I show absolutely no reason to speculate that. Its not like I defend every part of the team.
Bryce Harper Megathread
- Thread starter CrimsonCowboy
- Start date
I show absolutely no reason to speculate that. Its not like I defend every part of the team.
Julio3000
<B>A Chip Off the Old Rock</B>
Vestigial tail?
VirginiaBrave
Well-known member
Look, I don't see the huge deal here. It's some good old fashioned sports hate. Its Celtics/Lakers, Redskins/Cowboys type stuff and there is nothing wrong with it. If I'm Freddie or JUp tonight I expect to get plunked and if the Nats want to dance, we dance. Just no headhunting. I think it goes back further than just last night. The Braves have felt disrespected all year by the mess coming out of that clubhouse and Harper's been a ringleader of it. Between the fanbases its even getting bad. This rivalry is getting good.
Dunit24
Awaiting a Promotion
Harper usually sprints around the bases. He will at times walk a few steps after a no doubter, but nothing like last night.
Upton on the other hand, usually walks a few steps and takes forever rounding the bases.
If Upton disrespected the game on Monday, then he has disrespected the game every time he hits a HR.
That is the difference. Harper did something abnormal for him that stood out. Nats fans thought Upton was disrespecting them bc he is just slow around the bases.
GEt over it.
Wait, so if Harper disrespected the game last night, he should be plunked bc he never does so. But, since Upton disrespects the game (your point) every time he hits a homer, he should get a pass? Thats some interesting logic.
Dunit24
Awaiting a Promotion
BOOM! Couldnt have said it any better. Its clear the Nats dont like the Braves. Its about time the Braves showed whos boss. The Atlanta Braves RARELY show a lack of class. Everything they do that shows a lack of class is usually done for a good reason. Its a FACT.
Dunit24
Awaiting a Promotion
LOL no, my point(which you always miss bc you dont want to accept whats right) is that Justin Upton USUALLY walks a few steps and is slow around the bases. See David Ortiz. Some players just do it naturally. Whats disrespectful, is when someone goes out of their way to do something to be noticed, and Harper did that last night. Put it this way. Jason Heyward usually sprints around the bases and almost never walks off a HR. Say he goes yard tonight and pimps it and is slow rounding the bases. Thats abnormal for him and its obvious he is showing up the Nats. Justin does it EVERY time. Thats Justin. He wasnt showing up the Nats. Its just Justin being Justin. If Justin is being disrespectful, teams would start plunking him for doing so but they are smart and they know its not abnormal for him to do that and hes not showing up the other team.
Bryce on the other hand, was showing up the Braves. He got plunked for a reason. Chipper has openly admired Harper and how he plays. He didnt agree last night with what Harper did bc it was clear he was showing up the Braves. Not that hard to understand IMO.
Exactly. I did think it was quite funny when JT plunked him. Honestly, it is good for JT to do so. Believe it or not, that is only the 2nd time Harper has been HBP all year. If he was on Atlanta's roster, that would put him last amongst starters. Heyward leads the team with 7, R. Johnson has 6, Uggla has 6, and Freeman has 5.
My stance? Take your base and help get your team to .500. And the next time you hit a HR, whether you are Harper, Upton, or friggin' Arod, act like you've done it before.
57Brave
Well-known member
////
Poster actually was accurate.
c) I read it on the first page of this thread..
e) Big difference between being pitched tight inside and getting HBP.
Diesel
Spring Training Invitee
We're over here discussing whether hitting Harper was right, wrong, or necessary while most Nats fans wish their team would stick up for each other in that fashion. Reading their forum, it's a main point of frustration that Gio nor any other pitcher after that had the gonads to stand up for their team and send a message to the Braves.
Maybe it's coming tonight. If not, you can believe that they will be upset and proof to them that their team lacks heart.
Maybe it's coming tonight. If not, you can believe that they will be upset and proof to them that their team lacks heart.
VirginiaBrave
Well-known member
The Nats have no message left to send. The reality of this thing being over has set in. The only thing thing they could do is hurt one of our guys.
I'm quite positive Fredi will have a talk with everyone before the game tonight in which he will discuss the last thing that a team with a 14.5 game lead on a 12 game winning streak that is clicking on all cylinders needs is some getting suspending for fighting, if you get hit tonight, take your base.
Dunit24
Awaiting a Promotion
I expect either the Nats to do nothing, or do something terrible like head hunt. That organization is the worst.
57Brave
Well-known member
This Happened:
//////////
May Day – Dock Goes Redhunting
On May 1, 1974 Dock Ellis engaged in one of the most deliberate acts of headhunting in his career. In this case, he went hunting for Cincinnati Reds. Reds Make Nice Targets For Erratic Dock Ellis
The boxscore for the game tells just part of the story. As with many tales from the annals of Dock Ellis, this one is overloaded with insights into the game of baseball, and the art of pitching & plunking — and also as usual with Dock, when we scratch beneath the surface the back story becomes just as fascinating as the incident itself. In 1976 Donald Hall provided some background in Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball:
Four days earlier, I had seen him at a party in Pittsburgh. I wandered around, talking to various people. Dock’s attorney and friend Tom Reich was there, shaking his head in disapproval of a plan of Dock’s. I met Dock in the kitchen fixing a drink. I asked him with some awe, “Are you really going to hit every Cincinnati ballplayer Wednesday night?” He returned the awe. “How you know that?” he said.
In 2006 Bob Smizik of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette spoke with Dock, who elaborated that the seeds for this were sown at least as far back as 1974 spring training:
“They called our team dumb,” said Ellis of the Reds. “I told Kurt Bevacqua in spring training I would drill all of them. “Bevacqua said, ‘I’ll bet you a Chateaubriand.’ “I collected.”
More from Donald Hall, quoting the reasons Dock gave for his plan:
“Cincinnati will bull**** with us and kick our ass and laugh at us. They’re the only team that talk about us like a dog. Whenever we play that team, everybody socializes with them.” In the past the roles had been reversed. “When they ran over to us, we knew they were afraid of us. When I saw our team doing it, right then I say, `We gonna get down. We gonna do the do. I’m going to hit these mother****ers.’ ”
Donald Hall poetically described the game action: Pete Rose 1974 Topps baseball card
“The first pitch to Pete Rose was directly toward his head,” as Dock expresses it, “not actually to hit him, ” but as “the message, to let him know that he was going to get hit. More or less to press his lips. I knew if I could get close to the head that I could get them in the body. Because they’re looking to protect their head, they’ll give me the body.” The next pitch was behind him. “The next one, I hit him in the side.” Pete Rose’s response was even more devastating than Dock had anticipated. He smiled. Then he picked the ball up, where it had fallen beside him, and gently, underhanded, tossed it back to Dock. Then he lit for first as if trying out for the Olympics. As Dock says, with huge approval, “You have to be good, to be a hot dog.”
As Rose bent down to pick up the ball, he had exchanged a word with Joe Morgan who was batting next. [...] Morgan taunted Rose, “He doesn’t like you anyway. You’re a white guy.” Dock hit Morgan in the kidneys with his first pitch. “The next batter was Driessen. I threw a ball to him. High and inside. The next one, I hit him in the back.” [...] Bases loaded, no outs. Tony Perez, Cincinnati first baseman, came to bat. He did not dig in. “There was no way I could hit him. He was running. The first one I threw behind him, over his head, up against the screen, but it came back off the glass, and they didn’t advance. I threw behind him because he was backing up, but then he stepped in front of the ball. The next three pitches, he was running. . . . I walked him.” A run came in. “The next hitter was Johnny Bench. I tried to deck him twice. I threw at his jaw, and he moved. I threw at the back of his head, and he moved.”
Al Oliver told what happened next in his 1997 autobiography Baseball’s Best Kept Secret:
Danny Murtaugh came to the mound. “Dock it looks like you don’t have your good stuff tonight,” Danny said. I wanted to laugh. It took everything I had in me to suppress it. I’m sure Danny knew what was going on with Dock that night; he was no dummy. Knowing Murtaugh, he probably liked it, but he had to come out to the mound. Sanguillen, Murtaugh, Ellis, Oliver on the mound
Manny Sanguillen -
The Reds said something in the paper, and Dock told me, “I’m going to knock everybody down.” I just sat there and he threw the ball. He said, “No matter what you do, I’m going to throw the ball at them. No matter what you say, I’m going to throw at them.” Dock didn’t care. When Danny came to the mound he asked, “Dock, what happened?” Dock told him, “Nothing’s wrong chief,” and Murtaugh asked him for the ball. Danny liked these kind of players. Fighters. You want to be on a club that’s strong. That has respect.
Joe Posnanski summed up Dock’s efforts in a 2009 blog post:
Did the mowdown serve its purpose? Hard to say. The Pirates continued to play uninspired ball well into August — they still had a losing record on August 11th. But the division was so even that they were only 2 1/2 games back at the time. And they won 31 of their last 47 games to win the division title. They lost to the Dodgers in the NLCS.
Dock shares the record for most hit batsmen in a single inning at three — with a whole slew of other pitchers. However, not only is he not the only NL pitcher with three hit batsmen in the first inning (Candiotti, Hawley, Weaver), he’s not the only Bucco pitcher with that distinction (Deacon Phillippe in 1905). Dock does stand alone with the dubious record for most consecutive hit batsmen (with three) in that game, and according to the Plunk Everyone blog, Dock is “the only post-1960 pitcher to hit 3 batters without recording an out”. Mark Ecko’s complex.com voted this incident baseball’s number one greatest retaliation.
//////////
May Day – Dock Goes Redhunting
On May 1, 1974 Dock Ellis engaged in one of the most deliberate acts of headhunting in his career. In this case, he went hunting for Cincinnati Reds. Reds Make Nice Targets For Erratic Dock Ellis
The boxscore for the game tells just part of the story. As with many tales from the annals of Dock Ellis, this one is overloaded with insights into the game of baseball, and the art of pitching & plunking — and also as usual with Dock, when we scratch beneath the surface the back story becomes just as fascinating as the incident itself. In 1976 Donald Hall provided some background in Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball:
Four days earlier, I had seen him at a party in Pittsburgh. I wandered around, talking to various people. Dock’s attorney and friend Tom Reich was there, shaking his head in disapproval of a plan of Dock’s. I met Dock in the kitchen fixing a drink. I asked him with some awe, “Are you really going to hit every Cincinnati ballplayer Wednesday night?” He returned the awe. “How you know that?” he said.
In 2006 Bob Smizik of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette spoke with Dock, who elaborated that the seeds for this were sown at least as far back as 1974 spring training:
“They called our team dumb,” said Ellis of the Reds. “I told Kurt Bevacqua in spring training I would drill all of them. “Bevacqua said, ‘I’ll bet you a Chateaubriand.’ “I collected.”
More from Donald Hall, quoting the reasons Dock gave for his plan:
“Cincinnati will bull**** with us and kick our ass and laugh at us. They’re the only team that talk about us like a dog. Whenever we play that team, everybody socializes with them.” In the past the roles had been reversed. “When they ran over to us, we knew they were afraid of us. When I saw our team doing it, right then I say, `We gonna get down. We gonna do the do. I’m going to hit these mother****ers.’ ”
Donald Hall poetically described the game action: Pete Rose 1974 Topps baseball card
“The first pitch to Pete Rose was directly toward his head,” as Dock expresses it, “not actually to hit him, ” but as “the message, to let him know that he was going to get hit. More or less to press his lips. I knew if I could get close to the head that I could get them in the body. Because they’re looking to protect their head, they’ll give me the body.” The next pitch was behind him. “The next one, I hit him in the side.” Pete Rose’s response was even more devastating than Dock had anticipated. He smiled. Then he picked the ball up, where it had fallen beside him, and gently, underhanded, tossed it back to Dock. Then he lit for first as if trying out for the Olympics. As Dock says, with huge approval, “You have to be good, to be a hot dog.”
As Rose bent down to pick up the ball, he had exchanged a word with Joe Morgan who was batting next. [...] Morgan taunted Rose, “He doesn’t like you anyway. You’re a white guy.” Dock hit Morgan in the kidneys with his first pitch. “The next batter was Driessen. I threw a ball to him. High and inside. The next one, I hit him in the back.” [...] Bases loaded, no outs. Tony Perez, Cincinnati first baseman, came to bat. He did not dig in. “There was no way I could hit him. He was running. The first one I threw behind him, over his head, up against the screen, but it came back off the glass, and they didn’t advance. I threw behind him because he was backing up, but then he stepped in front of the ball. The next three pitches, he was running. . . . I walked him.” A run came in. “The next hitter was Johnny Bench. I tried to deck him twice. I threw at his jaw, and he moved. I threw at the back of his head, and he moved.”
Al Oliver told what happened next in his 1997 autobiography Baseball’s Best Kept Secret:
Danny Murtaugh came to the mound. “Dock it looks like you don’t have your good stuff tonight,” Danny said. I wanted to laugh. It took everything I had in me to suppress it. I’m sure Danny knew what was going on with Dock that night; he was no dummy. Knowing Murtaugh, he probably liked it, but he had to come out to the mound. Sanguillen, Murtaugh, Ellis, Oliver on the mound
Manny Sanguillen -
The Reds said something in the paper, and Dock told me, “I’m going to knock everybody down.” I just sat there and he threw the ball. He said, “No matter what you do, I’m going to throw the ball at them. No matter what you say, I’m going to throw at them.” Dock didn’t care. When Danny came to the mound he asked, “Dock, what happened?” Dock told him, “Nothing’s wrong chief,” and Murtaugh asked him for the ball. Danny liked these kind of players. Fighters. You want to be on a club that’s strong. That has respect.
Joe Posnanski summed up Dock’s efforts in a 2009 blog post:
Did the mowdown serve its purpose? Hard to say. The Pirates continued to play uninspired ball well into August — they still had a losing record on August 11th. But the division was so even that they were only 2 1/2 games back at the time. And they won 31 of their last 47 games to win the division title. They lost to the Dodgers in the NLCS.
Dock shares the record for most hit batsmen in a single inning at three — with a whole slew of other pitchers. However, not only is he not the only NL pitcher with three hit batsmen in the first inning (Candiotti, Hawley, Weaver), he’s not the only Bucco pitcher with that distinction (Deacon Phillippe in 1905). Dock does stand alone with the dubious record for most consecutive hit batsmen (with three) in that game, and according to the Plunk Everyone blog, Dock is “the only post-1960 pitcher to hit 3 batters without recording an out”. Mark Ecko’s complex.com voted this incident baseball’s number one greatest retaliation.
CyYoung31
Shift Leader
I hate you for making me side with harperfan in an argument on the Braves and Nats, but that is some absolutely terrible logic. Pimping your homeruns is showing up the other team. Period.
Dunit24
Awaiting a Promotion
You are exactly right. Im not denying that Justin Upton and David Ortiz pimp their HRs, but the main point is - When Upton and Ortiz do it, teams dont feel like they are showing them up. Why? BC they do it all the time. Is it showing up the other team? By definition yes, but not by the norm of both players it isnt. Its confusing and some will not get it, but ive been in those spots when im playing against a guy and I know his tendencies. In this case, im facing Justin Upton and he hits a HR, I expect him to "pimp" it. He does it all the time. Its not bc hes hitting it off of me. Its everytime. If Bryce pimps a HR all the time, it wouldnt have even crossed my mind that he was showing up the Braves. Im not dumb enough to think Justin and Harpers trots were different, but if you take the consistency of both players, its clear that Bryce Harpers intent was to show up the Braves. Does it make it right that Justin does it all the time and doesnt get plunked but Harper does it once and he does get plunked? NO, but thats just baseball logic. Not mine.