Somehow, its louder and more personal if you are sitting in a dugout.
Matt Cain never meant to hit David Wright, but was forced to deal with the fact that he did. His body language conveyed as much, but the code had to be addressed and Johan Santana answered even though he knew that it wasn’t warranted. A “Just in case” thinking prevailed and Pablo Sandoval’s skip out of the way thankfully ended it all.
I’d imagine that Santana knew that Matt Cain didn’t intend to hit David Wright, but its been a long and painful month. The losses and all that crap back in NY with the Cradinals and Albert Pujols still lingers.
Damned code.
I heard that sound three times in my career from a dugout as an athletic trainer in professional ball when a pitched ball hit the helmets of three good men. One was an accident, while the other two were, well, likley to be something else. I’ve had major league pitchers tell me they intended to hit a batter because a hitter had done something. I’ll not share their names and don’t enjoy knowing what they are.
An idescribable beauty of baseball exists that players and fans share. It bonds them as there’s not a player alive that cannot share some unforgetable moment with a dad or mom.
My mom placed two ticket stubs over a large photo from a game my late father and I went to in 1974 and had it framed. She gave it to me at Christmas. It was the game that Hank Aaron hit his 715th homerun. Dad checked me out of school and we went up to Atlanta for the series hoping to see Aaron’s homerun. We saw it and I’ll never forget the smile on my Dad’s face when he realized what we just shared. My son has the framed photo displayed in his room.
A raw human experience always exists in any sport that forces reality on us all. David Wright will be ok, but that word, “perspctive” comes to mind.
