Baseball is currently slogging its way through their 432-game season but on Memorial Day a tussle out of AT&T Park in San Francisco grabbed the attention of the nation and myself. We even have a Notre Dame alum playing a major role. Let’s discuss.
First off, the background involved isn’t important. The Nationals Bryce Harper once hit some long bombs off Giants pitcher Hunter Strickland in the playoffs a couple years ago, they faced each other for the first time since then, and Strickland fed some laces into Harper’s thigh bone.
Then the fun begins.
Of course, Harper got absolutely roasted for his failed attempt at a helmet throw–just a bit outside! Hey, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. There are few things more difficult to throw with velocity and accuracy than a batting helmet. You can try to palm the top of the helmet which works well in close quarters but not at Harper’s distance. You can use the ear flap for leverage but accuracy is surely out of the window. Mr. Harper goes with the simplest route in the heat of the moment, the fingers on the brim method. It does not work well.
In retrospect, Strickland’s “ahhhhhh don’t hit me!” turn looks pretty silly for a guy 6-4, 220. I don’t necessarily blame him as a flying helmet could do some damage. Still, a quick hands to the face in protection would’ve sufficed before Harper ended up sending his lid into right field anyway.
Strickand almost slips on his pivot but shows tremendous agility and quickness squaring his shoulders and closing the gap between himself and Harper allowing for a quick jab and a miss from the Nats slugger.
Give Harper credit, though. So far he’s suffered the indignation of being hit by a fastball in the leg, given us among the national pastime’s worst helmet throws, and he’s now quickly losing this fight. However, he too squares up quickly and lands a hard right to Strickland’s facial and brim region, effectively winning the fight.
SHARK OUTTA NOWHERE.
I feel like not enough attention is being paid to this collision between teammates Michael Morse and Jeff Samardzija during the Harper brawl pic.twitter.com/HDiO2AaUJW
— Andrew Joseph (@AndyJ0seph) May 29, 2017
It’s former Notre Dame All-American receiver turned MLB pro Jeff Samardzija looking to wreck all sorts of worlds proving the old adage that you can take the player out of football but you can’t take the football out of the player.
If you look closely in the above tweet, Samardzija was READY to end Harper’s 2017 and possibly 2018 season. His fist is coming in fast and straight for an unaware Harper’s face. I mean, he looks super pissed off and cannot like Harper at all. Instead, Shark runs right into his own damn teammate giving his friend a concussion to boot. What is Michael Morse thinking? If you’re going to be this aggressive you have to either grab someone or throw fists. He tries to get in between a fight and pays the price.
By the way, we can blame the ridiculous Memorial Day camo uniforms for causing some confusion. In the bright California sunlight you can barely tell who is on which team.
Lost in the fracas is the amount of quality men’s hair flying all over the place. And that doesn’t really include Jason Werth’s mane as he pulls an opponent away from the swinging arms. It’s funny though as the Nats own broadcast keeps cutting back to Werth like, “Yeah, he had to have done something.”
Lastly, we cannot close this tale without bringing up Nationals second baseman Daniel Murphy. You can see him coming into the frame just moments after the Sharknado as he tries to grab Harper’s jersey to pull him away. A split second later and he completely bails. Murphy’s face would not be exposed as the Samardzija Disruption causes him to turn his back and fall to the ground. He truly wanted nothing out of this fight except to save Harper.
Excellent fight analysis. I have a different focus: how stupid is it that there are people in baseball who think it is appropriate to throw a hard ball directly at a person because that person did well against you three years ago? I realize that most people think Strickland was being a moron, but it’s not all people. What a weird sport.
@Yes, thank God no other sports have stupid “unwritten” rules like baseball…@
I’d think the pitcher would get a huge suspension and the batter in this scenario little to no punishment.
I’ll first ask you what you consider to be a “huge suspension” and then probably bet you $10 you’re wrong
Wrong how?
Like I’d overestimate what he actually received? Or overestimate what is typical based on history? Or that the MLB never goes hard enough on suspensions? Or they shouldn’t?
I don’t even know what bet you’re trying to lay out.
Reading the reports, Harper got 3 games and Strickland 6. The suspension is listed as “undisclosed” so I’m thinking it’s some minor amount. Probably around $5000 or so for each of them.
I think this is what I was suggesting you’re wrong about. Strickland got 6, Harper got 4 (and reduced to 3, I think). So, roughly the same punishment.
I read it as you’d guess Strickland would get 15-20 games and Harper would get 1-3, not knowing that their suspensions had already been handed out. Just trying to cash in on a sweet, sweet hypothetical 10-spot.
Oh, I see. Yeah, I knew what the suspensions were. I was saying I’d think, if they wanted to be “fair”, that Strickland would get a far worse suspension.
Gotcha.
But you can still PayPal me $10. Or I guess just take it off next year’s subscription rate?
Judging by the comments I’ve read about this, apparently Strickland is a lot like Bryce Harper and he’s a bit of a jerk. Even his teammates cant stand him which is probably why Posey did absolutely nothing to get out and defend his pitcher. Just stood back and watched.
It’s like the Dustin Pedroia-Manny Machado thing. Pedroia got spiked (a legitimate accident, apparently) and Boston’s idiot pitcher threw at Machado’s head next time up. And Pedroia’s yelling to Machado from the dugout, “That’s not me! I didn’t ask for that! You know that, right?”
Teammates, and all, but sometimes your teammate is just too damned stupid.
Is Bryce Harper actually known to be a jerk? The only thing I’ve ever seen negative from a teammate about him was Papelbon (known psychopath) trying to choke him. Granted, I haven’t followed the Nationals closely since I moved away 2 years ago, but back then everybody on his team really seemed to respect the hell out of him and how hard he worked.
Here’s my #HARRUMPH moment… MLB screwed this up when they overreacted to the beanball wars in the early 2000’s – I think there was one between the Royals and White Sox that got really ugly and touched off the current near-zero-tolerance policy. You want to suspend guys for starting fights, hey, no problem. But now when you hit a guy they warn both teams right away, the other team never gets to retaliate within the “unwritten rules,” and things stew.
Used to be you brush my guy back, I brush your guy back, it’s over. Now there are two things: I think there’s a greater need to take umbrage at someone dissing you, and then the MLB warnings policy. So guys get more ticked than they used to and can’t even it out right away, so it stews, so they retaliate months or years later. Which in turn makes retaliating after a long layoff seem less immediately idiotic than it did before, which makes guys like Strickland do this.
Now, what Strickland was retaliating for was just being beat, which is dumb in and of itself. Guys like that have no respect within the game (see: Benitez, Armando). That’s another story. And Harper, as noted, is a well-known jerk. I wonder how many guys from either side really wanted to get involved.
To answer your last question:
JEFF SAMARDZIJA.
I couldnt decide who I wanted to win this fight. On the one hand, I absolutely loathe Harper. You probably cant find a bigger prick in the sport than that guy.
On the other hand, that’s a clown move, bro throwing at a guy after three years removed AND the fact that YOU WON THE DAMN SERIES. That’s your parting shot, you moron. You get to chant “scoreboard” and walk off the field with a ring.
Either way, it was fun to see both guys get a little egg on their faces after this altercation.
Wait everyone keeps saying that Harper is a jerk but so we have a ton of evidence of that? Or do people not like him but he “doesn’t play the game the right way” like trout.
Surprised the posey absence wasn’t mentioned in the article but I fully support posey not getting involved. Brawls are usually pretty stupid, if my best player got hurt defending a middle relief pitcher with a grudge that he’s literally 10 times more valuable than, I would be livid
“Wait everyone keeps saying that Harper is a jerk but so we have a ton of evidence of that?”
I’m with you and MikeyB on this front. Without a citation, I’m not taking “Harper is a well-known jerk” as evidence that he’s a jerk. He’s confident, but he should be – he’s one of the top 5 position players in all of baseball. He works hard, plays hard, and seems like a good teammate (to everyone except Jon Papelbon, who was the instigator in that beef anyway).
Also, I don’t think the helmet toss went awry. I think Harper realized how gigantic his suspension would be if he attacked with equipment right as he was about to chuck it, so he hurled it away instead.
Out of all of the actions/reactions in this fight, Posey’s was my favorite. His “screw this nonsense” shoulder slouch was perfect. Of course, Harper firing his helmet 80 feet away from its intended target was a close second.
I’m a White Sox fan. I don’t really know, or care, about any of these guys, other than the Shark of course. I loved the blow by blow Eric. It was humurous.