It is a rare occasion when baseball players actually land any solid punches in a bench-clearing brawl, and this clip will be no different. No heavyweight blows connected cleanly in Tuesday’s bout between Braves starter Reynaldo Lopez and Angels outfielder Jorge Soler. It was pretty rowdy nonetheless. Keep an eye out for a flying tackle of Soler by Atlanta manager Walt Weiss.
Soler had homered off of Lopez in his first at-bat and gotten plunked in his second. That, one might think, would be the end of it, honor restored all around in whatever silly red-assed code required it. But in the fifth inning, Lopez sailed a pitch to the backstop. He said there was no intent behind it, and that’s plausible enough, given it allowed a runner to move into scoring position in a close game. Soler wasn’t having it. “I asked him if everything was OK and the answer he gave me, I didn’t like it,” Soler said afterward. “That’s why I went out there.”
The two were briefly teammates in Atlanta in 2024, so possibly there’s some unresolved interpersonal beef present. I’ll let them work that out. I’d instead like to focus on what made this basebrawl unique: the use of a baseball as a weapon.
To me, this makes sense. The baseball lives on the mound. That is its house. It leaves for work from time to time, but it always returns home. The pitcher lives there too. They are roommates, and possibly lovers. If a batter wants to invade their home, he had better be prepared to face both of them. And baseballs hate batters instinctively. Batters are always hitting them them and they are not allowed to fight back.
A pitcher using a bat? That would be inconceivable, and why everyone got so het up over Roger Clemens flinging lumber at Mike Piazza. It was an inversion of the natural order of things. A sign of the decay of the social contract. It could not be countenanced even for a moment.
An aggrieved batter has lots of potential weapons. He has a bat, though he is discouraged from bringing it to a fight on the mound for several reasons. One is because it is a crime. Two is because the bat is a homebody, and has mild anxiety. It does not want to go far from the batter’s box. This is why batters drop it when they become runners. They want it to be comfortable.
Another potential batter’s weapon is the helmet. Helmets are loyal to batters and follow them out of the box. It is why Carlos Gomez was able to use his as a melee weapon, and why Bryce Harper could use his as the least accurate projectile attack of all time.
A pitcher, compared to a batter with his multiple bludgeoning weapons, is soft and vulnerable. He is tender meat. He is like a crab who is molting. His continued safety relies on a heavily armored catcher stopping the batter from pounding his pitcher’s tender meat. The catcher is also like a crab, but with its shell intact. Specialized tools are required to expose a catcher’s vulnerable, creamy innards. No one messes with catchers. The only way to defeat a catcher is by surprise attack.
So I understand why a pitcher would use a baseball to defend himself in a brawl. The baseball is his only friend. It is his cowhide blackjack, his cork knuckles. They would die for each other. I find this beautiful.
If you are an angry batter you must charge the mound before the baseball gets thrown back, or you will have to fight it too.