Sunday afternoon, after Carlos Guillen of the Tigers stared him down following a no-doubter home run, Angels pitcher Jered Weaver, clearly upset by being shown up by Guillen, decided to pay him back by throwing the very next pitch almost into the ear hole of Alex Avila, the next Tiger hitter. I've heard many people over the last 48 hours saying Guillen was completely wrong by admiring his handy work, rather than heading toward first base immediately, thus saying Weaver was entitled to either throw at the next batter, or to throw at Guillen when he got up next. I have a better idea for Weaver: Keep the ball off the center of the plate next time.
What drives me up a wall when it comes to professional sports are the "codes" or the unwritten rules that teams and players are supposed to abide by. As far as I'm concerned, if you're being paid to play a game, anything goes. Jered Weaver makes $7.37 million this year. That ought to be enough money to keep someone from Carlos Guillen from driving the ball out of the ball park. The fact that you couldn't accomplish that shouldn't give you the right to get ticked off and throw at the next guy, just to show both Guillen, and the Angels, that you mean business. After the game, Weaver was quoted saying:
"He caught me in the All-Star Game (referring to Avila), and we gained a little respect for each other there. So I'm not here to hurt nobody. I just felt like I needed to prove a point. I think if I wanted to hit him, I could have hit him. I just threw a fastball up and in and it got up and away. It probably looked a little worse than it was, but it was clearly about a foot or two over his head."
You were trying to prove a point? What point was that? You threw at a guy who you supposedly had gained a little respect for, not the guy who supposedly disrespected you. And the pitch was only two feet over his head because he ducked down as it was nearing his helmet. Seriously Jered, you might want to bring a box of Kleenex out to the mound with you in case someone decides to disrespect you with a five-hit game.
The troubling thing to me wasn't just the fact that Weaver decided to throw at Avila to avenge the home run Guillen hit. The fact that a second unwritten baseball rule was supposedly broken later that game. With Justin Verlander in the midst of his second no-hitter of the season, and the Tigers leading 3-0 in the top of the eighth inning, Erick Aybar of the Angels attempted to lead off the eighth with a bunt single. How could he possibly consider bunting in a 3-0 game, especially off a guy who has no-hit kinda stuff? How inconsiderate of Aybar, to try and break up a no-hitter with such a cowardly act, rather than try to reach base like a man and just get a hit. Forget the fact that the Angels just needed base runners in order to try and come back. He was probably more interested in showing up Verlander and preventing the no-hitter than he was trying to win the game.
Verlander was clearly upset after the inning, despite the bunt attempt resulting in an error on his own throw to first base, thus not breaking up the no-no. Motioning to Aybar as he took the field in the bottom of the inning, Verlander indicated that the next pitch Aybar saw from him would be square in the middle of his back. Kinda childish, actually. Perhaps if the game were more than a grand slam away from being an Angels win, say maybe an 8-0 score, then I could understand the "cheapness" of what the Tigers and their fans considered Aybar's act of bunting to be. But, that wasn't the score, and as far as I'm concerned, Aybar was doing everything in his power to keep his team in the game, not to bust up history in the making.
Professional athletes shouldn't be allowed to have "hurt feelings" in situations like this. When an NFL team is leading 35-0 at half-time, that shouldn't mean that they take to strictly running the ball in the second half to preventing running up the score. NFL teams pay their players quite well, actually, so, if a team is paying its defense $50+ million collectively to stop the other team's offense, then by God, they better be able to stop the other team's offense. If they can't, then that's too damn bad. Now, if we're talking high school, or even college, then we're talking about something different entirely. But, we're not talking high school or college. We're talking about professional athletes getting paid very lucrative professional contracts to perform.
The same could be said for baseball as a whole. If a team is up by nine runs in the fifth inning, should that mean that the team leading shouldn't be allowed to steal bases? Last I checked, Joe Mauer was making $23 million this year. If a team is leading 9-0 and chooses to steal on him, and he can't throw the guy out, then that's tough luck for Mr. Mauer and the Twins. Does that mean a hitter who drives a ball into the gap for a sure-fire double in a 12-2 game should hold up at first so he doesn't appear to be "rubbing it in"? That's an absolutely ridiculous notion!
The sooner sports decide that the unwritten rules or the unwritten code aren't what keeps the game going, the better. Is it embarrassing when your team gets shellacked by 10 runs? Absolutely. Is it any more embarrassing when they get beat by 15? It shouldn't be, but for some reason, that's what we make it. So...let's get these unwritten rules unwrittenly erased.
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