Favorite Baseball Fights

Best meltdown? Absolutely. Not really a fight though...

 

I was browsing Youtube after reading this thread and came across this one from 1993. Mike Mussina plunks Bill Haselman and sparks a fight that goes on for a while. The kicker was Lou Piniella going ape at the very end.

http://youtu.be/eYTQE8wUuvw

 

"It's Haselmania!!!" said legendary Toronto TV sportscaster Jim Tatti as highlights of that brawl ran on the 11:30 sports show that night.

 

That's unpossible! Mr. Piniella was always such a calm, rational type.

 

I don't know what got into him that day. He so rarely got angry and kicked things.

 

Wasn't the '93 Mariners-Orioles brawl the one in which Cal Ripken hurt his knee, almost causing him to miss a game and end his streak?

You watch some of these things, with large, athletic men throwing punches and jumping on each other, and it's a wonder there aren't more serious injuries. Bill Lee's shoulder injury from the Yankee-Red Sox brawl is the only serious one that comes to mind.

 

Yeah that was the game. Also in that one, Chris Bosio rebroke his collar bone after having been on the DL earlier in the season for a similar problem.

 

You'd also think someone could land a real punch or two sometime.

Christ, no wonder half the league is batting .243. They can't hit anything.

 

Phillies-Braves in 1991, the Otis Nixon War, was pretty entertaining.
A Phillies pitcher named Wally Ritchie hit Nixon on Dale Murphy night in Atlanta, and Nixon charged the mound. Nixon threw a kick as he got there that cut up Ritchie's jersey and his stomach (Nixon went in spikes up), got in some good punches, and put Ritchie on the DL because of his injuries.

Here's the Philadelphia Inquirer game story from the first incident, with a heartwarming quote from Bobby Cox: http://articles.philly.com/1991-06-05/sports/25788300_1_wally-ritchie-phils-otis-nixon

And poor-quality VHS video of the fight:

A couple of weeks later in Philadelphia, Roger McDowell threw at Nixon's head and was ejected. Although there wasn't another fight, McDowell almost charged out of the dugout when Nixon started jawing at him from first base. It did cause more retaliation, though, when Tom Glavine threw at Dale Murphy (who was with the Phillies by then) in the bottom of the ninth inning. Glavine threw four change-ups, all inside. The last one hit Murphy and inspired this gem from home plate umpire Bob Davidson.

http://articles.philly.com/1991-06-20/sports/25788895_1_braves-outfielder-otis-nixon-jeff-blauser-braves-starter-tom-glavine

As an epilogue, I remember the Phillies hung Ritchie's shredded jersey from the first incident in the clubhouse as a rallying point. Didn't help them much -- they finished 78-84 -- but it was sort of funny.

 

Didn't have time to watch all the way through, but wasn't that the brawl in which Ripken got his leg tweaked and almost had to end the streak?

 

Stumbled across this one -- Red Sox at Yankees, from 1967 -- paging through some the the links, here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5H6oo1O0Q0

 

I have nothing to add except that it happened on my 11th birthday, which was awesome.

There was a notable Red Sox-Tigers brawl in the early 90s of which I don't remember much other than the catcher (Gedman maybe?) saying afterward that trying to stop Cecil Fielder from charging the mound was "like trying to tackle a buffalo."