagues have made them safer. Self policing has not. Additional rules have never caused violence. Self policing has. Additional rules are based on set criteria. Self policing is on the whim of the self appointed policer. Both are subjective, only one is effective.

I've had a grip on the point from the start. Self policing doesn't accomplish anything and as other leagues take charge of the issues, we see how central they are to the problem, not the solution. The further we get from them, the better and safer sports will be.

I would disagree, to one degree or another, with pretty much everything in this post.

 

Which means little, except to illustrate that we are both expressing opinions, not facts.

[TheLeviathan]

  On 5/19/2016 at 3:26 AM, USAFChief said:

I would disagree, to one degree or another, with pretty much everything in this post.

Which means little, except to illustrate that we are both expressing opinions, not facts.

Except I have the NHL and NBA as evidence for my opinion (not to mention our basic concept of justice and the role of vigilante self policing).....what evidence do you have?

[USAFChief]

  On 5/19/2016 at 10:54 AM, TheLeviathan said:

Except I have the NHL and NBA as evidence for my opinion (not to mention our basic concept of justice and the role of vigilante self policing).....what evidence do you have?

The NHL and the NBA?

 

Seriously?

 

We're on page NINE of a thread about a "brawl" in Texas in which one punch was landed, and you want to talk about the NHL and the NBA?

 

It's precisely because MLB self polices so well that this is extremely unusual and we're even talking about it.

 

And that is precisely why I hope it never changes. Jose Bautista can take his preening, "look at ME" act to the NBA, where he'd fit right in, and I won't have to look at it. And baseball can continue to be a place where people act like professionals.

[TheLeviathan]

 

  On 5/19/2016 at 1:01 PM, USAFChief said:

It's precisely because MLB self polices so well that this is extremely unusual and we're even talking about it.

 

No, baseball has less brawls because, at heart, it's not a violent sport.  The NBA is a lesser violent sport than the NHL but still involves much more physical contact than baseball.  You tend to have more violent altercations happen in sports where violence/physicality is engrained in the game.  In baseball, there need be no violence at all really.  As demonstrated by many levels of baseball where it is played without any issues.

 

Look, you're welcome to like self-policing for entertainment.  But it is demonstrably ineffective and self-fulfilling.

 

Meanwhile with some rule changes the NHL has all but made the enforcer (read: self-policer) a thing of the past.  And the game is better for it.

[jimmer]

A memorabilia store manager had to cancel an autograph signing by Texas Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor after "it got too big, too fast."

 

Store manager Brett Kravitz told ESPN on Saturday afternoon that the June 4 event, in which Odor would sign photos of his punch to Jose Bautista's face for a premium, would no longer take place. Odor's representatives expressed that the timing of the event wasn't good, considering that Odor is still appealing his eight-game suspension for his role in the fight.

 

The timing wasn't good because of the appeal? Really? Unbelievable! Because THAT is why it would be inappropriate. Obviously, they agreed to do it with the details they had and the fact it was originally scheduled, 

 

Goes on to say, ',Kravitz said two inscriptions Odor might have signed were "Don't Mess With Texas," a popular inscription on the famous Nolan Ryan-Robin Ventura punch photo from 1993, and "Bat Flip Will Get You A Fat Lip," a reference to Bautista's famous bat flip last season.'

 

You'll notice the second saying they were thinking of using.  Funny, nothing about the slide.

 

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/15644967/rougned-odor-texas-rangers-cancels-autograph-session-due-bad-timing

[ashbury]

"...I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas."

[USAFChief]

  On 5/22/2016 at 1:24 AM, jimmer said:

A memorabilia store manager had to cancel an autograph signing by Texas Rangers second baseman Rougned Odor after "it got too big, too fast."

 

Store manager Brett Kravitz told ESPN on Saturday afternoon that the June 4 event, in which Odor would sign photos of his punch to Jose Bautista's face for a premium, would no longer take place. Odor's representatives expressed that the timing of the event wasn't good, considering that Odor is still appealing his eight-game suspension for his role in the fight.

 

The timing wasn't good because of the appeal? Really? Unbelievable! Because THAT is why it would be inappropriate. Obviously, they agreed to do it with the details they had and the fact it was originally scheduled, 

 

Goes on to say, ',Kravitz said two inscriptions Odor might have signed were "Don't Mess With Texas," a popular inscription on the famous Nolan Ryan-Robin Ventura punch photo from 1993, and "Bat Flip Will Get You A Fat Lip," a reference to Bautista's famous bat flip last season.'

 

You'll notice the second saying they were thinking of using.  Funny, nothing about the slide.

 

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/15644967/rougned-odor-texas-rangers-cancels-autograph-session-due-bad-timing

Well, there's the smoking gun. Case closed.

 

Sports memorabilia store guy's possible second choice of phrase for an autograph session that won't happen.

[jimmer]

http://deadspin.com/rougned-odors-been-a-****-for-a-long-time-1776921090