Albert Belle approves of this brawl

• Tickets for you, your wife and two kids to a minor-league baseball game: $40.
• Hot dogs, soda and popcorn for family: $35.
• Getting drilled with a baseball thrown at 90 mph by a pissed off pitcher trying to chuck it into the other team's dugout during a brawl: Thousands of dollars of medical bills
• Getting drilled with a baseball thrown at 90 mph by a pissed off pitcher trying to chuck it into the other team's dugout during a brawl: A six-figure settlement on your lawsuit just waiting to happen.
• Getting drilled with a baseball thrown at 90 mph by a pissed off pitcher trying to chuck it into the other team's dugout during a brawl: Priceless.

If you didn't see it on SportsCenter or your local news last night, that's the souvenir that a lucky fan walked away from a game featuring a wild brawl between Dayton and Peoria thanks to Peoria pitcher Julio Castillo. And when I say "walked away from", I mean "was taken on a stretcher to the hospital from" which explains why Castillo got to spend the night in jail.

Here's a fan video of the brawl, complete with Castillo going nhuts for several minutes after the fight is over, and a bunch of mouthy, idiot fans who probably wouldn't be so loud if there wasn't a big screen separating them and the large, irate professional athlete. (Note: the fan is not only a loudmouth but also swears a lot, so NSFW if you are using speakers in the open:



Throwing a baseball at a fan should get you kicked out for life. Unless you are Albert Belle and a really good hitter, then maybe it should get you a few games supension.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 9:46 AM 0 comments  

A nice, relaxing, 50-minute brawl

Now, nobody loves a good ol' fashioned baseball fight like yours truly. Nothing like a dust-up to inject some life into a game. However, there's such a thing as too much. A five or ten-minute brawl? Sure, that's great. But one that takes more than 50 minutes to break up and sort out? That just seems...excessive.

But that's exactly what happened in Modesto, CA on Saturday as the Class-A California League Modesto Nuts (please, no jokes...OK, feel free to make jokes) threw down with the Stockon Ports (not named after the desert wine, unfortunately) for almost an hour of haymakers, body blows and lots of guys rolling around in the grass with each other. And it wasn't just your usual baseball fight, usually consisting of a couple of guys flailing their arms like elementary school girls in what could very loosely be called "punching" before everyone spills out and proceeds to hug each other for a few minutes. No, this was a full scale, Pier 6 brawl. Ask one of the Ports' relievers, who broke bones in his face after eating some punches and will likely miss the rest of the year.

The best part of all of this? It happened during the one inning per game that the Nuts designated as $1 beer inning. So (factoring in the rest of the inning) for more than an hour, you could get $1 beers from the concession stands. Who says nothing ever comes from violence!

No word on if the 7th Inning Stretch was renamed the 7th Inning Puke on Your Neighbor.

Posted by The Duke of Everything at 12:25 PM 0 comments