NEWSLETTER
Nobody is going to tell you that it’s not a really bad thing when a batter hits a catcher with his bat. It’s such a scary and vulnerable position for a catcher, and it’s more or less the batter’s responsibility not to let his backswing wrap around and whack the catcher. So when that happened last night with Ian Happ at the dish and Willson Contreras behind it, you could see immediately that Happ knew it was his fault. The two hugged, and Contreras left the game with a towel on his head. Hopefully it’s just a cut and he’s OK today.
But it was an accident. A fluke. An unwanted mishap. It’s not the kind of thing you need to “police” away.
So when Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas threw at Happ thereafter, it was wrong. When he threw at Happ twice, because he’s so crappy that he couldn’t even hit Happ the first time, it was ejectable. Thus, Mikolas was correctly ejected.
If you argue that Mikolas should’ve first received a warning – after throwing up and in to Happ and missing, and then throwing at him AGAIN and hitting him – you are a homer or an idiot or both.
With that, let me share the video of the Cardinals’ broadcast when this went down:
Brad Thompson and Chip Caray, everybody.
At first, this just makes me angry, hearing these idiots talking about how throwing a rock at a guy – TWICE, with the first one nearly hitting Happ in the head – because of an accident is somehow the right thing to do. As if it actually protects anyone from anything.
Next, it makes the logical part of my brain break, because if you issue warnings after that, then all you’ve done is punish the Cubs for something Mikolas did (i.e., if a pitch got away from Justin Steele, he gets booted then for doing nothing wrong at all).
But then you get to the part of the clip where Mikolas is engaging the Cubs’ dugout like a middle school bully, trying to get them to come out, and the entire Cubs dugout is just laughing at him. No real response. Just laughing and pointing. It’s perfect.
So that’s what I’ll do, too. Laugh and point at the Cardinals and their broadcasters.
