Pedro Martinez had men on second and third, one run in, nobody out, in game 3 of the ALCS, and hit Karim Garcia on the first pitch. There is simply no justification for saying it was intentional. When you hit someone intentionally, you do it when it won't significantly hurt your team. People who say it was "clearly" intentional are morons. Maybe it was on purpose, but the evidence is -- um, clearly -- stacked against that hypothesis.
And even if you somehow disagree with the above analysis of the situation -- that if you are gonna hit someone, you don't do it in that worst-of-all situations, a truism that casts serious doubt on the claim of intent -- you are still left with the fact that it is only a guess, a hypothesis, a theory as to what his intentions were. You don't know. It is not clear. You are a moron. Stop it.
Re:And in English?
djberg96 on 2003-10-13T19:31:55
Baseball. Pedro Martinez is a pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. He hit a New York Yankees player. A brawl ensued. People got hurt and said many stupid things. All around poor sportsmanship.Re:And in English?
pudge on 2003-10-13T19:39:34
Yeah, lots of stupidity on the field, and off.Re:And in English?
waltman on 2003-10-14T01:07:42
Would a translation to cricket help?The pitcher is like the bowler in cricket. He stands about 60 feet away from the batter ("batsman") and tries to throw the ball past him. Since they're allowed to bend their arms when they throw, baseball pitchers generally throw much faster than cricket bowlers. (Pedro Martinez throws around 95 miles/hr.) Baseball batters wear much less padding that their cricket counterparts, usually only a helmet that covers the top of their head and their ears. Even with the helmet, batters can be quite seriously injured if they're hit on the head. And being hit on some other part of the body can sometimes lead to broken bones.
All the batter gets in return for his pain and suffering is a free base. The ball is dead (see rule 5.09(a)) and since first base was already open the other runners don't even get to move up. But having said that, most of the time the batter isn't hurt at all and is happy to "take one for the team".
This is a common source of conflict in baseball games. There are strategic reasons for a pitcher to want to pitch "inside" (the side of the plate closest to the batter), but if he goes too far inside he might hit him. And when he goes high and inside (i.e. around the batter's head) tempers sometimes flare.
In this case the pitcher threw the ball behind the batter's head. As Pudge said, it's impossible to know if he did it intentionally or not. Certainly the other team thought he did. Generally fans of Pedro's team think it was an accident, fans of the other team think he did it on purpose, and those of us who are fans of teams that didn't even make the playoffs just try to stir up trouble.
:)
Re:Pedro is the one at fault
pudge on 2003-10-14T01:21:29
You think the Boston sports media isn't full of morons?:-)
