Cole Hamels suspended 5 games by MLB for intentionally plunking Bryce Harper on Sunday night.
Good riddance. Although he probably won't even miss a start. Still, it's probably worth revisiting Mike Rizzo's thoughts on the plunking, in which he repeatedly calls Hamels chicken [bleep] and "fake tough", via the Washington Post. Sounds about right:
"I’ve never seen a more classless, gutless chicken [bleep] act in my 30 years in baseball.
Cole Hamels says he’s old school? He’s the polar opposite of old school. He’s fake tough. He thinks he’s going to intimidate us after hitting our 19-year-old rookie who’s eight games into the big leagues? He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with."
(Mike Rizzo, via Nationals Journal, 5/7/2012)
The tough guy talk from Rizzo is fun, but nothing beats Harper's answer to Hamels chicken [bleep] act.
(Screengrab via MLB.com/ESPN)
"Old school?" Hamels is 29 and at the beginning of Season #7. I not so sure that he knows very much about "Old school."
Aside from the fact that you never throw at anybody for no reason, Hamels was partly correct. In "The Long Season", Jim Brosnan wrote that if a pitcher really wanted to hit a batter, he would throw the pitch in such a way that the batter would react by turning into it, and get hit in the back. Brosnan wrote that in 1959. At least Hamels got the "Old school" technique correct.
Hamels should have been suspended for five games for the pitch, three games for stupidity and two more for showing his ignorance.
Posted by: Nor'Easter | May 07, 2012 at 11:54 PM