Prince Goes Jerry Springer?

This is the bad thing about West Coast games- you miss things like Prince Fielder trying to rush the Dodgers clubhouse and take out Da' Bums.

Since the South is in the Central and Eastern time zones, here's what happened- the Brewers were getting blown out, and eventually lost 17-4. Brewer's pitcher Chris Smith then hit Manny Ramirez. Probably not intentionally based on the highlight that I saw- Smith is a guy who at this point in his career is a AAAA pitcher with a couple of cups of coffee in the Big Leagues, and is hardly Greg Maddux. Then Brewers pitcher R J Swindle, a pitcher very similar to Smith except with an even worse ERA, hit Juan Pierre. OK, so now it's the ninth inning and Prince Fielder is at bat, and his team is getting blown out. He gets hit in the knee by Guillermo Mota. That's baseball as Ron Polk would say? Well, it doesn't stop there. It turned into That's Jerry Springer really quickly. After the game, Fielder decides to charge the Dodgers clubhouse. Now, as you might imagine, a MLB team is going to have some security at the door for common sense reasons. Well, Fielder wanted in the Dodgers clubhouse, and the security guard earned his paycheck and wouldn't allow it. Fielder then tries to force his way into the clubhouse, prompting the police to get involved and the rest of his Brewer teammates to restrain him. And to make matters even worse, all of this was caught on video. The funny thing about it was the Dodgers had no clue what was going on outside. It's a good thing none of them opened the door. Of note, Mota used to pitch for the Brewers and was a teammate of Fielder, but prior to last night there had never been any reported problems between the two. Just to throw that theory out the window. Mota was ejected from the game by Mississippi's own Lance Barksdale, who was the home plate umpire that night.

I don't know what Prince was thinking. He certainly was not looking for a raspberry baret. What would he have done if he had actually gotten in the Dodgers clubhouse? Seriously. There are twenty-five Dodgers. There is one Prince Fielder. Now, Fielder is a big guy, but so is Jonathan Broxton of the Dodgers. And remember baseball teams are very clanish. If someone on another team attacks one of their teammates- it's on. And with no umpires to break it up, and odds on slightly better than Custer, Prince probably should be thankful that he didn't get in the clubhouse. If he did get in, I think the end result would have looked something like this: (Not safe for work because of explicit language)











Now, John Kruk of ESPN weighed in on this and his opinion was that Fielder was way out of line (duh), and that Mota did it the right way because he didn't try to hit him in his head. He had some good clips of the "right" and "wrong" way to hit a batter, which is becoming a lost art. To sum it up, basically, if you're trying to hurt someone or end their career, then that is the wrong way to do it. If you hit someone in the leg, or their rear end, that's the right way. And he also pointed out that you don't necessarily even have to hit someone to send the message. He showed a pitcher who throw one pitch outside to get the hitter to lean over the plate and subconciously look for an outside pitch, and then come up in on the batter. In his example, the batter was not hit with the purpose pitch. According to Kruk, the pitcher should have stopped there. Instead the pitcher threw the same sequence two more times before finally hitting him with the sixth pitch. It was a good piece by Kruk- who has been thrown at before (cough, Randy Johnson, cough).

I sincerely hoped Prince Fielder watched the piece by Kruk, and I have a feeling that he's going to get a chance to watch a lot of baseball on TV very soon, so he'll get his chance. I think Fielder is a great player, and I think this was simply a moment of weakness for him, and I hope he learns a lesson from this.